What Your Dog Needs to Thrive — And How You Can Help with Rita Hogan
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hello and thanks for joining me for another episode of Lucid Cafe. Actually this is the final episode of season seven and it's been quite a season. We started out last fall with my friend Linda River Valente giving us us an astrological glimpse into 2025 and I'm not gonna lie I was kind of hoping that Linda's dire seeming glimpse wouldn't be as accurate as it has been. I'll have Linda back next season, at least I'm hoping to, so we can get an idea of the coming trends.
Wendy:In the meantime, I'm in the process of creating a talk that will explore some of the deeper themes I wrote about in my latest book Raven's Daughter. The working title of this talk is Entering the Age of Possibility where I'll tie indigenous prophecies about this particular time on planet Earth into what my shamanic experiences over the last fifteen or so years have also revealed. If you're in Vermont and are interested in checking it out, either sign up for my newsletter or keep an eye on the events page on either the threeworlds.media or lucidpathwellness.com websites. Alright, so today's episode is for dog lovers. My guest Rita Hogan is a clinical canine herbalist who's been helping pups for twenty years.
Wendy:She's captured what she's learned in her comprehensive new book, The Herbal Dog: Holistic Canine Herbalism, Applications and Practice. In this hands on herbal guide and in our conversation Rita will empower you to become your dog's wellness hero. She gives simple vital tips to help your dog thrive, live their best life and stay by your side for years to come. And maybe not surprisingly many of the tips she shares are applicable to humans too. So please enjoy my resource rich conversation with Rita Hogan.
Wendy:Hi, Rita. Thanks so much for coming on the show.
Rita:Hi. You're welcome. I'm excited to be here for sure.
Wendy:When I got the invitation to chat with you about your new book, I was pretty excited because I am a big proponent of alternative medicine. And I am, as I mentioned before we started recording, I have a dog family, and that's your world. You wrote this book called The Herbal Dog, Holistic Canine Herbalism, Applications and Practice. And what an amazing book.
Rita:Thank you.
Wendy:Because it's like, it's chock full of information for folks to help their dog friends Yeah. With all kinds of presenting issues, like, whole gamut. Super handy resource.
Rita:Yeah. It's definitely based on, you know, not just herbal medicine, but getting your dog to a point where they're they're healthy. It's a with a focus on organ health, teaching people that dogs are individuals, that everything in the body is connected, and that most of the symptoms well, I mean, most of the issues that anyone goes to a vet for, maybe not yet, obviously not a car accident or getting hit by a car or something like that.
Wendy:Like a trauma, yeah.
Rita:Yeah, a trauma. But other than that, everything is a symptom of organ health. So when we focus on our organs, including the gastrointestinal tract, know, outcomes are better. Even, you know, they're hit by a car, a dog is gonna heal better if they have better organ health. So it really all it does come down to assimilation and elimination and and how healthy our dog's organs are.
Rita:And a lot of people don't realize and don't even know how certain organs work. A lot of people think that the liver stores toxins, which it doesn't, and or they don't know what the lymphatic system is and what it does and how important it is, and I it's not mentioned like it should be. So, yeah, it's a it it definitely is all the things that I want people to know as an introductory to natural healing for their animals, for their dog.
Wendy:Yeah. And I can't wait to dive in because there's like a zillion questions I already have. But before we dive into the actual content of your book, you do describe your introduction to the the world of herbalism in the beginning of your book, but I would love to hear your story. How did you get here?
Rita:Yeah. So I was a what do you well, I just saw a meme on it this morning on Facebook. Latchkey kids, you know, like, we were the kids of we didn't have babysitters. We were outside all the time.
Wendy:We were feral!
Rita:Yes. We were feral. So I grew up on a farm. So I think that that definitely colored my vision of what the world was like. I spent a lot of time in the woods.
Rita:I spent a lot of time around animals. Farms aren't pretty places every now and then. You know? So I I did have some, I would definitely say, animal based trauma. And I brought that into my my world growing up.
Rita:You know, I did the normal twenties. I did the normal twenties. Every you know, everyone has their twenties stories. Right? And then I did go to the University of Minnesota, studied eastern religion and feminism and and anthropology, and none of it resonated with me.
Rita:So I did five years in the in school, and then I moved to Tennessee, and then I started boarding dogs. Like, I started boarding dogs, and it was camel free boarding and the dogs running around everywhere, like, 35 dogs a day just following you nonstop and just you you learn so much about behavior and so much about animals. And what I real I realized was how sick these dogs were, and I it was kind of an eye opener. I learned a lot about my own dogs and then all of these dogs I was boarding. And the owners were so frustrated with their dog's behavior and their dog's health that it kinda just exploded from there.
