Vaccinations

In my past post I wrote about the dangers of yearly vaccinations. My one year old female beagle/poodle recently had to take her one year shot. In fact today I took her to the vet to have her shots. She won't be getting another shot until 2013. I realize that having yearly booster or in my case two yearly booster can compromise her immune system. Now, I do not want my little poogle to fall ill after her vaccinations. So, I administer one dose of Thuja 30c which will help her immune system and next week I will administer Sulphur 6c for a week to maintain her health. These are homeopathic medicine that I give my dogs. I am an avid supporter of alternative medicines and homeopathic medicine do not harm your pets or yourself. It is very safe.

Problems with ticks?

I wrote recently about using this natural product that kills and prevents ticks effectively on my dogs. The reason why I started using it was after my brother asked me to try it out as he uses it for his dog and also around and in his house. You see, this product not only kills ticks, it also eliminates fleas, mites which means you can even spray it on your bed at home as we all know, there are mites living in our bed feeding off our dead skin. That's a fact. So, it is no surprise that sometimes we wake up in bed scratching away.

The second reason is this, spot on didn't work on my dog. He kept getting infested with ticks everytime we take him out for his walks. It's annoying, and worrying. It only takes one infected tick for the dog to get tick fever. So far, we've been lucky. Now since using this product, he no longer gets infested with ticks. Yes we do still get one or two ticks, but out comes the spray and the ticks just drops off..DEAD!

Thirdly, I didn't believe in slowly poisoning my dog with spot on or the spray. And if you are using the frontline spray for tick prevention, you are advised to not hug, touch your dog for at least a day. Reason, it's poison and it may be damaging to your health in the long run. But how many of us adhere to that? I know I can't stop myself from stroking my dog and giving him and her (I have two dogs) a kiss. And I have done it before when I was using frontline. Do you know that it is dangerous? That it is a carcinogen?

On to natural products. I have tried mixing my on concoction. I was told tea tree oil mix with eucalyptus mix with water works wonders! I tried it..the problem is, when I put it into the spray bottle, the oil would clog up the spray and soon it would be impossible to get an even spray from the bottle. Maybe it's the way the spray was design. So I gave up on that. Although yes I have heard tea tree oil works on fleas. Not sure about ticks. By the way, if you want to apply tea tree oil onto the dog's skin directly, you need to know how much to apply and personally I don't think it's a good idea until you have read up on it and do your research.

This new product I have currently, is being sold in Singapore. In fact it comes from Singapore as the manufacturers are there. It is called Bio-X d'Bug. It eliminates fleas, ticks and mites. This is great because, if your dog suffers from skin condition, it will help it tremendously and also heals it. The first point of healing when having skin problems is to heal the condition of the skin as it is the immediate problem. The second is to build up it's immune system in order for the condition to not flare up. That would be another product. Bio-X d'bug is safe & eco friendly. It comes in a 220ml spray bottle. It's active ingredient is Etofenprox which was classified by WHO as "unlikely to present acute hazard in human use" and US EPA classed this as "Not likely to be carcinogenic to humans..." So when you spray it on your pets or your home, you can immediately hug your pet, for the home, as it is non-toxic, you can rest easy knowing you are safe in your own home.

Next question is, how much is it? It is sold at RM58 per bottle. Is it expensive?? Well, honestly it isnt. Why? Because, not only does it kill ticks and mites, it is also a deodarizer. So when your dog starts to give out a smell, you can spray it on him instead of buying the perfumes for pets which also has harmful chemicals.

Interested? Email me @happydogz13@gmail.com I currently have 4 bottles left.

Canine Therapy

I recently had a new client today regarding her little dog. In fact the dog is my 'client'. At first he was very unsure about what I was doing to him as he constantly turn round and bite me. His muscles were very tight and it was a new experience for him. Loosening his fascia and kneading into his muscles can be quite uncomfortable in the first treatment and subsequent treatments. I knew that he wasn't trying to hurt me and for the better part, he is a very sweet dog. The poor thing suddenly loss the use of his hind legs hence overusing and over compensating on the other muscles. I'm not writing about this client as every client I see have got their records and are confidential. What I am writing about is about the benefits of therapy. Some call it massage. Yes in layman's terms I guess you could call it that but it is more than just laying my hands on the dog and stroking him. There is a certain amount of pressure that I will apply on the dog, manipulate it's fascia to loosen any adhesions in the dog's body which can be uncomfortable. There are certain strokes that I will apply and sometimes I apply TTouch on the dog when it's too painful using the stroking action. Many times I get asked, 'Do you put a muzzle on the dog if it's aggressive?'. There is one of two answers: 1. I do not muzzle the dog because it isn't a punishment and the dog will not relax as it associate muzzle negatively i.e. to stop attacking people. 2. If the dog bites and breaks my skin, I will refuse to continue any further. After all I need my hands to work on the dog.

I get asked how long is one session. The maximum time that a dog will allow me to 'massage' him/her is 30 minutes. In fact 30 minutes is sufficient to complete the therapy. Now back to the client I first mentioned, after a few minutes, he relaxed and his muscles were no longer reacting to the massage. If anyone of you think that this is easy, well, first learn up on the musculo skeletal of the dog. I do not do this blindly. I have learned about the muscles and skeleton of the dogs. When the therapy can be applied and when I cannot do it. Contraindication of when I cannot give a 'massage':
1. When there's a spinal injury
2. Cancer
3. when they are under pain killers

So the next time someone says to you or the pet shop states, we massage dogs as well as groom, ask them, what kind of massage they do then ask them, what qualification do they have.