Will Falconer, DVM Moderator
Balance is the key. When the vital force and therefore the body is in balance, bacteria or yeasts or viruses or parasites have no place to overgrow.
The common mistake in allopathic medicine is culturing and finding bacteria, and thinking they are the cause, not the result. I blogged about this here, if you want to review: https://vitalanimal.com/kill-germs/
So, "bad guys" is relative. Can you have a pseudomonas bacteria or a candida yeast living in your body and still be healthy? Absolutely. And when your dog is sick, and has an ear full of gunk that stinks and may include pus, is it the "bad guy" bacteria who are to blame? No, clearly not.
And, the ancillary damage done by blasting with antibiotics is what I was getting at in this post. A very near sighted view of health and disease is at the heart of this practice of antibiotics for all things.
Balance is further lost with this bazooka approach, and the animal suffers long term as a result. Yeast overgrowth is rampant in pets now, and that's just one side effect.