After some deliberation my daughter, Abbie, and I decided to breed from our springer spaniel, Rosie, this spring. We had to balance the costs in terms of worry and hard work with the benefits of the fun it would be and the possibly that it might make us a small profit.
In the end we decided to go for it and in February Rosie was escorted to the far side of Barnsley to meet her match, a handsome pedigree by the name of Alfie. We had two possible delivery dates and Abbie took a gamble and arranged to be back from university in time for the second date. It was a disappointment when I realised that Rosie was in labour two days early and while I had left the room to ring Abbie and tell her that she had missed the boat the first pup arrived ...on the floor!!
I quickly scooped up the pup and put it in the bed and for the next 4 hours stayed with the labouring Mum so she would settle and give her full attention to the job in hand. She proceeded to produce three more healthy pups and, when all had been quiet for some time, I decided that it would be OK to leave her so we could all get some sleep. Four hours later I got up to find a fifth pup! He was absolutely tiny but all seemed well and so her litter was complete.
Two weeks later I got up to find the runt of the litter looking very weak and poor. On inspection it was clear that one of Rosie’s teats was very swollen and hard. The other, stronger, pups had abandoned this unproductive teat and the runt, unable to fight for a better option, was starving.
The pup was soon revived with some fortified goats’ milk and Rosie’s teat was restored to health in 30 minutes with a dose of Phytolacca – a homeopathic remedy known to heal straight forward cases of mastitis in humans and cows.
At six weeks we decided to start taking Rosie for walks again as the pups were eating well and partly weaned. Whether this was the cause or not I do not know but the next day she was clearly very unwell and I found that she had a hot, swollen and extremely tender teat: mastitis again, but this time far more advanced. I gave her Phytolacca and some other remedies throughout the day but there was little sign of improvement. By the evening she was beginning to become ill with a fever and, knowing that this was dangerous I agonised over whether to call an emergency vet. In the end I decided that, if she got no worse, I would wait overnight and take her in the morning. By 3 am she was hot, her mucous membranes were dry and she was unwilling to move because it intensified the pain in her teat. These were danger signs and it was no longer safe to let the condition take its course.
Bryonia! The remedy she needed came to me in a flash and I immediately gave her a strong dose. An hour later she got up, had a drink and fed her pups. With guarded relief I thought that she might have turned the corner. An hour after that she polished off the tea that she had ignored earlier and I relaxed. The remedy was definitely working.
As is usually the case, this drama played out over a bank holiday when vets are less available or I would have taken her sooner, but there was a clinic the next morning and I decided to take her just in case this improvement did not hold. The vet prescribed antibiotics and anti-inflammatories and said that if I was to give the medication I must wean the pups as it would come through in the milk and might be harmful to them. Weaning at this time was something I wanted to avoid if I could: mastitis is extremely painful and the discomfort is worse when the teat is engorged with milk. So, with the medication to hand just in case, I decided to continue watching and waiting.
Rosie was improving by the hour and, as she no longer had symptoms that told me she needed more Bryonia, I gave her a Silica which is a remedy that heals abscesses. The next morning Rosie was her old self, the teat was cool and no longer painful and the lump inside had halved in size. The day following the lump had completely gone.
There are times when even seasoned homeopaths like myself marvel at the wonder of this medicine. It really does work. It heals rapidly, gently and without dangerous side effects. I have, of course, seen its wonders many times – it has cured my children’s acute ear infections in minutes, healed torn ligaments in days and cleared up the symptoms of flu in hours. At the moment many long standing clients of mine are returning for their annual ‘fix’ of homeopathy to stave off the misery of hay fever for the entire season.
There are two big mysteries of homeopathy – one is how it works so miraculously, defying scientific credibility, and the other is why people do not use it more! Who cares how it works. It does. As my dog will testify!!
Maybe the only mystery is in your credulity. Do you have cultures which proved that ear infections were "cured" in minutes? Or did they say they felt better, after you told them the remedy would make them feel better? If the latter, how can you seriously claim that isn't pure placebo effect? And it does apply to animals. You are giving something as a pill, and loving attention, and then making your own judgement as to (a) improvement and (b) the notion that improvement was actually due to the nothing in the homepathic remedy. Step back and take an objective look and it won't be so mysterious.
ReplyDeleteFailure to treat ear infections could lead to deafness, if it doesn't improve on its own. So far, you were lucky.