Rita:And I was like, okay. I knew that I wanted to go back to western herbalism because I studied Ayurveda in when I was in college as kind of like a side hustle. I I studied Ayurveda when I was doing the Eastern religions thing, and it it didn't resonate with me as far as a teaching modality for for myself and for dogs, and I went back to Western herbalism where, you know, those were the plants I grew up with. And I started rescuing pugs and helping these dogs that were boarding with me, and it was phenomenal to see the changes in them even with a diet, just a plain old diet change. Even with an upgraded kibble, like a high end kibble, the changes were phenomenal.
Rita:And so when when I stopped boarding dogs, I went headfirst into raw feeding and, you know, things just kinda built up from there. And but my dog boarding clients were some of my first clients, you know, and we taught each other a lot of stuff. And it was just phenomenal. But the health outcomes were were amazing. But, you know, when I wrote my book about organ health, I remember that it when I opened up my kennel, it was around 02/2003, February, maybe '2 I don't know.
Rita:February and '3 and 02/2005. I I didn't I don't I'm not good with timelines, but it's right around then. It was definitely over twenty years ago. But, like, I never had met a dog with cancer in Really? '3.
Rita:No. Never.
Wendy:Not until later. Yeah. Never.
Rita:I I'd never heard of one. I never met one. I never met a person with cancer. I never heard of one. It wasn't part of the conversation that we were having.
Rita:And now one in two dogs will die of cancer and people one in four people will be diagnosed with cancer. And I think that's actually a low statistic. I think it's one in three now. Jesus. And, you know, they are predicting it's not if you'll get cancer, it's when.
Rita:I think that's a travesty in in two decades. In two decades that that's where we're at. And so I wanna push that baseline theory back to its normalcy back in the seventies where dogs didn't get these disease, these autoimmune diseases, these things that they're getting now. Like, what has changed in the last what has changed in the last twenty years that has really accelerated everything? And pollution has changed.
Rita:Our food system has changed. We have Wi Fi in our houses now. We wear our tech on our bodies. Some people put tech on their dogs' bodies now. And all of these things are
Wendy:They put tech on their dogs' bodies? What do--
Rita:Yeah. They'll put, like, Wi Fi collars on them.
Wendy:--those do? Like, so that they can get their phone calls?!
Rita:Whole bunches of things, like geotrackers and all of these yeah. There's a lot of tech coming up.
Wendy:Okay. Alright.
Rita:My opinion, those are they mess with resiliency. And so now we're living in this day and age that evolution hasn't been able to catch up to. Right? I think in fifty to a hundred years, we'll be able to deal with a lot of tech, but our bodies will change. But I don't think they're catching up right now.
Rita:And the thing is is that we have to build resilient bodies, and we have to stop talking about dogs being geriatric when they're seven and eight years old. That conversation needs to go away because it's not the dogs. It's what we're doing to them that is causing rapid aging. So my book is about bringing those things to light. I don't cover, like, EMF in my book.
Rita:They cut out. My publisher had to shorten it, make it more concise, which I appreciate that they did. But it is all about inner terrain. It's all about what's inside and herbs and homeopathy, herbs, and other modalities can really help with building resiliency because I think we've we've lost a lot of that with ourselves and our pets.
Wendy:Well, and I think we forget that we're animals too, but all of us, we animals, we have such sensitive nervous systems. And just talking about being exposed to all these frequencies all the time, it's probably a lot for our our systems to process all the time. Yeah. And it's probably a strain or stress.
Rita:It definitely is.
Wendy:And why wouldn't it be for animal friends too?
Rita:And they you know, when we're stressed, they're stressed.
Wendy:Yeah. So They do mirror us, don't they?
Rita:Yes. And they they you know, I was at an event yesterday for my book tour, and I was talking to people. And I was just discussing that we think that we interact with our dogs through speech. Right? Through tone and speech, and that can be a component.
Rita:But our dogs interact with us through smell.
Wendy:Oh, wow.
Rita:And that's how they gauge their entire world is through their nose. And we smell like stress and fear and cortisol and adrenaline, and we're giving off these frequencies of being unsafe. And even, like, the act of scrolling puts you in a low level of fight or flight, looking at social media and caring about what's on social media and and connecting with other people through social media. This, like, contrived, curated idea of what someone's life is. Right?
Rita:We don't put we hardly ever put the the real stuff out there. I mean, yeah, it's real, but it's not the other. It's all the other things. So we get this one-sided view of what life is like, and that's really stressful to to put that strain on us and also to live up to certain expectations and and always trying to look good. And we smell unsafe.
Rita:You know, we're stressed out.
Wendy:It's so interesting.
Rita:Yeah.
Wendy:I don't mean to cut you off.
Rita:Oh, interrupt. Interrupt. Absolutely.
Wendy:I'm just thinking about our girl dog, Zora, who is she is an unusual dog friend. She is a combination. We think she's a rescue mutt girl. A combination whippet chihuahua. Fun.
Wendy:So she's got the head of a chihuahua and the body of a whippet. And she's about 14 now and is still quite youthful. If dogs can be on the spectrum, we would say she is on the spectrum. Because, like, one of the weird quirks and ticks that she has is when the electricity goes out, she freaks out. When everything quiets down, like, there's no electromagnetic frequency going through the house, she is beside she can't calm down.
