Dog home remedy.

The expert giving the talk said that you should only use one dog home remedy at a time. I have been reading the Holistic Page for quite a while and have been following your advice on combinations of flower dog remedies. I work with rescue dogs and have been seeing very good results following your advice. But the expert apparently said that combining the remedies gets poor results. I am confused."

This is an important area of potential confusion. It was a shame that the "expert" in question didn't offer any evidence for this claim. It is easy to make a statement of this sort, but the only way to test this kind of assertion would be to carry out trials, carefully controlled, comparing the results of using one flower essence at a time versus using them in combinations. The findings of the trials would then have to be presented very accurately through examining case studies, describing the protocal used for the trials and drawing a careful conclusion. But as far as we know, such a study has never been done and there is no basis for making this claim.
The fact is, flower remedies are nearly always used in combinations and always have been, since the time of Dr Edward

Bach, the man who founded the original system of Bach Flower Remedies. It was Bach who put together the famous combination known as Rescue Remedy, which contains five different remedies. It is probably the most widely used and most successful flower essence product in the world.
You said you work with rescue dogs and are getting good results. Well done, and keep up the good work! This is such an important part of flower essence work, and so easy to get good results with. Helping rescue dogs is one classic area where the pitfalls of using only one remedy at a time show themselves.

If you choose the wrong remedy, or don't manage to cover the whole problem (which is very easily done by choosing only one remedy), the chances are you will get only a partial success at best, and possibly no success at all. The result is that an animal goes on suffering needlessly when it could have been helped. Detractors of the therapy (and there are still many of those!) will then be quick to say: "see? I told you it wouldn't work!". Funds are tight in rescue centres, and centre bosses will only provide cash for remedies if they see them working. Thus, it is important to make sure we get good results first time, or the benefits could be denied to hundreds and thousands of suffering dogs in the future.

Even if you put 10 flower remedies in a combination and only 2 are the "right" ones, the wonderful thing about this therapy is that the remaining 8 will simply fail to act. They "bounce off", as we always say. In 70 years of flower remedies there has never been a case of side-effects or ill effects of any kind. So it is a pity when people posing as experts give out information that could potentially mislead users and cause confusion. You have been using combos successfully - we urge you to carry on doing it as you have been doing!

Some homeopaths are also advocates of the "one remedy" approach - this is called "classical" homeopathy. However, since the 19th century and the work of Dr Samuel Hahnemann (founder of homeopathy) dual and multiple remedies have been used with great success and with 100% safety record. These are all debates that rage quietly on behind the scenes in the natural therapies world!
Our advice to you and to all our readers is: do what works. There are only two rules: one, be effective, and two, be safe.

Stiff Setter
"Myoid Irish Setter is a bit stiff in the joints. I am going abroad for a couple of months on business, a trip I cannot avoid. I have to leave Red with my elderly father. I have been using some natural remedies to help him for his problems, but I am worried because my father is not great with remembering details and he may get confused with the remedies. Might there be an easier way to deal with the problem?"

Irene Sanderson, Surrey
It is great to hear that you have been getting good results using natural remedies to help Red's stiffness. We do appreciate your dilemma, and it's true that many people, elderly or not, get mixed up about giving pills and remedies. When you have to give four drops of this four times a day, two of these twice a week and one of these every other day for two weeks and then stop, it can all get a bit overwhelming! How about trying magnet therapy? There are two great potential benefits here. The first one is that magnet therapy, or magnetotherapy as it's sometimes known, is really very effective indeed.

We have even seen it working faster and better than homeopathic or herbal remedies! The second benefit is that it is extremely simple and practical to use. There is nothing fiddly about it, and no detailed treatment procedures to remember. You just apply the magnet for an hour every day. The only possible contra-indication would be if Red were fitted with a pacemaker or other artificial heart device, as the electromagnetic (EM) fields from the magnets are pretty powerful, up to 4000 Gauss depending on what product you use.

To give an example of magnet therapy on a dog, let's quickly describe our personal experience with our Rottie, Mungo (pictured). You can't see it from the photo, but Mungo's breeding has given him a great barrel of a body and rather spindly legs to carry him! We try to keep him down to a certain weight, but he carries so much bulk in muscle that occasionally while running and playing he will strain something. He did this again recently, and we decided to treat his pains with magnet therapy. Conveniently, he wears a metal chain collar and it was very easy to stick a small magnet (900 or so Gauss field strength) to the inside of it. We were pleasantly surprised at the speed of the results. One day poor old Mungo was plainly very stiff and hobbling about; the next day he shot out into the garden like a Greyhound and was back to his old self again.

How does it work?
The idea is that the harmless EM radiation of the magnet interacts with the electrical fields (called endogenous fields) of the patient and has the ability to promote healing. The science of magnet therapy is part of the wider science of Bioelectromagnetics (which includes light therapies and electro-crystal therapy), and is all researched in staggering technical depth. Many people call it the medicine of the future.

It is often associated with treating musculo-skeletal problems, strains and sprains, etc. - but it has a huge range of other applications for animal and people including asthma, atopic eczema, bronchitis, hypertension (high blood pressure), flu and colds, carpal tunnel syndrome, and even to protect against the harmful effects of powerful EM fields such as X-ray radiation. Apart from the contraindication with pacemakers and pregnant animals (both of which are theoretical as there have not been any reported cases of ill effects as far as we know), magnet therapy is completely safe. This, combined with its effectiveness, range of use and utter simplicity, makes it a fantastic addition to the home natural remedies toolkit!

_{source Your Dog Mag.}