Welcome to DOCKSIDE tid-bits. Sherry Raley here. I'm the person behind the scenes at Palm Beach Training Center. To mix things up a bit I will offer you a place where you can find articles, thoughts, photos, ideas, humor, and even useless information that doesn't pertain to skiing.
Yes, there's life outside of skiing.
Yes, there's life outside of skiing.
tid-bit #1
Dogs. I love them. Just ask Chet. Can we live without them? Yes. Do we want to? NEVER.
Our dogs are like family. And, we want to treat them as such and take care of them the best we can. That would entail the best dog food, exercise and sickness and disease prevention.
Giving your dog a strong immune system will go far in disease prevention. Which takes me to my next point,
the truth about heartwarm medicine.
Dana Scott is the founder and CEO of Dogs Naturally Magazine, She has written an article that brings insight to the dangers of heartworm meds that a lot of dog owners are not aware of.
Here's a condensed version of the article.
Some vets tell dog owners that heartworm medicine is too dangerous to use. Does that surprise you?
Holistic veterinarian Glen Dupree didn't want his patients taking heartworm medicine.
Dr. Dupree found that a strong immune system was enough to protect his dogs from heartworm. And he also knew that giving dogs neurotoxic drugs every month would harm that immune system.
"I assume my dogs have heartworms," said Dr. Dupree. "But there's a big difference between heartworms and heartworm disease." And that difference is a fully functioning immune system.
There are many holistic vets who don't recommend using heartworm medicine but the pro-health approach to parasite prevention isn't all that popular...yet.
I bet when you think of the immune system, you think it protects against diseases like parvo or kennel cough. What most dog owners don't know is the immune system also protects the body from parasites.
A well-tuned immune system is the difference between a few heartworms and a large heartworm load that affects your dog's health.
The vets at the Heartworm Society agree with me:
"Single-sex hearworm infections, host immune responses affecting the presence of circulating microfilariae and the administration of heartworm preventives can be factors which produce occult infections in dogs."
An occult heartworm infection means there's an infection of some sort but the microfilariae... or the heartworm offspring aren't circulating in the blood. So if all of the heartworms are of the same sex, or the dog is taking preventives, then those little guys can't reproduce and cause much of an issue.
Look at that quote again. If you go to the Heartworm Society, it's easy to miss it. But there it is, nonetheless, shoved into a little corner and never mentioned again:
"Host immune responses affect the presence of circulating microfilariae."
In a nutshell, this means that dogs with functional immune systems aren't good hosts for heartworms and other parasites. The mosquito larvae (microfilaria) are killed by the immune system before they develop into adult heartworms.
That's the good news..
The sad part is few dogs these days have a strong immune system.
While vaccines can protect your dog from infectious diseases they come at a cost.
Vaccines contain mercury (yes, even thimerosal-free rabies vaccines can still contain mercury), which is neurotoxic and causes cancer. In fact, research labs will give lab animals just a tiny bit of thimerosal to give them auto-immune diseases (which include allergies, cancer, arthritis or GI diseases).
Vaccines also contain aluminum. Aluminum is neurotoxic and can cause degeneration of the brain and nervous system, especially in young dogs. And the scariest part about aluminum is that is increases the toxicity of mercury, so the "safe" levels of mercury in your dog's vaccines are severely underestimated.
Vaccines also contain MSG as well as formaldehyde...which is one of the most hazardous and highly cancer-causing compounds known.
Immunologist HH Fundenberg says if your dog receives just one monovalent vaccine, his cell-mediated immunity will be cut in half..and just two vaccines will lower it by 70%.
And "all triple vaccines markedly impair cell-mediated immunity, which predisposes to recurrent viral infections, especially otitis media, as well as yeast and fungi infections."
Sound familiar? Keep in mind, most dogs receive 3 to 7 vaccine components at a time!
Is it any wonder why dogs, even minimally vaccinated dogs, get heartworm?
We know the immune system is responsible for protecting our dogs from heartworm and other parasites. So why would we purposely expose our dogs to things like vaccines when they destroy that immunity!
Just as vaccines can damage the immune system, so can your dog's heartworm meds.
But you need to know that all drugs carry risk and adverse reactions.
What are those risks? I can only guess because to my knowledge, nobody has tested heartworm meds for more than a few weeks. We have absolutely no idea just how toxic they are when given every season for the lifetime of your dog.
So the best guess we have is the adverse reactions that occur right after taking hearworm meds.
This includes HEARTGARD & TRIHEART PLUS, INTERCEPTOR, SENTINEL, REVOLUTION &
PROHEART 6.
Here they are:
Depression/ lethargy, vomiting, anorexia, diarrhea, staggering, convulsions, increase thirst, pale gums, bleeding, fever, mydriasis, pruritus, urticaria, skin congestion, ataxia, tachypnea, facial swelling, muscle tremors, seizures & death.