Wendy:It's almost like she's it's the weirdest thing. Right? Yeah. I mean, it's like the opposite of what you would think. You would think she would calm down when the electricity would go out, but it's actually I don't know if it's just the difference between the frequency.
Wendy:Yeah. Like, even if it just blips for like, the electricity just goes out for, like, a few seconds and comes back on again, she'll start pacing and whining, and she'll go upstairs and hide in the place that she always hides. It's the weirdest thing. You ever heard of that?
Rita:No. I've never heard of that one, but it doesn't it doesn't surprise me.
Wendy:She's she's quite quirky like her mom. Anyway, I'm sorry to interrupt, but that was Oh, no. When we were just talking about frequencies, was like,
Rita:Maybe that's what Zora's responding to. Anyway, getting back to your points about our dogs responding to us and how even on social media, when we're on our cell phones and stuff like that. When you're with your dog, you know, your dog knows when you're not present. Your dog knows when you're not listening. My biggest thing that I tell people is get off the phone when you're walking your dog.
Rita:Get off the phone when you're with your dog. They know it. And, when you're on the phone, you smell like stress. And I don't think we need a lot to feel stress in this world right now.
Wendy:You don't think so?
Rita:A lot of people no. No. Jeez. I think a lot of people are feeling unsafe, and I think that we have to really you know, there's only so much our brains can handle, and dogs are looking to you for guidance, and what is happening is dogs are mirroring their owner's stress and a lot of their physical ailments, and it's pretty interesting how our creatures, you know, are coming together to help us heal these diseases that we have, encountered through inflammation and stress. And so there's a big part of my book, there's a section called Everything's Connected, and I talk about the vagus nerve and the nervous system and how we regulate it and vagal flexibility and, you know, that ability to go from fight or flight to relaxation pretty quickly.
Rita:And some dogs have good vagal tone while others do not. And then there's some that are genetically bred to be on, like Australian Shepherds and Melanois and Border Collies, certain types of guard dogs, you know, they really need nervous system support to help them calm down and not be so reactive. And then there's, you know, there's a lot of toxins out there that cause reactivity and panic and fright, like like chlorine. Chlorine causes histamine levels to to skyrocket, and a lot of people don't filter their dog's water or for themselves, or they're feeding bottled water in plastic bottles, which is an endocrine disruptor. And dogs have a real hard time with hypothyroid right now.
Rita:A lot of them are spayed and neutered. You know? Well, ninety nine percent of them are spayed and neutered, which is a big assault to the endocrine system. So dealing with organ health in general and learning how to support the body, I think, is one of the main tenets of my book. And it's just beautiful to see people using the book and having better outcomes and figuring how to deal with the root cause of their dog's condition.
Rita:Because a lot of books that you get, they're awesome. But, like, if you get an herbal, right, a an herbal book, whether it for be for humans or for animals, it'll say, you know, use ashwagandha for stress and anxiety or use this and try milk thistle. But it doesn't tell you what type of remedy. Do how do I know if that herb is good for my own individual dog? How much do I give of it?
Rita:If it's a tea, how do I make that tea, and how much do I give it? If it's a dried herb, how how do I give it? Do I give it with food? Do I not give it with food? All of those questions are answered in the book.
Rita:All the dosages are discussed in the back. Chapter three is the best chapter in the book to really help your dog deal with themselves as an individual. But you said you had lots of questions, and I'm prattling on. So what what questions do you have?
Wendy:Well, I more and more are generating as you're talking. Just an observation, it sounds like what you're saying is that our dog friends, they're mirroring us.
Rita:Yeah.
Wendy:Or they can be a mirror for us because clearly, we're not healthy and they're not healthy either. And I don't know. Is it because we're eating shit and they're eating shit because we're eating shit and that's everybody eats shit now or like shitty diets? Yeah. Or is it because we are highly stressed and our systems are just not processing the way they used to?
Rita:Or a conversation Yeah. Like, you know, I have this little in fact, I think, I'm I have an event tonight too. I've got, like, four back to backs. And I don't talk about the same thing in my book signings. And so I, tonight, I'm gonna talk about I have this little speech that I've been creating over the last, I don't know, maybe three months that when I'm driving in my car to these different events, I I think about, like, I'm nerding out with myself in the car.
Rita:And these things that we forget we're doing to our animals, right? And a lot of them mirror what we're doing to ourselves. But you have a lot of things going on. The average American dog gets less than fifteen minutes of exercise a day. And if you were to ask the majority of people, they probably get less than fifteen minutes of exercise a day.
Rita:We're not breathing fresh air like we need to. We need to be outside. We we're in our homes, and our dogs are in our homes, and they're laying on all of our toxic laundry soap and and dryer sheet covered. Oh, now there's scent boosters. Scent boosters are some of my faves and walked into an Airbnb the other day and immediately took out the Glade plug ins, you know, or the Febreze plug ins.
