Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning. Hey, how you doing. Come on in and have a seat. Let's talk about animals today, specifically dogs. You know, I had an author on the program last year talking in general about animals and people really liked it. And so I keep my eyes open for topics that are supportive
of that theme. And I remember Destiny is all about tools for transformation, and I have a really good one today, an author who is a holistic herbalist, a canine herbalist, who recommends using herbs and quality foods for dog health. And I think it's important to note that when we have an animal, we have a dog in our lives, and I've had a number of dogs, they're like children. You have to really be careful what you feed them, how you work with them, how you exercise them, and
you have to be conscious of it. And so many people, my friends, my family, consider kibble is the primary food or wet food out of a can, without really considering the dog's health. And as we're going to learn today, it's really critical what we feed our animals and how we are part of that animal's environment. And when I say environment, it's like when we're feeling bad. They pick up on that. Dogs are really hyper sensitive. And I've
known this and discovered it over the years. If you're depressed, if you're feeling sad, they understand that. They pick it up, they can feel it. And we're gonna hear about how to go about working with your dogs or dog and the responsibility of being a parent or a dog owner. And you know, I figured this out after having a couple of dogs. You know, you think they can do their own thing, but they're very reliant. They're completely reliant on their human parents to help them live a healthy life.
And it's funny because we're going to hear this today that the veterinarians of the world, although they're honorable, they still follow a similar path that our allopathic doctors follow, which is great amounts of drugs, great amounts of steroids, great amounts of unnecessary femotherapy when an animal isn't well. And I see this with my brother. I haven't had a dog in a couple of years, but my brother and his wife got a terrier. And terriers require a
great deal of energy because they're hyper. They get to get they want to get out, they want to run they want to see what's going on. They very very interested in what's going on when they're walking and when they're running and when they're out. And if you don't have a lot of energy, and I'm not saying that my brother doesn't have a lot of energy, but they're they're demanding. It's almost like you need to really be aware of the dog breed that you are acquiring if
you want to be a dog owner. And I think they may have become challenged with the need for more walking, more outside time, and a diet that supports their their personalities. So it's interesting to say this though, and you can see this and dog owners, dogs are a reflection of our own personality and lifestyles as well. So if we're into exercise and eating well, I think we were responsible for the dog having the same kind of environment and the same kind of world good food, good exercise, and
responsible parenting. I call it parenting, but it's really responsible ownership. So I think you've got to like this today. The book is The Herbal Dog Holistic Canine Herbalism Applications and Practices, and my guest is Rita Hogan. She has been working with dogs for over twenty years and the book just came out, just came out a few weeks ago, and it's really and I had to say this when I
was reading it. It's a great reference. So it's not like you have to really know all about herbs, but you know, it's a good primmer for using herbs as a supplement, supplementing your dog's diet with herbs. Wow, it's amazing. So I hope you enjoy the program. Hey, if you ever thought about an exotic tour, think about Earth Ancient's tours. We have a series of tours every year. We have our final tour that's finally out as our Sacred Temples
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Check this out there. This is a rare opportunity to really interact with pyramids, interact with the cultures, and really get a sense of the ancient past and the energetics that were part of the Mayan culture. Again, for more information, go to Earthncients dot com Forward slash Tours. This is not to be missed. If you're an animal like me, I have a fantastic book for you. It's brand new. It's called The Herbal Dog Holistic Canine Herbalism Applications and Practices.
And I got to tell you, not only was I pleasantly surprised that the way it was designed, it's a true herb book for animals, specifically dogs. And I wish I'd known about it when I had dogs years ago because the solutions, the remedies are fabulous. And my guest today has been working in the field for many, many years. My guest is Rita Hogan, and she is a clinical canine herbalist. Can you believe it, We're gonna learn a
little bit about that today. She hasn't just been doing this for a few years, She's been doing this for over twenty years. And this book is fantastic. So Rita, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
All right, tell us about this book. Why did you write this book? I mean, I want to just say this. In the beginning of the book, you have this wonderful kind of opening where you were talking about living on the growing up on a farm, having animals, seeing how they are nurtured and age and so forth and so on. That's a big part of this history of yours, isn't it. Yes?
