Dr. Pitcairn's Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats (33 page)

I have noticed these connections particularly in pets with emotional and behavioral problems,
but such patterns often seem to affect chronic physical problems as well.

By paying special attention to emotional issues in the home, it’s possible to foster the kind of positive emotional climate that helps a pet maximize its ability to restore and maintain health.

PROBLEMS THAT START AFTER LOSSES

Many animals suffer a loss of attention and/or territory when a baby or a new pet arrives in the home. The same may occur when the family moves (perhaps to a small apartment or to an area with unfriendly neighboring pets). It can happen when someone dies or leaves the home, or when a person takes a time-consuming job, goes on a long vacation, or just loses interest. Or perhaps the house has just been redecorated and the animal is no longer welcome inside.

This loss may soon be followed by a decline in the pet’s health. In cases like Bandy’s (banished to the outside after the baby was born), boredom and frustration may combine with a pre-existing tendency for skin irritations and lead to excessive licking, scratching, and chewing. This, in turn, may aggravate what was only a slight weakness, creating more inflammation and irritation. Before long, a vicious cycle is well underway, with the skin increasingly inflamed and itchy.

Quieter types of pets may react by becoming more lethargic and apathetic. This inactivity and disinterest, in turn, lowers the strength of the immune system, and the pet may become susceptible to an infectious disease.

In yet another scenario, some pets may become stressed by territorial conflicts caused by a new animal’s presence in the family or even in the neighborhood. If the disputes are not resolved, the constant stress can wreak havoc on the first animal’s well-being, once more setting up fertile ground for germinating new health problems.

Problems like these may even be reinforced unintentionally by an innocent reaction. Say your dog is feeling lonely because you went back to work and just don’t have as much time for him as you used to. Before long, he develops a minor symptom—a cough—that worries you. Every time he coughs you rush over, pet him, and murmur comforting words. (This sounds a little bit like dog training, doesn’t it?) Pretty soon the dog gets the idea that every time he coughs he gets what he wants—your loving attention. What incentive is there for him to get well and stop coughing?

Even if you were to scold the dog (as Bandy’s person did for scratching), he could perceive the scolding as a reinforcement of sorts. Receiving even such negative attention when he is usually ignored is preferable to feeling completely neglected.

Such scenarios are most likely to develop with symptoms such as coughing, limping, or scratching that involve some action over which the animal has some control. Veterinarian Herbert Tanzer, author of
Your Pet 
Isn’t Sick (He Just Wants You to Think So)
, has found that teaching people to stop coddling pets in response to a symptom and to coddle them more at other times has resolved many irksome cases that seemed to have no physical cause.

What to do:
Watch for any changes in your pet’s psyche that might be the result of new household schedules or a family crisis. Animals are individuals just as people are. Some require more attention, social bonding, territory, and routine than others. Try to see altered situations at home from your animal’s perspective and use your common sense in trying to make adjustments that will ease the situation. Perhaps you simply need to spend some special one-on-one “together” time with each animal; or you might have to construct a solid fence to keep out intruding neighborhood dogs. Maybe one person’s German shepherd needs daily walks, but just holding and petting a Siamese more often could be all that’s required to calm her.

Sometimes the answer lies in confining a new pet to limited space until the “senior” pet accepts the newcomer. With animals that are particularly hostile or territorial toward other animals (especially cats), you might have to remain a one-pet family. However, with highly sociable animals, especially dogs that have just lost an animal companion, you might do well to get a new pet, particularly one of the opposite sex, one that seems to have a friendly attitude.

It could be as difficult as deciding that your animal needs a more suitable home than the one you are able to provide. But then, it could also be as easy as allowing Rover back on his favorite chair and protecting your new upholstery with a towel or blanket.

Resist the temptation to baby your pet or to fuss over him whenever he limps, coughs, or scratches. Instead, pet him and play with him more at the times when he’s behaving normally. And, of course, take him to the vet for a professional evaluation and give him whatever care he needs.

HUMAN EMOTIONS AND ANIMAL PSYCHES

The well-being of our pets is also affected by our feelings. Most dogs and cats form strong bonds with the people they depend on for food, shelter, safety, and affection. That’s why it’s especially important for them to tune into our emotional cues. Except perhaps for a few brief verbal commands or names, pets rely completely on the emotional messages communicated by our posture, tone of voice, facial expressions, and, well, just plain feelings in the air.

As a result of this connection, pets often seem to soak up angry, sad, or fearful feelings from family members who are experiencing tension or conflict over issues that have nothing to do with the animal. Frequent arguments in the home are especially stressful for a pet, which may react with irritability or fear. Emotional tensions in particular may affect health problems that have
either a behavioral component (such as increased aggressiveness, destructiveness, or extreme restlessness) or a nervous component (such as irritated skin, ears, bladder, and the like). Just as a pet might react to losses, an emotionally stressed animal with a predisposition to skin or bladder problems, for example, might scratch or urinate still more, further irritating the tissues and setting up the conditions for a vicious circle.

Other times, a person’s anxious emotions and expectations can aggravate a pet’s existing health problem. Most commonly, one becomes upset on first noticing that a family pet is not feeling well. Deeply worried that the condition may worsen or even become fatal, it is common to be afraid of doing something wrong in treatment and losing a dear friend as a result. The animal senses this anxiety. Something must be wrong! The uncertainty only increases the pet’s anxiety, which may already be heightened by the discomfort of illness. The animal may even begin to hide. When fearful and stressed, your pet may have a diminished capacity to heal.