Wendy:That shit is the worst.
Rita:I'm like, it smells like ivory soap in here. That's weird. I went back to my childhood of ivory soap, and I I was like, oh, and I pulled it out of the wall. But they're in our homes, and we have domesticated our dogs so much that they are mirroring our lifestyles. And so they're probably within a 10 foot proximity to us a lot of the time.
Rita:So there's that. There's not breathing fresh air. There's not giving enough exercise, which affects organ health and lymphatic health. And then we discussed EMF, but then we have, like, these dog specific things. So we spay and neuter our dogs without thinking.
Rita:Right? Even if we're really good owners that aren't gonna allow our dogs to be impregnated, it's just what we do. Right? Okay. And we we do it, and then the only thing that we're concerned about afterwards is the incision getting infected.
Rita:We're not concerned about that you just took out twenty five percent. Don't quote me on the percentage. It's roughly twenty five percent, a quarter of your dog's endocrine system. You just disrupted their nervous system. And you just disrupted their everything connected organ systems that are talking to that endocrine system consistently all day, all night.
Rita:Right? And you just rip that out.
Wendy:You know, I've wondered about that. Support. Because, I mean, I understand at least my understanding of the reason why we spay and neuter is because we don't wanna create an overpopulation of dogs without homes.
Rita:Yeah. So in certain areas of the country, that can be an issue. Like, I did my rescue six years of rescue in the South, and over dog overpopulation is terrible due to human ignorance. But if you are a dog owner that is responsible, I don't suggest spay and neuter. However, I have five dogs.
Rita:Four are spayed and neutered. Okay? You have to do what you need to do. However, you need to stop spaying and neutering under the age of one because what happens is some dogs are getting spayed and neutered at, like, 12 old and younger. Those hormones that are produced by our reproductive systems affect everything, especially when dogs are young.
Rita:Okay? So, like, for instance, if you have a Great Dane and you spay and neuter them at a young age, under the age of one, you are upping their chances of osteosarcoma by over forty percent.
Wendy:I wondered if that's where you were gonna go.
Rita:Yes. And osteosarcoma and hermangiosarcoma are killing our dogs right now, like, terrible. And
Wendy:We've buried four mastiffs, English mastiffs, that were rescues. And I think well, two of them had bone cancer.
Rita:Yes. Large dogs. Yeah. Because what happens is is those growth plates, hormones kind of negotiate with the body on when to close or leave open the growth plates so that a dog's bones can grow. And big dogs, those are a huge factor in their stability and, how their bones, develop and grow.
Rita:Right? And when they end the growth. So we're completely messing with them. In large breed dogs, it is imperative that you do not spay and neuter until that dog is 100% fully grown, and that I personally would wait three years.
Wendy:Okay.
Rita:And then spay and neuter. Right? And it's the same thing for hemangiosarcoma. And
Wendy:What kind of cancer is that one?
Rita:That one is dire. It is a like a blood cancer. Okay. It happens in the spleen and the heart, and it can happen under the dermis, and it it it's a bleeding out. Okay?
Rita:So it bleeds out. And Oh my god. It kills tons and tons of aggressive, just like osteosarcoma. So we're seeing all of these aggressive cancers. So spay and neuter is one of them.
Rita:We don't do it mindfully, right? Oh, you're going to get pyrometra or you're going get testicular cancer. Well, you know, if your dog gets pyrometra, then spay them when they have pyrometra.
Wendy:I don't even know what that is.
Rita:Oh, it's a a pyrometra is something that happens to girls that is life threatening. It happens when dogs I mean, obviously, when they're not spayed because that's one of the things that dogs can get, but pyrometric comes from stagnation, from organs not working correctly.
Wendy:Oh, okay.
Rita:It's not a reason to spay your dog, in my opinion. We need to be more mindful because we've bit just we've just grown accustomed to these things. This this is just what we do. Okay. Well, if this is just what we do, we need to be more mindful of when we do it.
Rita:And then another thing that we do to dogs specifically, and it's happening more in horses as well, is we're giving vaccinations every single year for things that our dogs already have immunity to. Get your puppy shots and be done with it. Now rabies is required by law in The United States, so I can't speak anything ill against that. But in my book, I have a pre and post vaccination protocol to help your dog deal with those vaccinations. And the all the other vaccinations are not required by law.
Rita:I do recommend parvo and distemper as puppies, and then you can test for antibodies five, six years down the road. We have to we have to change this. This is one of the things that changed. This over vaccination is definitely one of the things that has changed while our dogs are getting sicker and sicker. It causes rapid it got more aging.
Rita:It causes a higher toxic load. It affects the nervous system. And another factor on that vaccination is they're giving multiple vaccinations in one shot, and that is not a good practice. Oof. There's lots of research that shows when you do single vaccines, it is much healthier outcomes than the, like, six in one.
