Friday, June 26, 2009

Holistic Vet

So glad it is Friday.... busy week!

As you know, Reagan and I saw Dr. Julia last week. I thought Dr. Julia was a nice compromise. She was well versed in a number of holistic approaches (acupuncture, kinesiology, nutrition, Bach flowers, Chinese herbs, chiropractic, homeopathy, homotoxicology, and western herbs) and she was a veterinarian of conventional medicine. She had lots of tools to draw from.

The staff marvelled at how well behaved and sweet Reagan was. She was either relaxing on her fleece pad, squeaking her stuffy goat, or practicing sit stays. Kudos to me! I must be doing something right!

I had typed out 2 pages of history and printed out Reagan's blood work results for Dr. Julia to review. I indicated that trying a cooked diet was probably my next step. She agreed that raw food is not for every dog and Reagan may be one. However, she recommended going with a commercially prepared diet instead of cook. She also was concerned that Reagan may be headed towards a chicken allergy and a hypo-thyroid problem.
Dr. Julia suggested that I avoid poultry all together. She said Reagan was a cold energy which might make sense because Reagan is much more heat tolerant than the other greyhounds and quick to need a coat when temperatures drop. Per the holistic point of view, if you are cold energy, you should eat hot energy food. Poultry is cold energy and red meat his hot energy. I don't understand any of that and I don't believe it is based on any science. It does not mean it is wrong though.

Dr. Julia recommended a very high quality venison and buffalo kibble. I was not interested in going that exotic yet. Ideally, it would be best if Reagan did well on beef and/or lamb since that increases my choices of food and treats I can use.

I decided to start with Blue Buffalo Lamb & Rice since I had some already. I had tried feeding it to Jet, but he did awful on it.