Holistic. This word gets a bit of a bad name these days from people taking things too far, but it is something we can really put into practice in our pet care. Holistic really means looking at things from a balanced view.
There are different elements of holistic care. The one you’re probably most familiar with is homeopathy, which is literally “like heals like”. Ironically to both the nay sayers and the militants both this is the idea of vaccination in a nutshell. Give a small controlled dose of damaged virus and the body will use this to build a response. We use this in terms of behaviour too, introducing a controlled small level of stress to build a behavioural or neurological response that we are looking for, in both ENS and emotional conditioning.
Another element of holistic health is in psychological health. Stress makes you sick, it impacts how you respond to the world and how your immune system responds to things too. This is why we have a psychology department for people dealing with chronic pain because often the stress of how our lives have changed makes us worse. Problems like depression and anxiety can be caused by medical imbalances but more often are caused by environmental factors. The circumstances we live in, the things we’ve been through. Our pets are the same. I have seen rescues in who are it really bad states mentally and until they were in a better place they wouldn’t put on weight. After an accident one of our jills even went into emotional shock once, and she displayed signs of real pain. We can put this element of psychological health into play by providing our ferrets with the toys, space and friends they need to be happy. Neutering or implanting if your ferrets are hormonal and it is causing fights. Giving plenty of mental stimulation.
That brings us to our third element which is basically physical health. The first thing that comes to mind is probably weight but rather than obsessing over weight or fitness providing plenty of room and activities for play and good food is a cornerstone of physical health. Play is how your ferrets get their exercise for the most part. I will come back to food soon. Other important aspects of physical health are genetics, that is diseases that are inherited and phenotype; their build, coat type, angora noses etc, and how they impact the body’s ability to regulate. For example if you have an extreme angora nose you may need to consider dust in litter or dig boxes a lot more, if your ferret is prone to insulinoma you may have to completely forgo any food that isn’t meat and bone. There is also the elements of changing physiology such as those in neutering that can lead to issues with hormone balances, or your choice of flea and wormer can lead to skin problems or poisoning (google bob martin reactions), a lot of medications can lead to something being slightly off in the body that they body then has to address.
Finally, we can talk about food. Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food. We’ve already touched on this with insulinoma but there is so much more to it. Bad food choices can affect teeth leading to gum disease and blood poisoning. It can cause the body to not form correctly if the wrong things are fed at the wrong time in pregnancy or if things are out of balance during growth. You can even see serious problems with the kidneys if you are feeding dry food as such pets often live in a state of chronic dehydration. This is one of the reasons cats are so prone to uterine crystals.
These are great things to think about to make your pet healthier, happier and they can add up to big impacts. This is the basis of all our recommendations and how we personally raise our kits. Balancing the best of what’s natural and what we can do to help them have a better life. We would highly encourage you to learn to speak your pets language so you can recognise if they need anything changed in their home or routine, and never stop learning so you can provide the best, most holistic life, catered to suit your pet and your home.
I’d like to tell you a story that I hope can show you just how much of an impact these elements can have on a pet both in a day to day and in a health crisis. Last Christmas one of our dogs had what is suspected to be Alabama rot. Now I say suspected as at present the diagnosis involves an autopsy and thankfully, he is still here. Let me quickly give you a run down of Alabama rot. The dogs capillary’s begin to break down (or are broken down) leading to lesions on the legs mainly but also muzzle, occasionally rib cage, and the kidneys. These kidney lesions are a big aspect of diagnosis in autopsy. Our boy never showed signs of kidney failure but that last month after he was recovering was nerve wracking because it’s quite common for dogs receiving treatment to heal externally and suddenly go into kidney failure. Our pup is luckily enough raw fed, maybe this is one of the reasons he is here when so many others aren’t. His kidneys were not compromised by his diet. It was still an awfully long road though with a lot of medication, injections and healing. The fur on his legs is still not fully in where he had the deepest black scars.
Since then there was something up with his ears. Nothing I can put my finger on. They just look too pink, and he sometimes lifts his paws as though he’s going to scratch and skips if he’s excited. I have noticed they get bright red if I’M upset, he is a very empathetic boy, and at other times they seem normal. There is no smell. There is no dirt just something off. This has all came to a head because I had a steroid cream for treating any small infections. His immune system is still somewhat compromised so if he gets a scrape, he can have a long-time healing without that little hand. I though why don’t I try it on the redness. It worked but it was a temporary fix and afterwards I noticed something strange. Once the treatment stopped, he had a dirty ear. No smell, no huge amount of dirt, no itching, just more than he should have. I was so stressed out and it was getting worse!
But of course it was. It got worse when I was stressed. Deep breath, step back. It wasn’t an allergy. Allergies don’t respond to your owner being stressed. It wasn’t an infection. It wasn’t mites or yeast. It wasn’t anything! It was just happening again as soon as treatment stopped.
It dawned on me that I had seen this before. He was displaying the same things I associate with a detox on a pet switching to a raw diet. All his medication, all his steroids, and the kidney damage that wasn’t enough to affect day to day, but was it enough to affect his ability to remove toxins? Well that day I started him on milk thistle and gave him some activated charcoal. I ordered a dog aromatherapy spray to use when I was stressed. I had a plan and just that little bit of control was enough for me to gain control of my spiralling stress. The next day he was normal. No dirt. No pink. Not even skipping when excited! I had been so caught up in fixing him, in putting things into him to make him better I had forgotten the power of taking them back out and the homeostasis of his body.
If he had been on kibble instead and had been having extra vaccinations (currently core vaccines are to be no more frequently than 3 yearly), or chemical flea and wormers, maybe even exposure to some weed killers, we might have been seeing exactly the same kind of problems.
Sometimes the best port of call is some self-care, some time to reflect and take a view from a holistic approach. Maybe that’s looking at diet, maybe it’s looking at your enclosures, how you train. Occasionally its just not stressing out and letting healing take place. Pharmaceutical help should always be one part of a much broader picture when we consider the lives of ourselves and our pets. It is not a case of one or the other. Taking the best and most suitable elements of multiple branches of the husbandry tree is infinitely more impactful. It is important we always try to see that full picture of health. Striving to incorporate elements of holistic care can really help with the day to day health of our pets as well as their overall health in ways we don’t realise. Some day, like myself, you might be thankful you incorporated a bit of unconventional thinking, even if it just bought you a little more time with your loved ones.
I hope this helps someone and finds its way to someone who needs it xx