My family dog has a pretty interesting story, starting with being a wild island dog for the first year of her life before she was rescued and adopted by my family in the much colder Midwest. She has also been my herbal patient many times over the years it seems. Thankfully, she never complains when
I give her herbs and is the most compliant patient I have ever worked with.
This past summer brought another herbal episode for her. She woke up one morning with a mild limp. She had gone to bed the night before without any issue, so I wasn’t sure what was going on. Her paw didn’t seem sensitive to
the touch, so I decided to wait and see what would happen while also watching for potential signs of Lyme disease, as joint problems are a common symptom.
A day or two had passed, and she had gotten worse to the point that she was no longer putting any weight on her paw and it was clearly swollen.
Now I knew that I needed to act. The first thing that came to mind was Dr. Christopher’s Complete Tissue & Bone formula because of how well it works to repair damaged tissue. I didn’t have capsules on hand, but I did have the syrup. I also knew that I wanted to get her some comfrey since the compounds in comfrey would work synergistically with the Complete Tissue & Bone formula to work on the repair her body needed even faster.. As I got her usual food ready for the evening, I added a large dose of Complete Tissue & Bone syrup and one to two tablespoons of dried comfrey root. Since this was an acute issue, I had no
concern over using larger doses. I mixed this all together, and she happily ate all of it. There is definitely a benefit to knowing how to get your dog to take herbs in various forms.
After she finished her dinner, I grabbed a homemade herbal salve that I had created with comfrey, calendula,
plantain, and yarrow. I often use this salve when my kids get owies. I gently rubbed a very generous amount of the salve over the area of her paw that was swollen, and I didn’t bother stopping her when she ended up licking much of it off. The next morning I followed the same protocol when I gave her breakfast. By the early afternoon she was completely better, running and playing as if nothing had happened, and it was no longer swollen at all. I did give her a smaller dose of the protocol with
her dinner for good measure, but really it only took 2 doses for the issue to clear up. She has had no recurrence of the issue.
Thinking back over the whole situation, it really shines a light on the need to act quickly when it comes to acute issues instead of letting them fester. The quicker that
we start working on the problem, the faster that we see results. It is also helpful to have a compliant client who willingly takes their full dose of herbs without complaint.
