Category Archives: Herbs

Supplementing Your Dog’s Diet – Glucosamine

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This comes from my For the Love of the Dog site;

Although I am not a proponent of commercial dog food, I will admit that most high quality dog foods do have most of the vitamins, minerals and whatnot your dog needs. As you stand in the store pondering the plethora of varieties of dog food for your dog’s diet, your mind can truly become overwhelmed. The numerous ingredients in dog food simply complicate things even further. Who really knows what all of those ingredients really mean? You see glucosamine on some of the dog food labels. That sounds a bit familiar. What exactly is glucosamine and why should it be in your dog’s diet?

You have probably heard of glucosamine in the news. Glucosamine has been beneficial to joint health in humans. Research has also shown that glucosamine in a dog’s diet can be beneficial to your pet’s health.

Glucosamine is a dietary supplement that has been shown to encourage good joint health. This supplement helps to maintain good joint cartilage. Glucosamine is one of the key building blocks to produce joint lubricants. The joint lubricant helps to keep the joints moving and functioning with ease. Glucosamine in your dog’s diet will ensure your pet’s joints work at their peak performance levels for years to come.

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Cancer in Pets – Don’t Just Take it Laying Down!

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Cancer, the Big “C” is one of the worst words a pet owner can hear. It almost sounds like a death sentence, but it doesn’t have to be. Caught early enough and aggressively treated, survival rates are improving everyday.

Cancer in Our Pets

Cancer is not uncommon in dogs and cats and the incidence increases with age. It accounts for almost half of the deaths of pets over 10 years of age. Dogs get cancer at roughly the same rate as humans, while cats get fewer cancers.

Here are some common warning signs of cancer;

  • Abnormal swellings that persist or continue to grow
  • Sores that do not heal
  • Weight loss
  • Loss of appetite
  • Bleeding or discharge from any body opening
  • Offensive odor
  • Difficulty eating or swallowing
  • Hesitation to exercise or loss of stamina
  • Persistent lameness or stiffness
  • Difficulty breathing, urinating, or defecating

This is definitely one area where modern medicine has made huge strides but you don’t need to rely only on modern medicine. There are many things you, as a pet owner, can do to improve your pet’s chances and keep them strong and help them fight.

What Can We Do?

One of the first and most important things, from my point of view, is to make sure your pet’s diet is as good as it can be. Specific diets have been formulated to help combat cancer but you can make your own at home very easily if you just keep some things in mind.

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Some ‘Myths’ Vets Tell You – DeBunked!

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Veterinarians, like any doctors, depend on their client base to make money and generally, the more clients, the more money. Now I’m not saying that all vets only think about the bottom line, but to be honest I am seeing this more and more.

A friend of mine has a little Cocker Spaniel with a myriad of medical problems. These problems, such as Cushings, chronic staph infections and allergies, just to name a few, have been tested and diagnosed but it seems that every time my friend takes her dog to the vet they want to rerun a bunch of tests and do a complete blood work-up, running into hundreds and hundreds of dollars. And this went on every couple of months! She recently found a new vet for her pooch and when he looked at the chart he couldn’t believe the overwhelming number of tests that had been run and rerun, again and again, unnecessarily!

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Herbal Health for Pets

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Do you know that a great many of the herbs and you may use for your own health can also be used for your pet’s health?

Herbs like ginger root, echinacea, ginseng, willow bark and valerian?

Ginger root, wonderful for anti-nausea, can also help your dog or cat.

Willow bark, source of salicylate the active ingredient in Aspirin, is a well noted anti-inflammatory can be used to ease arthritis pain in dogs, DO NOT administer to cats!

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