Land of Holistic Pets Principles of Holistic Approaches to Health

The Healing Power of Nature. The body has considerable power to heal itself. You only have to consider minor cuts and bruises or a tooth removed at the dentist.  They heal themselves given time. The role of the holistic vet or healer is to facilitate and enhance the body’s own healing process, preferably with natural, non-toxic therapies. More importantly, the healer should do no harm.

View your pet as a whole. Your pet should be looked upon as a complex interaction of mind, body and character (spirit) functioning in the environment. The environment can greatly influence all 3 of the other aspects.

Identify and treat the cause.  Symptoms are an expression of the body’s attempt to heal, thus at all times we should seek to find the underlying cause rather than simply suppress the symptoms.

The Holistic Practitioner is a teacher. The holistic practitioner should be educating, motivating and empowering the pet owner to take responsibility for the pet’s health by adopting healthy lifestyles, feeding good diets and providing a good social environment.

Prevention is better than cure. This is best accomplished through dietary and lifestyle habits that support health and prevent disease.  

The 5 basic principles outlined above are a rudimentary introduction to holistic approaches to health.  Health is considered to be normal but if injured or diseased then the body acts to repair the damage.  This injury or disease manifests itself as symptoms and can be equated to that of ripples in a pool that spread outward after a stone has been thrown in. The symptoms are the energy of disturbance spreading across the body.
It is this disturbance of the vital energy radiating outwards/inwards which gives rise to the concept of holism, more commonly referred to as holistic. No one part of the body can be affected without affecting the whole.

The meaning of disease "failure of health" is another way of saying health is normal and that the symptoms indicate a more serious and general problem. The symptoms can also indicate the degree or level to which health has failed.
 
Early Warning Symptoms
The immune system is particularly vulnerable to nutritional imbalances and tends to show symptoms much earlier than say heart or joint problems.

The following symptoms are the easiest to see and recognise:

• Itchy Skin
• Eczema
• Hot Spots
• Hair Loss
• Excessive Hair Loss/ Shedding
• Waxy Ears
• Runny Eyes
• Tooth Tarter
• Bad Breath
• Chewing Feet
• Anal Gland Problems
• Digestive Upsets
• Body Odour
• Eating Grass
• Hyperactive
• Loss of Energy

These symptoms are indicating that waste or toxic matter has been accumulating in the body and that the immune system is attempting to get rid of them. It is not uncommon for a range of these symptoms or ripples to bee seen at one time. 

The Holistic, Natural Dog Diet and Pet Health
Holistic comes from the word ‘holism’ meaning that whole entities have an existence other than the mere sum of their parts. Webster’s dictionary goes on to say that holistic involves the principle of holism in a system of therapeutics mainly nutritional.

With Land of Holistic Pets they fully endorse this interpretation in that dog food nutrition is the life force of the body. Holistic practitioners have always seen improvements in dogs’ health when proper nutrition is used. This is not a new concept; in fact the principles of natural health and diet are a revival of ancient ones but only becoming recognised in mainstream U.K.

The homeopathic practitioner for example only recognizes one disease, disturbance of the vital force. They see the body as being like still water in a pond and disease being a ripple on the surface when a stone is thrown in. The symptoms and their severity are indicators of the level of disturbance to the vital force.

So we may ask why dog nutrition is so important. The answer lies simply in experience and observation. It was not by accident that Hippocrates, the founding father of medicine coined the phrase “we are what we eat”. It is as obvious as swallowing cyanide – our body stops working altogether. This is a rather extreme example but none-the-less important in that poisons come in varying degrees and effect. 

In terms of holistic pet nutrition we may well raise the question of what is a good dog diet? At Land of Holistic Pets they believe that a good dog diet is one that when fed in the correct proportions, it helps the body and mind function in a normal healthy way.

In the USA the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) insists that products are labeled ‘complete and balanced’. Complete meaning no other form of food is required and balanced means it contains all the required vitamins and minerals to sustain life without reference to quality or digestibility.

At Land of Holistic Pets they have a slightly different but very important interpretation of balance. We believe that it is something which is achieved when the body works in harmony and that what is consumed is utilized in the best possible way to achieve healthy dogs, full of vitality. This is what we call metabolic balance where every organ in the body functions at the optimum level for the benefit of each other and ultimately the whole body – This is Holistic Nutrition.

Herbs and Homeopathy are a focused form of intervention that counter and correct individual imbalances. Diet will achieve the same result but be slower acting. This is why prevention is much better than cure.

In Chinese Nutrition foods are classified as warming and cooling. If the body is overheating we should eat cooling foods such as cucumber. If it is cold we eat warming foods. Natural dog food should therefore be neither warming nor cooling. Only when ill health prevails should we really adjust the diet to minimise extremes.