Rita:And they're doing it with horses, and horses are starting to get a lot of Cushing's disease. They're getting Addison's disease. They're getting they're getting cancers, lots of tumors that never ever occurred in regular horse rearing, husbandry, if you wanna call it. It it's insane. So over vaccination, automatic spay and neuter at a really young age, just those are things that we're just we've forgotten, and we haven't we're not supporting our animals when we do it.
Rita:So and and that's one of the things my book talks about. Doesn't talk about a lot about spay and neuter because it was one of the things that was kind of cut out of the book, but I talk about it a lot on my podcast and in my courses and things like that. And then another one is flea and tick meds, right? This is another thing that was not on the scene when I was young. We didn't give flea and tick meds because our dogs had a more vital resiliency to them.
Rita:My dogs had ticks and fleas all the time, but they didn't overcome everything. We didn't do anything. They were naturally resilient to them. Flea and tick meds are poison. And if I took that poison, that active ingredient in the flea and tick meds, and I put it in a shot glass and I asked you to drink it, would you?
Wendy:Fuck no?
Rita:No. Nobody would. Nobody would.
Wendy:Okay. No. So you're saying it's actually poisonous to ingest, but usually flea and tick meds are topical. Correct? Is that what you're
Rita:they're not? Those are those are almost worse because the topicals get into our environment. They get into our water supply. They get into your bodies. They get into your children.
Rita:If you test in a home that uses topical flea and tick meds, they'll they will be in everybody.
Wendy:How did you come to these conclusions that all this stuff would was, like, poison? Like, hurting.
Rita:Tons of research on it.
Wendy:Okay.
Rita:If you Google, in Google Scholar and if you Google flea and tick meds in the environment, you will be floored by what you'll see. If you, Google residues getting into humans and the testing they've done on these flea and tick meds, all around the world, they're making pleas to, like they're killing and decimating bird populations and fish populations. They're getting into our waters. It's in our atmosphere. It's crazy.
Rita:And then you have the internal pills. All of them are neurotoxins. They're they're nerve toxins, and they're liver toxins. They're they they're cause hepatic injury. So when you're if you're gonna give these medicines I cover this in my flea course.
Rita:Like, if you're gonna give these medicines, you have to prepare the body's organs to deal with them. But if I gave you that poison in a shot glass, you wouldn't drink it. And then why are our animals any different? So, you know, we're rationalizing the use of these just absolute poisons for our animals. And
Wendy:It sounds like what you're describing is what I am discovering with the clients who come into my wellness center who are struggling with chronic illness and what they've run into with their doctors and getting prescribed lots of medications and then medications to deal with the side effects of the first medications. And so there's this whole cocktail of of
Rita:Yeah. Like Rexulti.
Wendy:It's like making our immune systems, breaking them down even more, it seems. I'm not an expert, but it seems like people are just getting sicker or they're plateauing at this sort of place that's not healthy, but I don't know. It but that's what you're kind of describing. The same approach is happening in the veterinary world too.
Rita:Exactly. And in the human industry, you know, like, antidepressants, they cause a demyelination of nerves in the brain when given long term. And a lot of people have been on them for years, and it's really hard to get them off. It takes over a year to really like wean them off. One of my good friends is a research pharmacist, and she knows everything about so many drugs and what the negative effects that they're doing.
Rita:Dogs are actually getting a lot of antidepressants in mainstream medicine and Prozacs and different types of medicines. It's just awful.
Wendy:You're serious?
Rita:Yes, I'm very serious. And it's really sad and very high dosages. And so that's also in the things, but it's not as common as these other things, but the use of the flea and tick meds, the heartworm meds, depending on where you live in the world for heartworm, like I don't live in a high vector area, but testing is a really good method. Giving a wormer without a dog having worms has its own negative effects on the gut. And then also giving antibiotics out like it's candy.
Rita:The standard of care for diarrhea in dogs is Flagyl metronidazole, and that's a gift that keeps on giving for years. It can cause what's referred to as IBD or IBS, which in my opinion is, I don't know what is wrong with your dog's gut. This is what I'm going to label it, or severe gastritis, Crohn's.
Wendy:This all sounds so familiar.
Rita:Yeah, it's the same. And so like, my opinion is don't use antibiotics unless your dog is going to die. If your dog is gonna die like I recently had a little dog that I was working with and he's not mobile. So he has a lot of stagnation, right? So he can get pneumonia pretty quickly.
Rita:And he got an infection in his lungs and of course, you're gonna give antibiotics. It's not something that herbs are gonna work for because he couldn't breathe. So he had to go on a low steroid and an antibiotic, and of course, it saved his life, and we're, you know, now we're dealing with cleanup. But the cleanup lasts for it lasts very long. It's not something where, well, we're just gonna give probiotics for a couple of weeks and and, oh, I gave it to him when he was on the antibiotic.
