The new vet was great. She was so nice and spent almost 50 minutes with me.
Her focus is on eastern philosophy which I am not all that familiar with so it was an interesting experience. I left thinking, hmmm, well we'll just see if this works. She is a DVM so is trained in traditional western medicine, she just has additional training in eastern medicine. She gave Sugar a thorough exam and checked his stool sample- all good. Then
she gave him a form of acupuncture . I can't remember what its called but she said its the best form for little dogs because they are usually wiggly and this form is way quicker. You use an acupuncture needle but instead of putting all of the needles into the acupuncture points at one time she used them in a syringe type thing and injected medicine into each pressure point of the abdomen one at a time. It took about 5 seconds and Sugar didn't even know anything was being done. She spent quite a long time discussing diet with me. SHe is an advocate of raw but said that home cooking is very good too. I am going to keep home cooking until his next appt. in Jan (rabies shot) and if I haven't gotten it down by then, I'm going to switch to raw. She also gave me 2 medicines to give him, Canine Enteric Support, which is a holistic medicine for digestive problems and Curing Pill, which is a blend of Chinese herbs used for digestive problems.
Okay, here's what she told me about food. If you're not familiar with eastern medicine (which I'm not), this will sound a little out there. I just decided to have an open mind and see what happens. For those of you who know eastern philosophy, please correct me if I explain this wrong- I'm still learning. Animals as well as humans have an element. Most yorkies are fire (lively, friendly, affectionate). She said Sugar is wood (decisive, assertive, impulsive). Both elements are yang or hot. Hot animals need cold food. Not cold as in the temperature but she gave me a chart showing which foods are hot, cold or neutral. Chicken and white rice are both hot- something he's had a lot of.
So last night and this morning I gave him foods from the cold list- fish and potatoes (surprise Wylie's mom!
). SHe also told me leafy greens will help with his eyes running because she's not a fan of Angel Eyes for long term use since it's an antibiotic.
Well like I said, it was all very new to me but I really liked her beliefs on a lot of things like not over medicating and over vaccinating so I figured I'd give it a chance.
Here's the good news- Sugar didn't go all night and this morning he had a perfectly normal poo!
I am assuming it is too early to attribute it wholly to the food or medicines and think the acupuncture did the trick. With this success, she has won me over so far. I'm going to stick with the fish and potatoes until I'm sure he's back to normal and then add turkey and brown rice and take it from there.