It was forty one years ago last month.  I was an excited young man starting the first day of veterinary college.  At that time, one in nine applicants were admitted to vet school.  One in three applicants were admitted to medical school.  It was a moment of mixed emotions; satisfaction from an enormous goal accomplishment, fear of making it through vet school and excitement of starting a career that was bathed in respect. I can still remember old Dean Shelton telling the 138 eager students, “You will never get rich as a veterinarian, but you will always have a job

Pet caretakers who have dogs who have had TPLO surgery for cruciate ligament injuries, whose dog later on developed bone cancer at the site of the surgery, have been asking if there is a connection between the two.  The standard answer is that there is no evidence that shows that there is a connection.  But, human research done this year shows that this in not likely true.  Since bone cancer is a malignancy that leads to death of the pet, it is something that we need to know. TPLO (tibial plateau leveling osteotomy) is the current method for surgical repair

Imagine that you want to grow some healthy, organic veggies in a garden. The first thing you must consider is the health of the soil that you will be planting your seeds. If the soil is healthy and you do your job with supporting the plants, you will likely succeed. If your soil is contaminated, then no matter what you do, the veggies will not be healthy and your efforts will have been for naught. We all know the old proverb, “You reap what you sow.” This is particularly vital and so often overlooked when it comes to dealing with

Take a moment or two and contemplate this.  What is your pet?  With your eyes, you see the lovely eyes and nose and lolling tongue.  It makes you smile.  With your touch, you feel the soft fur, the wetness of the kiss.  With your ears you hear the breath, the paws softly moving across the flooring with your nose, you smell the soft coat and the breath.  This is what our mind tells us is our pet. But, what if you were born without vision.  Your pet would be different.  You would not have the vision to make reference.  You

As a vet for over 40 years, and having practiced from a holistic perspective the past 23 years, I could not have helped learning a few things about the people who take care of their pets.  Nowadays, I do phone consultations with people all over the world, most of them who have pets that are seriously ill or have chronic diseases that have not responded to a conventional medicine approach.  All of them have one goal, to have their pet heal. However, if I took the time to ask them why they wanted their pet to heal, they would likely

I talk to phone consultation clients all the time who tell me that their vet appears to have given up on their pet’s illness.  This attitude seems to be counterintuitive for the veterinary profession, but it is not.  If we look a little deeper as to how this can happen, we can learn what to do if it actually does happen. First, we have to look at the structure of conventional medicine.  Conventional medicine, whether it is human or veterinary, is based on a plethora of algorithms.  Most of us know what an algorithm is; that funny looking diagram of

A lady takes her dog to the vet because it hasn’t been feeling well.  The dog is put through a number of diagnostic tests and she is informed that her dog has malignant cancer.  She is devastated by the diagnosis and turns her focus on how to proceed with a treatment.  She is told by the vet that chemotherapy is the standard treatment protocol and that she will need to make an appointment with the oncologist. She goes to the oncologist and is told that her dog will likely live 2-3 months without chemotherapy and 6 months to one year

According to the dictionary, the word paradox means….A statement that seems contradictory or absurd but is actually valid or true. Epileptic seizures appear to be the pinnacle of paradox but in actuality there is truth behind the madness. The problem is, that we vets, have not desired to find the truth in the paradox. Until now. Seizures, a symptom and not as disease, occur when the brain is firing too many neurons (messages) to the body and the body reacts to these messages. When the brain sends messages to the body, they pass through the cerebellum and like a traffic

I remember years ago when I was in vet school.  We had two large animal clinicians who had been in practice for many years, retired from practice and were hired as clinicians at the vet school.  These two cow-practitioners had a wealth of experience and knowledge.  When a client would back his trailer with a sick cow to the unloading ramp at the large animal clinic, the two vets would literally run out to the parking lot in a race to see who would diagnose the sick cow first.  The vet students were enthralled to watch these two clinicians work. 