Here's the way I look at it. These meds work by poisoning and killing microfilariae. If they are toxic for heartworms, they are toxic for your dog.
And for my dogs, even a little bit of poison isn't something I would give them. It weakens their immune system.. and makes them more susceptible to all the other diseases out there.
Heartworm is a scary disease that could threaten your dog's life. And the treatment is costly and really tough on your dog.
But what if I told you it's possible to protect your dog from heartworm without using those meds?
Here's some news for you..heartworm meds don't prevent heartworm at all... they kill heartworm larvae that are already in your dog.
The only prevention they offer is killing the mosquito larvae (microfilariae) before they develop into adult worms..which migrate to your dog's pulmonary artery and cause heartworm symptoms.
Your dog's heartworm meds work by killing those little larvae. Once they develop into adult heartworms however, it's dangerous to use those meds to treat your dogs.
That's why you vet wants you to give your dog heartworm meds every month. But what he or she didn't tell you is that it takes 5 to 8 months for those microfilariae to mature into adult heartworms. Seems like a lot of unnecessary poisoning of your dog, doesn't it?
CAUTION: This does not in any way mean you should give your dog his/her heartworm meds every 5 months.
But it does allow you to replace those dangerous meds with well-timed testing.
Depending on where you live, you would only need to test once every four months, or once to three times a year. Not only can this eliminate one more toxin from getting into your dog, it will probably be cheaper than giving heartworm meds.
What happens if your dog's test comes back positive?
That's the beauty of testing every 4 months...you know it takes at least 5 months for the microfilaria to develop into the harmful adult heartworms, so if your dog's test is positive, you can just give him regular heartworm meds for a bit or if you're holistically-minded, you can treat him/her holistically with the help of your holistic homeopathic vet.
Your dog will never get adult heartworms if you do this and you can avoid the dangerous and costly heartworm treatment your vet warns you about.
You might have heard that heartworms are becoming resistant to heartworm meds.
That's absolutely true. And the more we use the drugs, the less effective they become. In the U.S., more and more dogs each year are getting heartworm while on the meds.
Yet, ironically, the American Heartworm Society responded to these reports by urging pet owners to give heartworm meds year-round. Why do they think giving heartworm meds more often is the answer?
Well, it might have something to do with the companies who fund them.
Wouldn't you think the people who make money from heartworm meds would want you to take them more often? Of course they would. They're running a business.
It's ludicrous to feed my dog a small amount of poison every month and think I've made him/her less likely to get sick. Yes, they might have less risk of heartworm, but dog's statistically has a 50/50 chance of getting cancer!
Below is a heartworm preventative guide.
Dogs. I love them. Just ask Chet. Can we live without them? Yes. Do we want to? NEVER.
Our dogs are like family. And, we want to treat them as such and take care of them the best we can. That would entail the best dog food, exercise and sickness and disease prevention.
Giving your dog a strong immune system will go far in disease prevention. Which takes me to my next point,
the truth about heartwarm medicine.
Dana Scott is the founder and CEO of Dogs Naturally Magazine, She has written an article that brings insight to the dangers of heartworm meds that a lot of dog owners are not aware of.
Here's a condensed version of the article.
Some vets tell dog owners that heartworm medicine is too dangerous to use. Does that surprise you?
Holistic veterinarian Glen Dupree didn't want his patients taking heartworm medicine.
Dr. Dupree found that a strong immune system was enough to protect his dogs from heartworm. And he also knew that giving dogs neurotoxic drugs every month would harm that immune system.
"I assume my dogs have heartworms," said Dr. Dupree. "But there's a big difference between heartworms and heartworm disease." And that difference is a fully functioning immune system.
There are many holistic vets who don't recommend using heartworm medicine but the pro-health approach to parasite prevention isn't all that popular...yet.
I bet when you think of the immune system, you think it protects against diseases like parvo or kennel cough. What most dog owners don't know is the immune system also protects the body from parasites.
A well-tuned immune system is the difference between a few heartworms and a large heartworm load that affects your dog's health.
The vets at the Heartworm Society agree with me:
"Single-sex hearworm infections, host immune responses affecting the presence of circulating microfilariae and the administration of heartworm preventives can be factors which produce occult infections in dogs."
An occult heartworm infection means there's an infection of some sort but the microfilariae... or the heartworm offspring aren't circulating in the blood. So if all of the heartworms are of the same sex, or the dog is taking preventives, then those little guys can't reproduce and cause much of an issue.
Look at that quote again. If you go to the Heartworm Society, it's easy to miss it. But there it is, nonetheless, shoved into a little corner and never mentioned again:
"Host immune responses affect the presence of circulating microfilariae."
In a nutshell, this means that dogs with functional immune systems aren't good hosts for heartworms and other parasites. The mosquito larvae (microfilaria) are killed by the immune system before they develop into adult heartworms.
