Rae and Mark November 25th, 2007
My dog is sick. What should I do? Should I take him to vet or try to treat him at home?
This question is not as black and white as it may have been in the past. Granted there have been many innovations in small animal medicine, but there is a price for progress.
If your dog has been hit with bad genes, as many breeds are due to inappropriate breeding-for-profits-without regard to any genetic considerations whatsoever, then you’ll know all too well the cost of dog ownership has skyrocketed.
If you have a large breed of dog then you know that there are at least 100 or more large-breeds (including the giants – dogs over 200 lbs [90.72 kg]) that are prone to hip dysplasia (a painful, crippling, hereditary disease that can cause complete lameness or greatly reduced mobility in dogs, especially the large breeds). Now, if your dog is so unfortunate to have this condition, his life will be pain-filled – just getting up will be a struggle.
Who would want to see their dog in pain? What do you do? If you take him to the vet and they say surgery, that means be prepared to write a blank check. You could easily spend $5,000/hip minimum. Indeed that is expensive, but you cannot allow your dog to be in pain all of time, you cannot carry him to bathroom, he’s a dog and he’s meant to have dignity and enough free will to be able to conduct day-to-day activities unassisted.
This of course brings up many issues. It will be necessary to look into all of the options available to you. Certainly, there are now many products on the market that may bring relief by reducing friction/swelling/inflammation, providing necessary lubrication, stimulating the immune system, and increasing cell regeneration for damaged cells, etc. You may find that chemical-free/natural products can help your dog to have some semblance of normalcy until you can budget the money for surgery, if that is what is warranted.
Organic, chemical-free, herbal products can provide many safe alternatives to drugs. The problem is, as a responsible pet owner, you must do research on a regular basis in order to know about alternative products.
Here’s a common problem we see day in and day out:
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I am sorry that I cannot purchase your product today, due to the fact that I wasted too much at the vet’s yesterday. If my dog “Mack” lasts thru tomorrow, I might be able to borrow enough to try and save him. Thank you anyway. John |
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This is very sad, and gut-wrenching. How is it possible that people have to think of borrowing money just to save their dog? Or even worse, we know of at least one vet that admits 75% of his clients must put their dogs down because they cannot afford his treatments for Parvo. Or have you heard about this new term “depopulation”? So, what in the world does that mean? Yep, that’s right it is code-speak for killing dogs because there is no funding for a shelter to treat their Parvo outbreak.
This is staggering and almost incomprehensible. If there are so many innovations in small animal medicine, why do people still have to decide if they can afford to treat their animals or have to put them down?
This is really frustrating why there is not enough talk about solutions other than the easy way out – i.e. destroying animals.
Now a lot of people will say:”It is just a dog or just cat, why worry about them, they’re not your children.” Well, as far as we’re concerned, that is total BS. We have eight dogs and they ARE our children. We will fight for them to the end. We will do whatever we can. Our dogs are with us 24/7, some sleep with us (it’s their choice), they have free-feeding of premium dry dog food, and after we eat we save some for them (e.g. fruit, fruit juice, vegetables, chicken, oatmeal, etc.) They feel that they are part of our family, not just walking stuffed toys.
When it comes to health issues, we have made the decision to treat them at home. This is partly due to our location, we’re in a little rural area and the vet clinics here are sparse at best, and frankly we hate drugs since for the most part they do more harm (both short and long-term) than good. Now, if mainstream Western medicine practitioners are scarce, then holistic types are even harder to find in most areas. So, for us it is clear that we must rely upon ourselves as much as possible and prevent/contain problems long before there are any real threats to any of our dogs.
Now mind you, this philosophy did not happen overnight. Ten years ago, three of our dogs came down with Parvo (one by one). So, we had no other choice but to take them to the vet and be prepared to pay whatever she wanted. At that time, the bill was over $700 USD which was a lot for three Chihuahuas (all under 10 lbs or 4.54 kg). There was never any thought of doing anything else but seek immediate treatment and promptly pay whatever the bill was.
Today, in the new modern world, it is not uncommon to hear of vets charging anywhere from $500 - $6,000 per dog to treat them for Parvo. So, now we can see how it is possible to find yourself wondering how in the world you will be able to pay for the vet bills.
As with most things, it can be rather complicated, but you need to be able to save your animals without skipping your rent note, or not paying your electricity bill, or not buying groceries, etc. You DO NOT want to have to make those kinds of choices. Careful planning is in order. Don’t wait until your dog is on his last legs to start researching options. Do your research now and be prepared.
This is what we did: we ordered some safe herbal products that have NO Side Effects, treat a lot of common conditions, and have a long shelf life (4 years or more). At any time, we have enough products to treat all eight of our dogs if, let’s say, all of them came down with Parvo at the same time. We also have our day-to-day supply which we use for little stuff like upset stomachs, vomiting, bad indigestion, moping around, lethargy, parasites, etc.
Case in point, recently one of our eight, a 60 lb (27.22 kg) female Catahoula Leopard dog, came in the house and was really moping around. She had very little energy compared to her norm, so after an hour of this it was time to take action. We gave her a dose (15 drops put in some food) of Vibactra Plus, which is an herbal antibiotic with a built in antiparasitic; then a couple of hours later another dose. Still there was no real change, so we then brought out the big guns. The third dose (15 drops/product) consisted of Vibactra Plus, Parvaid, and Life Cell. Did this twice, she came back into the house flying. She was back to normal. All of this was over a course of around six hours or so. We never really exactly found out what was wrong, but since we live in a rural area, the dogs love to go on safari. What they don’t count on, is that some snacks bite back.
We are extremely fortunate in that we are around the dogs all of time (literally 24/7) and we’ve developed really strong observational skills. If any of them look out of sorts or are acting strangely, we’re all on top of it immediately. By giving Crystal the products super fast, whatever was upsetting her system had no chance because we crushed it long before it could ever really get started. This is how we save so much money in vet bills, because we have the products on hand at all times and when the dogs are sick we deal with it within the hour.
OK, now how did we know what to get and how much of it? That was easy, we filled out the form on our Product Selector, and it came back with a recommendation. We told it that we had eight dogs (we fill out the weights for all of them), they were sick for one day, no fevers, and had bloody diarrhea. It came back and told us that we needed about $500 worth of products. Seems high, but do the math, $500 for all eight dogs or $500/single dog at the vet’s office…hmm.
In this case, we actually ordered more than the recommended minimum products, the idea that we would have enough stock for a big emergency (e.g. all of them were infected with Parvo) as well as some extra bottles for day-to-day little things. We’ve been using the products for small issues and things are great. We’ve had no adverse reactions; we’ve squelched some problems and nipped them in bud. We’re very happy with the performance of the products. We strongly recommend that you have a minimal set of these products on your shelf at all times. This way, you won’t have to make hard choices about saving your dog or paying your rent.
Just fill out the form on our Product Selector and it will tell you what you need. If you don’t have the money today, plan for it. Start putting a little away each week until you have enough. If you’re wondering where that will come from, try to remove any unnecessary expenses (fast food places, Starbucks, etc.) If your dog could help you he would - it is our responsibility as pet owners to provide proper health care.
The question is, will you be prepared?