I once read a statement that said, “The more you grieve for your deceased pet, the more you loved them.”  If you genuinely feel that this statement is correct, you might not read this blog and move onto something about feeding or not over-vaccinating. Grief is one of the most confusing emotions that humans experience because it is given credit for many things and most of them are incorrect.  Grief is a human emotion and we will all experience grief at sometime in our lives.  Without the experience, we will not have the ability to truly understand it and deal

The dictionary defines a myth as a widely held but false belief or idea.  Boy do we like to use these in vet medicine.  I know, I used them my self for over twenty years.  Once I started questioning my own myths, I came to realize the absurdity in them and now spend my time empowering my clients to question them themselves.  There are many myths regarding pet care but here are a few that have stood the test of time. 1.  You must feed dry kibble to keep your pet’s teeth clean. You are led to believe that dogs

Nothing shakes us up more than having the veterinarian tell us that our pet has a serious illness.  Immediately, we go into panic mode and our thoughts start racing and our fearful emotions start to flow.  We are so wrapped up in the thoughts and emotions, we are no longer capable of even listening to what the veterinarian may have to say about options for treatment.  This is why so many vets send home written information about the disease so that the caretaker, once the mind settles, can review the information and approach the pet’s care objectively. Many of us

Pancreatitis is a stubborn disease and has been since I started treating it in dogs and cats forty years ago.  It is stubborn because the symptoms are vague and the diagnostic tests for the disease are not exact.  At best, they point towards the pancreas and then leave it up to the doctor to make the diagnosis. Pancreatitis comes in two different flavors.  Acute pancreatitis and chronic pancreatitis.  The only difference is that once pancreatitis has occurred more than once in a pet, it is now deemed a chronic pancreatitis.  Actually, chronic pancreatitis is recurring bouts of acute pancreatitis.  I

Yunnan Bia Yao (YB) is finally getting its due now that western medicine has started to open its mind about herbal therapy.  Ten years ago, you could not find YB in any veterinary hospitals.  Today it is in all emergency animal hospitals and most general practices.   YB is know for its ability to stop bleeding.  It can be used topically and internally.  It use has been documented in China for many years and they have been using it mostly for surgery patients to prevent bleeding during and after the operation.   YB was created and is still manufactured solely

Nothing can cause more suffering than trying to make the right decision.  This can be especially difficult when trying to figure out what to do when our pet is diagnosed with a serious disease such as cancer.   Then, the options start appearing.  Should I have the surgery done?  Should I have chemotherapy done?  Should I try to go an alternative and natural route?  And the hardest, When is it time to let go? We are blessed as humans to have a wonderful, intellectual mind that is good at solving problems.  That is when they are simple problems.  The intellectual

As you might already know, acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medical approach for treating health problems.  It is speculated to be somewhere around 3000 years old.  It applies putting stainless steel acupuncture needles into acupuncture points that will have specific benefits for the patient. But, how does acupuncture really work?  According to Johns Hopkins medical school, one of the foremost medical programs in the country, Acupuncture points are believed to stimulate the central nervous system. This, in turn, releases chemicals into the muscles, spinal cord, and brain. These biochemical changes may stimulate the body’s natural healing abilities and promote physical

I am amazed at how may people post statements on different pet-related Facebook Pages that state that they love their pets more than they do people.  A lot of you might be shaking your head in agreement with their statement.  How is it that this can happen because true love is always unconditional?   Why is it so easy to love your pet?  Because you know that they don’t judge you.  This is the definition of unconditional love.  If they don’t judge us, they don’t remind us of how little we actually love ourselves.  How could we love ourselves?  We

I probably can’t count the times that clients have asked me what they can do for their anemic pet.  My immediate response is asking them what caused the anemia.  Anemia is not a diagnosis.  It is a clinical finding, a generalization, sort of like saying your dog is skinny?  Why is it skinny?  Is it not being fed enough?  Can it process the food that it is being fed?  Is there something that is competing for its food like a parasite and so on. Anemia is defined as a red blood cell deficiency.  Basically, the pet doesn’t have enough red

    Do you remember grandma’s chicken soup?  Perhaps many of you had it served to you when you had a cold or some other illness.  Obviously it was effective, otherwise it wouldn’t have stood the test of time as a natural remedy. What was it about grandma’s soup that helped our body heal itself?  Was it all the natural ingredients she used?  That was likely part of it but the main ingredient was the Love that she added to the soup.  We think this is some heart-warming tale that makes us remember grandma and feel good, but in actuality,

For some bizarre, unexplainable reason, when I was a young pup of a veterinarian, I was intrigued by skin problems, particularly allergy.  Maybe it was because we were told in vet school that allergies were not curable and I love to prove people wrong.  I had even considered going back to school and getting a board certification in veterinary dermatology.   Allergy patients in my practice in south Texas made up about 15% of my veterinary work.  I worked with so many allergy patients that other vets in town sent their stubborn cases to me.  Why not?  They were frustrated.