Rita:The antibiotics cause severe damage, you can't get that gut back. Like, the gut prior to an antibiotic dosage is not the gut after the cleanup. It's a completely different set of species.
Wendy:And there's
Rita:some really awesome companies making some really great different types of fermented and cultured probiotics that are not currently on the market these days, but there's some really great stuff coming up in the transom by companies like Green Juju. I love that company, and they're doing some just really awesome different types of probiotics, but for more species diversity. But it's
Wendy:Is it for for canines in particular? Yes. Okay.
Rita:And it's just so interesting that, like, these are things that we have to support our dogs for the long term, And we just kind of forget because they become they have become everyday occurrences, and we've gotten conditioned that they're normal. But they're not normal. They're not normal. We're destroying our dog's immune system. We're destroying their health.
Rita:We're destroying their organ health. And not only are we destroying it, we're not giving them anything to fix it, and that is causing rapid aging.
Wendy:Okay. So let's talk a little bit about fixing
Rita:Yeah.
Wendy:Before we end our conversation. I think that's important because, I mean, it sounds so dire. Everything you're just touching the surface of
Rita:Yeah.
Wendy:All of the all of the things that you cover in your book. Alright. So maybe diet is a good thing to talk about?
Rita:Fixing it isn't hard. And Okay. You know, it may sound dire, but it's not hard. Like I said, every symptom that your dog has is a or maybe I didn't say it, but I'm gonna say it. Every symptom that your dog has is a product of organ health.
Rita:And I think I did at the beginning. Yes, you did. Yeah. It's a product of organ health because our bodies and our dogs' bodies are amazing at being resilient. Right?
Rita:I mean, we are pushing them to Yes.
Wendy:They are. Yeah.
Rita:Drink right now. But they are amazing when they get what they need for good organ health. And I definitely go through that in my book. And, yes, diet is very, very important. But even, like, even if you are feeding a high end kibble, no rendered meal ingredients that you can pronounce and know what they are, limited ingredient, those are the, like carnivores and excellent kibble, open farm, these are our higher end kibbles.
Rita:There is a kibble hierarchy, I talk about it in my book. If you feel you can't afford to feed a minimally processed diet, you wanna add fresh to the bowl. That's where, like, companies like Green Juju come in. You add fresh to the bowl. Any type of fresh food that you add is going to change the microbiome in the large intestine for the better.
Rita:And I go through all of, like, these different types of of improvements that you can make in the book and improving diet, but also get your dog outside. Their feet on the ground. Take those booties off unless there's antifreeze or or salts in the winter. I see more and more dog with booties on. Get those booties off.
Rita:That that's not what they're meant for.
Wendy:But but it's not fun to to have dogs without booties on, I guess, the on the TikTok.
Rita:Well, I don't yeah. Probably not. It's not fun. Their their little paws need to be on the ground and and get them outside breeding fresh air. Get their organs moving.
Rita:There's a big section on the lymphatics in my book. It is so dire to read it. Read chapter three on energetics. It helps your dog teach about your dog as an individual. But when you systematically support organ health, all the other outcomes are better.
Rita:You're gonna see more longevity. You're gonna see less aging. When we be more mindful of what we're doing to our dog because if I again, if I took what a dog normally gets in their first year of life and took the liquid medicine and put it in shot glasses, you would not drink it. You wouldn't drink the flea and tick. You wouldn't drink the heartworm med.
Rita:You definitely wouldn't drink all the vaccines. And you would be just flabbergasted by the amount of medicine that we are putting in our dogs' bodies as commonplace, but not helping our dogs' bodies deal with them. Right? I spend a good amount of money per month on food for my dogs, but they're my children. Right?
Rita:I don't have any physical children. I have a daughter, a a a kind of an adopted daughter, but I don't have any, like, physically children. So I spend a good amount of money on my dog's food. However, I don't do flea and tick meds. I test for heartworm every three months when I live in places that have a high vector.
Rita:Right now, I don't do any testing because I live in the Pacific Northwest. I might test to, like, every two years. I don't get vaccines unless I'm forced to to give the rabies vaccine. I I just I focus on their health, their inner terrain. And usually when I go to the vet, it's for my wellness checkup is a vet doing an x-ray or feeling around my dog.
Rita:They can feel for things that we can't feel like we don't know what we're feeling. Right?
Wendy:Right.
Rita:Or I bring my dog to the vet for an acupressure session or an acupuncture session or a veterinary chiropractic for wellness and prevention versus working from a mentality of of reaction, waiting for them to get sick. One of the book one of the things the book does in the Everything's Connected section is it gives you lists of red flags that tell you, hey, your dog's liver needs help, or, hey, your dog's lymphatic system is stagnant. Hey, this is an early warning sign of kidney of kidney health going down. Right? So that we can work in a preventative mindset versus just waiting for our dogs to get sick.
Wendy:So helpful. I mean, I I wish there was a book like this for every species.