Conversely, your calm, positive response to a pet’s first symptoms relaxes and reassures the animal, helping to strengthen its immune response. All else being equal, I have observed time and time again that the animals likeliest to recover from chronic and difficult illnesses are those that live with people that manage to be calm and maintain a positive outlook. While it may be difficult to find calm in the face of suffering, it’s the best thing you can do for your animal.

Besides sending a danger signal to your pet, your anxiety could also hinder treatment. Clients have often told me that acting from fear or a sense of urgency, they made decisions that they later regretted. When animals get tumors or cancers, clients often feel under tremendous pressure to have the growths immediately removed, as though every passing hour were critical. But there is no evidence to support such urgency. In fact, the stress of the surgery can make the animal even more difficult to treat when using less drastic methods. Similarly, the intense scratching that accompanies skin allergies sometimes drives clients to get corticosteroids, which can undo several weeks of progress resulting from nutritional and homeopathic treatment. True healing of chronic disease requires, above all, patience. The desire for immediate relief is very seductive. That’s the appeal of using strong drugs to control symptoms. But since they don’t actually cure the underlying ailment, the illness recurs, gradually worsening over time or taking a different and more difficult form.

Over-anxiety can also push people to jump from one veterinarian or treatment to the next, whether conventional or holistic. This can overwhelm and confuse your pet’s body, never allowing any one method a chance to work. On the flip side, worry and discouragement can lead people to give up on medical treatment without really trying.

One final way our psyches may impact our pet’s health is something of a mystery. Veterinarians
see many cases in which pets develop the same problems as the people they live with, seemingly beyond coincidence. This could be caused by a common toxin or other agent in the environment. But it’s also possible that the strong bond between some pets and people can create a kind of sympathetic resonance, akin to “catching” a yawn or the urge to scratch from someone nearby. Many experiments and anecdotes attest to a mysterious, seemingly extrasensory connection between animals and people. This could be a factor when it seems that the same health problem is shared between a person and an animal.

What to do:
First, don’t worry about whether your emotions have affected your pet’s health. Even if they may have, it was never intentional. In any case, the best thing from this point forward is to be as relaxed, confident, and calm as you can. Whenever you are in an upset state, it is best not to engage in too much interaction with your pet or other family members. Taking a break can give you a fresh perspective.

Don’t let yourself be hurried into medical decisions. Give treatments a chance to work and make any changes purposefully and carefully, in cooperation with your veterinarian.

Finally, learn to have faith in the power of healing. Life always seeks to right itself—to close a wound, to lift up our spirits. Try also to accept the fact of death, for it is part of a larger cycle of eternal renewal. After the winters of our lives—all the disappointments, the lows, the losses—spring will always come again.

CHAPTER 11

NEIGHBORLY RELATIONS: RESPONSIBLE PET MANAGEMENT

L
iving with animals can be a wonderful experience, especially if we choose to learn the valuable lessons animals teach through their natural enthusiasm, grace, resourcefulness, affection, and forgiveness. In that same spirit, a kind person is very dear to an animal. But when it comes to living habits, the natural tendencies of people and animals often widely differ. To some of us, the joys of an animal’s company are well worth the little extra mess or noise that may be part of the package. Our neighbors, however, may not be as tolerant of muddy paw prints on the car,
loud barking in the early morning, dug-up flowerbeds or extra “watering” of the bushes.

That’s why taking responsibility for the impact our dogs and cats have on the rest of the community is one of the most important aspects of our responsibility of caring for an animal. Whether it’s someone else’s pet or our own, we all know the unpleasantness of dealing with animals that have not been well-taught or restrained. In fact, a nationwide survey revealed that the number-one citizen complaint made to city governments concerned “dog and other pet control problems.”

I recall a neighborhood Doberman who used to bound into my front yard, relieve himself, then run up to my window and bark angrily at me as I sat in my own living room. And how many times have you walked through a parking lot when a big dog suddenly thrust its head through an open car window and barked ferociously, its huge jaws just inches from your face? I think of a veterinarian friend whose hand was painfully mauled by an aggressive dog. And I remember a town I used to live in where packs of roaming dogs used to chase down joggers and bicyclists as though they were prey. I always had to keep an eye on all the “ambush” spots when I jogged.

Recently we moved into a new home. Our next door neighbor’s deck abuts our side yard and often contains several dogs excitedly barking and growling viciously inches from us as we work in our flower beds or mow the lawn. It is surprising to me that there is not more consideration in these situations. They can’t possibly think we enjoy it.

If you have built a bird feeder in your yard only to see the neighbor’s cat catch and eat the little songsters, it can be an upsetting experience. Such situations often pit neighbor against neighbor, with pets caught in the middle. And yet if animals could speak, they would probably complain about us humans—about being tied up or locked up too much, for example. Some might growl softly as they reflect on life with a rock ’n’ roll fan addicted to top-volume stereo. Pets injured by cars might demand to know why we have to rush around so dangerously. And the millions of pets dropped off at animal shelters by the people that have been caring for them might tell how it feels to be abandoned. (Over half of these were given up because of unresolved behavioral problems.)