Replies on Walk With Me: Curing Lily's Heartworm Without Drugs, Part One

So much to unpack here, Cal. Let me dig in.
1. Long time since I posted this, but interestingly, a reader informed me in the past week that Tramadol is garnering more concern of late. A quick Google search also reveals athletes have problems with it, and some want it banned from sports. My main point was its common overuse in spayed and neutered animals. No drug is w/o side effects, and why use pain killers when, for many years before we thought they were so necessary, animals rarely (if ever) showed pain after neutering?
2. Blood tests pre-surgery? No harm, just an added expense that is likely unnecessary in most cases, barring seniors or suspicious symptoms indicating liver or kidney impairment. Maybe in Lily they would have made sense, but in the clarity of hindsight, I don't see that anything was missed by not doing labs.
3. Rabies. Yeah, we're seeing this quite differently, Cal. If you count "reaction" as sickness within hours of the shot, yeah, you're likely to think the world is a rosy place, and rabies vaccines are as safe as purified water. I can't tell you how often we'll see illness after vaccination, rabies, DHLP, any vaccinations, if we look out a month or two. Some of it is much sooner, but it seems only those who don't sell vaccinations care to look at the longer picture. We've been aware of this since the 90's at least, and when you look for it, you notice it, unmistakably.
At "best," it's a curse of life long allergic skin or ear disease or both (none of which you can cure, by the way). At the worst, it's autoimmune blood disease or partial to progressive paralysis or seizures.
I'm not necessarily telling everyone to never vaccinate for rabies. But, with duration of immunity being for several years, why repeatedly vaccinate every year or three? If indeed you recommend titers instead, bravo, but I'm just going to assume you push the "law" and say, "We've gotta do this one. No choice here." That's all too common, and animals suffer needlessly from too frequent vaccination when prior immunity is already there. That same immunity likely interferes with further immunity from the oncoming vaccine, so it's also a waste of your client's money.
Oh, and the euthanasia scare tactic? My readers have likely read the Compendium of Animal Rabies Prevention and Control. I know most of my students have. You may want to brush up on it. It's free for Pack members on your Member Home. Euthanasia is clearly not the only choice owners have, whether their dog is vaccinated or not or merely "out of date."
4. Immiticide "works." Sure, so did its predecessor, the other arsenic-based drug. If people get success with alternatives to that toxicity, they're not going to wait on "published studies" to leave your practice and seek something safer. I won't be publishing a homeopathic protocol because I treat each dog as an individual, the way all homeopaths do in all species. When we get them well, they no longer tolerate a worm burden and they slowly rid themselves of these parasites. No sudden die off, no cage rest, and no drug side effects. I've also heard of success with herbal protocols, though I've no first hand experience with them.
5. As to your own dogs, depending on how many you have and how frequently you vaccinate them, sooner or later I'd predict you'll run into allergies, at a minimum. Do you vaccinate them every year or three? If so, why? There's absolutely no science behind repeating vaccinations in adult animals who are already vaccinated. Hopefully you know this. Vaccine labels have zero science behind their recommended repetition.
And those hundreds of vaccinates you speak of? Start an exercise in your practice, if you dare. Do a thorough history taking when someone brings you an itchy dog or one with otitis. Look back to when the prior vaccines were given. Do that for a year. Let me know what you find.
While you're at it, check all your hypothyroid dogs, hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma, and mast cell tumor cases, and the CCL ruptures and see who was neutered vs intact. A lot of good solid data that shows increased incidence of all these in the neutered. Again, if you care to look for it, it's there.
So, you're faced with a choice, as are your clients, Cal. You can blow all this off and carry on the way you always have or you can open your mind and explore it. The latter is far riskier for your feeling good about your profession and your style of practice, of course, but in the end, you'll be doing a greater service for your animal charges and your patients if you take the blinders off.
When I started practice back in 1980, I was much like you are now. We did what everyone before us did, and "kept up" with the latest vet medicine procedures and drugs. It took leaving that paradigm and striking out on my own to see things differently. And that leap has changed everything, both for my peace of mind and for the health of my patients, many of which no longer need my medical help. They remain healthy by avoiding practices like yours.
Their owners have learned valuable rearing practices that save them from countless expense and the common scourges of chronic disease that seem to only be increasing, year over year, among those who refuse to see a more natural path is possible and wise.