Rita:I'll get working on that.
Wendy:Okay. But I've and and humans also. But that makes me wonder. My husband, he does therapeutic canine massage
Rita:Yeah.
Wendy:And is quite brilliant working with especially dogs who are aging or are post surgery. Yeah. Almost almost like in a PT way. But Yeah. He's not a physical therapist, so he can't call himself that.
Wendy:So we feed our dogs raw. It's a combination of fruit and veggies and meaty bones and raw chicken or turkey or both. And the younger ones we've rescued are very healthy. They don't seem to get sick. No.
Wendy:The ones we've rescued who are older usually end up unfortunately getting sick, cancer and dying earlier than we we would we would like. Yeah. Anyway, what I was gonna ask is because John, my husband, he was saying because he went to school to learn bodywork for humans. And then he said that there's the anatomy is very similar for canines. He just translated did some study on on just translating the the practice for dogs.
Wendy:Is that true with with the treatments too? I mean, this is probably the lamest question ever, but, like, can can we humans look at these
Rita:Oh, absolutely. Remedience. Really big thing about dogs versus humans is the size of their gastrointestinal tract. It's very short. So, like, when I talk about bloody diarrhea in there, it does not apply to humans.
Rita:You know? If you have bloody diarrhea, you need to go to the hospital.
Wendy:Yeah. That's different. Yeah.
Rita:Yeah. It's different. Bloody diarrhea really isn't that big of a deal for dogs. I do tell you when to when to go to the vet. I'm not anti vet in any way, shape, or form.
Rita:Some of my really good friends are vets. I respect what vets do. I do think that they're being misinformed in veterinary school. They're not learning about nutrition. They're not even learning how the body works as an ecosystem.
Rita:One book that I can recommend to your husband is a book called Four Paws, Five Directions by doctor Cheryl Swartz. It will help his massage practice exponentially. It's just a wonderful book. I love massage because it helps with stagnation, and it helps get trauma out of the fascia. Know?
Rita:Fascia Lymphatic smoothing. Yeah. Yeah. And the the fascia stores so much trauma. And a lot of our dogs have a ton of trauma, and we just you know, we don't acknowledge that either.
Rita:We just we we take them into our homes, we want them to abide, by whatever we want them to do. Right? And some dogs are especially rescue dogs are carrying around a lot of trauma that's inside their body. So massage is just a really wonderful way to get the lymphatics moving and to get some of that trauma out. So, yeah, I love it.
Rita:Tell your husband thank you.
Wendy:Oh, yeah. It brings some great joy, especially doing end of life care. Like, he'll work with dogs who are dying and and help them transition, which
Rita:is lovely.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. It brings him a lot of joy. It breaks it breaks our hearts, of course. But
Rita:Yeah. Anyway. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. But we probably could talk for another three hours
Rita:Yeah. I have no problem talking.
Wendy:About all the things. I mean, we covered so little of what Yeah. You covered in your book. And then you covered beyond in this conversation, beyond what's in your book.
Rita:Yeah. There is a great section on grief in that book, though. Because that's a very overlooked object for animals.
Wendy:I think overlook is kind of a a common denominator for all of these these topics we've been talking about today. Yeah. We are overlooking things all the time.
Rita:Oh my god. Absolutely. But, you know, like, people ask me all the time. They say, you know, Rita, what's the best herb I can give my dog so that they'll live for a long time? Right?
Rita:It's not an herb.
Wendy:Mhmm.
Rita:It's get your stress underhand. Learn how to deal with yourself. Improve yourself. Improve your relationship with yourself. Tell yourself that you love them.
Rita:You know? Tell treat yourself kinder. Breathe from your belly, and learn how to manage stress. However that resonates with you. There's so many ways to do it.
Rita:And the great thing about technology is there's there's no excuse anymore because you can Google how do I deal with stress, and 400 modalities will come up. And with YouTube, so many of them are free. There you can do qigong. You can do you can
Wendy:Meditate, whatever.
Rita:You can meditate. You can do yoga. You can just breathe for three minutes, three times a day. Huge. Go sit on the earth with your dog.
Rita:Go for a walk in the woods. Go for the walk in the park. Just being present brings down stress.
Wendy:Right. But being present for That's I highly recommend that. Being present is a tough thing in our contemporary culture because we are so distracted by everything. I'm wondering too is, can we use our dogs sort of as a litmus test? So, like, if they're behaving in a certain way, instead of focusing on their behavior, focus on ourselves to see what they might be telling us through their behavior.
Rita:Absolutely. Absolutely. Now that's not always gonna be the case, but absolutely. It's the first thing that I would try for sure, especially if you're being honest with yourself. Right, you can ask yourself, am I an anxious person?
Rita:Mhmm. Do I feel that I'm I have anxiety? And if you were on their your phone, you can check your screen time. And if your screen times are high, you can pretty much tell yourself, yeah. The answer to that question is yes.