That's the good news..
The sad part is few dogs these days have a strong immune system.
While vaccines can protect your dog from infectious diseases they come at a cost.
Vaccines contain mercury (yes, even thimerosal-free rabies vaccines can still contain mercury), which is neurotoxic and causes cancer. In fact, research labs will give lab animals just a tiny bit of thimerosal to give them auto-immune diseases (which include allergies, cancer, arthritis or GI diseases).
Vaccines also contain aluminum. Aluminum is neurotoxic and can cause degeneration of the brain and nervous system, especially in young dogs. And the scariest part about aluminum is that is increases the toxicity of mercury, so the "safe" levels of mercury in your dog's vaccines are severely underestimated.
Vaccines also contain MSG as well as formaldehyde...which is one of the most hazardous and highly cancer-causing compounds known.
Immunologist HH Fundenberg says if your dog receives just one monovalent vaccine, his cell-mediated immunity will be cut in half..and just two vaccines will lower it by 70%.
And "all triple vaccines markedly impair cell-mediated immunity, which predisposes to recurrent viral infections, especially otitis media, as well as yeast and fungi infections."
Sound familiar? Keep in mind, most dogs receive 3 to 7 vaccine components at a time!
Is it any wonder why dogs, even minimally vaccinated dogs, get heartworm?
We know the immune system is responsible for protecting our dogs from heartworm and other parasites. So why would we purposely expose our dogs to things like vaccines when they destroy that immunity!
Just as vaccines can damage the immune system, so can your dog's heartworm meds.
But you need to know that all drugs carry risk and adverse reactions.
What are those risks? I can only guess because to my knowledge, nobody has tested heartworm meds for more than a few weeks. We have absolutely no idea just how toxic they are when given every season for the lifetime of your dog.
So the best guess we have is the adverse reactions that occur right after taking hearworm meds.
This includes HEARTGARD & TRIHEART PLUS, INTERCEPTOR, SENTINEL, REVOLUTION &
PROHEART 6.
Here they are:
Depression/ lethargy, vomiting, anorexia, diarrhea, staggering, convulsions, increase thirst, pale gums, bleeding, fever, mydriasis, pruritus, urticaria, skin congestion, ataxia, tachypnea, facial swelling, muscle tremors, seizures & death.
Here's the way I look at it. These meds work by poisoning and killing microfilariae. If they are toxic for heartworms, they are toxic for your dog.
And for my dogs, even a little bit of poison isn't something I would give them. It weakens their immune system.. and makes them more susceptible to all the other diseases out there.
Heartworm is a scary disease that could threaten your dog's life. And the treatment is costly and really tough on your dog.
But what if I told you it's possible to protect your dog from heartworm without using those meds?
Here's some news for you..heartworm meds don't prevent heartworm at all... they kill heartworm larvae that are already in your dog.
The only prevention they offer is killing the mosquito larvae (microfilariae) before they develop into adult worms..which migrate to your dog's pulmonary artery and cause heartworm symptoms.
Your dog's heartworm meds work by killing those little larvae. Once they develop into adult heartworms however, it's dangerous to use those meds to treat your dogs.
That's why you vet wants you to give your dog heartworm meds every month. But what he or she didn't tell you is that it takes 5 to 8 months for those microfilariae to mature into adult heartworms. Seems like a lot of unnecessary poisoning of your dog, doesn't it?
CAUTION: This does not in any way mean you should give your dog his/her heartworm meds every 5 months.
But it does allow you to replace those dangerous meds with well-timed testing.
Depending on where you live, you would only need to test once every four months, or once to three times a year. Not only can this eliminate one more toxin from getting into your dog, it will probably be cheaper than giving heartworm meds.
What happens if your dog's test comes back positive?
That's the beauty of testing every 4 months...you know it takes at least 5 months for the microfilaria to develop into the harmful adult heartworms, so if your dog's test is positive, you can just give him regular heartworm meds for a bit or if you're holistically-minded, you can treat him/her holistically with the help of your holistic homeopathic vet.
Your dog will never get adult heartworms if you do this and you can avoid the dangerous and costly heartworm treatment your vet warns you about.
You might have heard that heartworms are becoming resistant to heartworm meds.
That's absolutely true. And the more we use the drugs, the less effective they become. In the U.S., more and more dogs each year are getting heartworm while on the meds.
Yet, ironically, the American Heartworm Society responded to these reports by urging pet owners to give heartworm meds year-round. Why do they think giving heartworm meds more often is the answer?
Well, it might have something to do with the companies who fund them.
Wouldn't you think the people who make money from heartworm meds would want you to take them more often? Of course they would. They're running a business.
It's ludicrous to feed my dog a small amount of poison every month and think I've made him/her less likely to get sick. Yes, they might have less risk of heartworm, but dog's statistically has a 50/50 chance of getting cancer!
Below is a heartworm preventative guide.
