Vital Animal Podcast

#026 My guest this week is Julie Anne Lee, homeopath and owner of the Adored Beast Apothecary.

Her origin story itself is seriously inspiring. Julie felt the connection to animals from a very young age, and wanted to help them. After some years of searching, she realized her vet tech work wasn’t her best foot forward. When homeopathy cured her of a difficult illness quickly (and in a foreign country, to boot), she knew immediately that was what she wanted to offer the animal world.

But, she chose to skip vet school and study with the best of the best in veterinary and human homeopathy instead. When it came time to bring her services to the public and their animals, she had to get creative, as the Canadian vet board was having none of it. Don’t miss Julie’s shrewd choices that ended up with her owning a clinic and employing 5 vets!

I invited Julie on to open the box on leaky gut. Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past decade, you’ve heard of this disease and how widespread it is. And you’ve likely heard even more about the ever increasing influence the microbiome has on everything in your body and that of your animals!

How are these related? How do you know when leaky gut is holding your animal back, and how can you ultimately help them get back to normal?

Julie is, to a fault, a deep researcher. She sticks to a subject like a bulldog and won’t settle until she learns all she can and takes that knowledge into the trenches, testing her findings in the real world.

Can you just throw some probiotics at this condition and expect a fix?

Julie’s work says no, it’s clearly not that easy. But she knows what does work, and shares that with us in this episode.

Getting the chance to listen to how this brilliant woman thinks and solves problems for animals is not to be missed!

Her links and more are in the show notes at https://VitalAnimal.com/26

#030 We were taught in vet school that “one size fits all” when it comes to vaccination: a Great Dane and a Chihuahua both get a 1 cc dose of the vaccine. There was some vague explanation that the “antigenic load” was all the mattered, and big animals and small ones needed the same amount of challenging substance injected.

This is what a past client was told recently when he asked for a smaller dose of rabies vaccine to be given to his 9 lb dog. His reaction (like mine should have been as a vet student) was “What the H? How does that make any sense at all?”

I immediately knew who to interview on this: Dr. John Robb of Protect the Pets, who observed early on in his practice that the smaller the pet, the more likely they were to have a negative reaction to a vaccine. In his work at a Banfield clinic, he also had access to a very large study that showed, in well over a million dogs, that he was far from the only one to observe this.

Join me and Dr. Robb as we discuss this reality that most of our profession refuses to come to grips with. We discuss how titers clearly demonstrate that immunity happens in the small pets with a lessened dose. Dr. Robb had to endure the long, lonely torment of his veterinary board for refusing to adhere to a standard dose that he knew would cause harm to his smaller patients.

For more information and links, be sure to visit the show notes for this episode at https://VitalAnimal.com/30

#022 What are nosodes and do they deserve the bad rap some vets give them? I asked my old friend and homeopathic vet colleague Dr. Don Hamilton to answer this in light of a Jean Dodds blog post saying they clearly don’t work. Not enough “science,” she said.

Don helps us understand where that opinion comes from: a faulty study done by Susan Wynn and Ron Schultz Ph.D. Don was actually contacted before the trial was set up and he made it clear: the study design was guaranteed to fail. Their knowledge of HOW to use nosodes properly was woefully lacking.

We discuss what a nosode is, why they are safe, and what methods to use to ensure success. Don has a great story from his early days of giving them to a kennel experiencing significant infectious disease problems in their boarders. The nosode brought great success, but new management put a stop to their use.

Whoops, up went the infectious disease! The kennel staff said, “Whoa, we need to start this up again!” and down went the incidence once more.

New management again, and same deal, all over again: stop the nosodes, the boarders got sick, sound the alarm and restart the nosodes, everything gets better. AGAIN!

Not double blind, placebo controlled, published research. But is that supposed “gold standard” necessary before we move forward with safe and effective natural remedies?

Not in my world!

Don’t miss this episode if you want the truth about nosodes from a long time homeopathic vet whose work helped inform how many of us use these remedies effectively.

For more info and links to this episode (and a great place to comment or ask questions), the show notes are here: https://VitalAnimal.com/22

#011 As a blog writer and podcaster, I get a lot of email, especially when things have gone badly in an animal’s world.

One recurring theme that has always rubbed me the wrong way is the reports that puppies were vaccinated, often more than once, before they were sent home. As most leave for their new homes at 8 weeks of age, that translates to vaccines given to pups of 4 weeks or 6 weeks of age, and maybe again at 8 weeks, before they travel!

As there is plenty of science behind this being a dumb practice, I’m calling it out as such in this episode.

Minimally, the early vaccination of pups and kittens does no good but more concerning: every vaccine, given at any age, carries a very significant risk of long term damage to the recipient. Witness the explosion of allergic itchy skin and/or ears over the past many years. Most of this follows vaccination, but often a month later (so, unless you look for this pattern, you'll miss it).

It boils down to what’s long been known about Mom’s colostrum and “passive immunity.” We’ve generated data on that since at least the 1950’s! And that is the #1 reason for “vaccine failure,” meaning the hoped for immunization has failed.

As I understand the breeders’ intent (“We don’t want to lose youngsters to infectious disease!”), I do offer some safe and effective alternatives to all this crazy over vaccination.
Please join me for this discussion and tell me in the comments if you need anything clarified.

The show notes and comments for this episode are here: https://VitalAnimal.com/11

#42 Dr. Janet Roark rightly calls herself the Essential Oil Vet.

Newly graduated from vet school, she found herself in a deeply stressed state.

Migraine headaches, classified by the allopaths as “ice pick migraines” (ouch!) forced her to take time off she didn’t want to take.

Newly graduated, in a new practice, new work load, and chronic migraines accompanied with depression that drugs weren’t helping — what was she to do?

One day, she found herself without drugs, suffering a crushing migraine, and all she had with her was a small tube of essential oils she’d been given by a helpful friend.

In short order after topically applying the oils to her temples and back of her neck, the good doctor experienced a revolutionary resolution of her pain and suffering.

In mere minutes, the migraine lifted. No drug had ever come close to bringing this kind of relief.

“If it worked this fast and this amazingly on me (when the drugs did not), imagine what it could do in my animal patients,” thought Dr. Roark!

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Listen up as we explore her transformation, her shift in practice, and her happy results with a wide variety of animal patients.

This is a very timely episode, as Dr. Roark is offering an in depth workshop to help you wield these amazing natural remedies, safely and effectively in your own animals.
You’ll have two full days LIVE with her, with break out sessions, lots of bonuses, and lifetime access to this material, and it’s all happening May 20-21, 2023.
To get full details and be able to perform your own EO miracles, use this link to get her Early Bird Pricing.
For more links and info, be sure to visit the show notes at VitalAnimal.com/42