Rita:The more time we spend on our phones looking down, scrolling, the more anxious we become. So and if just the mere talking about limiting phone time even just resonates with you or bothers you or you are getting irritated by just even having that conversation, know that you are addicted to your phone. I had a little kid come up to me in a event. I I'd say he was about 15 years old. And I was talking about stress and how our dogs mirror our stress, and his dog is his best friend.
Rita:And he came up to me and said, you know, when you started talking about scrolling, I immediately got irritated, and I panicked. I started panicking.
Wendy:Oh, man.
Rita:And he goes, so I knew that I'm addicted to my phone. And I'm on my phone all the time when I'm with my dog, and he's my best friend. And I feel bad. And I said, well, don't feel bad. You can't get the the past means nothing, right, except to learn by it.
Rita:We can learn from our past, but you can't get it back. And I said, just move forward. Spend more time off your make that your off your phone time when you are with your animals, when you are with your kids, when you are trying to be present.
Wendy:Dogs are really freaking entertaining too. Like, if you if you put your phone down and your dog is I mean, what are the best videos to watch are, like, dog videos and cat videos.
Rita:Oh my god. I love them.
Wendy:If you have one in front of you, you can just be entertained by your your dog friends. Yes. Or all of the animals that you have. Rita, this is very helpful.
Rita:Thank you.
Wendy:Thank you. No. I I hope people will because your book is like a resource. If if you have dog friends, you should have Rita's book on your shelf just to have and also make sure your dog friend is getting, I guess, the best care we can give them.
Rita:Yeah. And it is a good reference book. It's a good learning tool. It will be coming out on Audible and other types of places like that. I I I read it myself.
Rita:It was an undertaking.
Wendy:I bet. Yeah. That's because it's it's no joke. Did you read, like, every recipe and every
Rita:I do. I do. I I personally think that if you want in my opinion, if you you love a book being read to you, I would have it at I would have the physical book as well because a lot of the things you'll have to keep rewinding. Reference it.
Wendy:Yeah. Exactly.
Rita:Yeah. So you can look at the reference and the stuff. The appendices will be attached as a PDF, the things in the back to the Audible Oh,
Wendy:that's great.
Rita:Audio recording.
Wendy:Yeah.
Rita:Yeah. No. I I literally had to read two drops for extra small dogs, three drops for you know? And, I mean, the engineer was like, oh my god. I've never recorded a book like this.
Rita:I'm like, yeah. Well, they wanted a book. They wanted a recording, and here it is.
Wendy:Here we are. Yes.
Rita:Yeah. And it's also available, like, I I think what is it called? Kindle?
Wendy:Mhmm. Ebook. Yeah.
Rita:Yeah. And then if you wanna get in touch with me, I have a teaching platform, canineherbalism.com, and then I have a store with dog products and medicine that I make and and a bunch of stuff. And my consulting website is canineherbalist.com. And then my book's website, which the book references the website a lot, it's a resource website. It also has my book tour dates for my book tour goes through November of this year.
Rita:That is the herbaldog.com. So and I'm on Instagram and Facebook as canine herbalist.
Wendy:Okay. Awesome. And then tell me about your podcast.
Rita:I have a podcast. I think there's, like, about a 118 episodes so far. I do it weekly. At some months, there's only three episodes depending on what's happening.
Wendy:But It's better than I do.
Rita:Yeah. So, usually, it's every week. It's, dogs are individuals. Some of the episodes are short. They're like I call them shorts.
Rita:They're under fifteen minutes, and some are, like, thirty five, forty minutes. And I don't have guests. It's just me rambling on about a certain subject. Maybe next year, I'll start having guests, but I couldn't wrap my head around that this year. And this year, I'll be for most of my podcasts, I'll be, coming from, different places around the country and around the world.
Rita:I'll be in Ireland, England, and Spain for my book tour as well.
Wendy:Wow. Check you out. That's like a a very cool book tour you got going on. Yeah.
Rita:It's, you good for you. What it wants. My next book, I'm I speak a lot during the year, but I'm not gonna be doing this type of book tour only one time for this first book. My next book's on canine cancer.
Wendy:Okay. Well, Rita, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of this wisdom. I really appreciate it.
Rita:You are so welcome. Thanks for having me on.
Wendy:I guess it's not surprising that if we take better care of ourselves, our dog friends will benefit greatly too. Shocker. To get a copy of Rita's herbal guide, please visit canineherbalist.com. That wraps up season seven of Lucid Cafe. Thanks for going on this podcast journey with me.
Wendy:Whether you're a new listener or a regular listener, I so appreciate you. I've already scheduled like seven conversations for next season and the subjects we'll be covering are looking really intriguing so far. We'll be exploring witchcraft and fairy tales, consciousness and dreams, shamanism, a unique take on astrology, and who knows what else? I guess we'll find out. So for the time being, I'm wishing you peace of mind and a happy heart.
Wendy:I'll be back in the fall. Until next time.
