by William Greenbaum, aka love ya woof!
Pets Add to Our Lives
Ferndale, WA: Pets play a vital role in our lives. Whether its a dog that makes you feel great around the Christmas tree or a cat curled up beside your elderly aunt, pets provide comfort and help us emotionally smile and live a life that is hopefully stress free. Indeed, dogs, cats and horses, turtles, hamsters and goldfish, pets teach us about caring for something smaller than ourselves and also teach us about love and kindness. I think they say everything about us as a person and our approach to daily life. In fact research shows that pets provide ‘life lessons’ about love and caring and they improve our physical and emotional well being.
Pet Health Questions & Health Concerns
Since we share so much in common with pets we also by default share their health concerns. We get worried when they suffer from separation anxiety, allergies, cushings disease, ear infections, skin disorders, etc. I’d say we ‘humanize’ them, feeling their pain and almost feeling their suffering. The close relationship is often so big and so profound that when one of our pets gets very very sick and then passes we grieve as much as if we had lost a true family member.
When our pets get sick or we have a health concern typically the first thing we do is call the vet. After all they are trusted and trained. In more acute health challenges veterinarians (as we see in allopathic traditional human medicine) prescribe drugs and typically what these drugs do is suppress the symptoms and so begins a very interesting dance – in that as the symptoms begin to aggravate and become worse stronger drugs are prescribed more frequently. The drugs attack the health disorder with side effects and they seem to cure cure the disorder only to have the heath disorder return with increased discomfort when the drugs are stopped.
Enter the era of alternative therapy, which according to research firm Packaged Facts has seen double digit growth at up 1.15 billion over last year(1). Alternative ‘holistic’ pet medicine is growing in popularity because it is filling a gap that traditional veterinary vmedicine cannot meet; and as costs of traditional veterinary drugs and vet visits climbs more pet owners are turning to alternative healing modalities to help their companion animals with not only treatment but with prevention too.
In our company we say you can think about alternative healing modalities and preventative care such as homeopathy and herbal remedies and Bach flower essences — which work very well but not instantly. What seems to bug people about alternative medicine is that it doesn’t work instantly, but we say nothing in nature does. Its us humans that invented the idea of instant cure so this is carried into allopathic traditional medicine everywhere. Natural medicine takes time sometimes as much as 90 days and often the pet or even the patient feels terrible whilst on the medications – as an aside this is nothing to fear it is called medically ’sign of progress’ – meaning you often feel worse whilst your body adapts to heal itself on the road to recovery.
Avoid Low Grade Garden Variety Commercial Pet Food
To our way of thinking the first thing you have to think about to help your pet is to avoid commercial pet food meaning those with high fat content or excessive grains or chemicals. Even then many pet foods lack essential vitamins, minerals, amino acids and essential fatty acids vital for your pet’s health. On the market today there are stunning new natural health diet supplements such as Nordic Naturals or Udo’s Choice that are chaulk full of the nutrients and vitamins required for a normal diet – essentially they put back in what the processing and manufacturing of pets food leaves out.
In addition, natural pet health care products help with joint pain recovery, motion sickness, nerve calming, muscle relaxants, digestive health, skin and fur health and eye drops for clarity, oral health, weight control and bladder i.e. urinary health. Also available are natural shampoos and insect repellents for our pet’s comfort and health. We even have available to us, natural aromatherapy products to control unwanted order and enhance our pet’s emotional well being.
Happiness is Pets
Bottom line, we are grateful for the lessons that our pets have taught and continue to teach us. We can actively demonstrate our appreciation, respect and responsibility for our animal friends, by attending to their physical and, yes, emotional health by providing our pets with natural pet health care products that keep them safe, healthy, vibrant, and active. Our efforts are beyond obligation. Our caring for our pets is motivated by our gratitude and love.
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1. The natural and healthy pet food market has more than doubled since 2005, currently
sitting at $1.5 billion. According to market research firm Packaged Facts, the market is
expecting to hit $2.6 billion by 2014.