For sure, it really did imprint on me. And you know, as I talk about in the book, my dog Susie lived until she was at least twenty four, if not twenty seven. But my dad passed away, so we can't really ask him. He's the man that would know. But my brothers and sisters, you know, they're quite older than me, and they know that at least it was twenty four, So she was there way before I was born and
after I went to college. So it was interesting, you know, looking at how she lived her life and how our dogs are living their lives right now to night and day.
Do you suspect that your dad was using herbs, incorporating herbs and holistic remedies into the animal's daily lives on the farm.
So Susie didn't. I never saw him usually use herbs with the dogs. He used him with the horses and pigs and cows. But Susie, her like, her diet was pretty simple. She had raw milk from our cow Motley. She ate meat scraps. She ate whole foods, she ate off the table. I mean we ate, like we didn't eat processed foods for the most part. There wasn't a
lot of processed foods in the seventies. And she, you know, whenever I would I rode my horse most days, and she would be behind us walking nibbling, eating plants, eating, you know, eating little creatures that made me cry, and you know, just do and stuff that dogs do. But she also like got to choose if she wanted to sleep outside or not. She got tons of fresh air, which you know, fresh air is a huge thing for dogs right now because the dogs spend the majority of their lives inside.
Yeah, exactly. Okay, what is a holistic herbalist.
Who is different than like an allopathic herbalist herbalist? The easiest way to explain it is, you know, well, I don't know, seven to ten years ago, you would see all of those lists five things that for arthritis, ten herbs for arthritis, right, yeah, and people would literally like take six herbs on that list. But and people always say, you know, rita, what's the best what's the best herb for my dog? I can't answer that without asking you
a slew of questions. You know, dogs are individuals, and a lot of times when people don't feel that herbs work out, it's because they're not appropriate for your individual dog. And that is the biggest thing. Because plants have language, you know, they speak on a language of opposites. So if you're warm or your dog is warm, you're going to give poling herbs. You know, turmeric, right, Turmeric is
everyone knows what turmeric is. It's an excellent anti inflammatory, but it's not an excellent, excellent anti inflammatory for a very warm person or a very warm dog. It causes more heat, and that's when you get into trouble. So when you learn plant language, you can use herbs so much more effectively, and that's kind of the basis of holistic herbalism.
I was amazed, and this makes perfect sense to me that when you go to your typical vet, they are using a allopathic modality, which is using drugs, using hormon shots and surgery and pretty invasive treatments. Is it your hope or can you tell us our herbs being more incorporated into veterinarian practices today or is it more that the individual parent of a dog, cat animal is the one who is speaking up and saying I'd like to try this.
I think it depends, so I think people people are frustrated. You know, veterinary allopathic veterinary care is really good at saving lives, yeah right, And it's excellent at like end of life care to create more more comfort, excellent in emergency situations like if your dog gets hit by a car. But I don't think the doctors of today are skilled in the art of prevention and longevity as far as having a dog thrive. Looking at nutrition, very little nutrition,
if any training in vet school. And you know thatts are busy, right, They're busy, and you really have to take time out of your practice to learn something new. A lot of vets have started learning acupuncture, which is great. I'm very happy for that. And when you learn acupuncture, you start to learn kind of how the body is connected. And my book is all about how everything in the body is connected. And when you understand the dog as an ecosystem, you get that the treatments that you're getting
at the VET are just to quell symptoms. They're not to solve the problem in the first place. And I truly believe in integrative care. I would I like, you know, functional kind of functional medicine on the on the human side, you know, functional medicine for dogs, including plants. And I'm I'm on a book tour right now and I've had close to thirty vets at my my events and that's been that's been really promising. I really like that. And I'm you know, I'm I have a lot of holistic fat colleagues.
I like that. You know, it's funny you mentioned functional medicine and this is something that's recently come on board with human medicine, is functional medicine, which is more integrative in its capacity to heal than just allopathy. One of the things that I find fascinating about your book. And by the way, those of you listening, Rita has done a great job. And this is a reference book. So would you say that it's made for everyone from the
beginner to the advanced parent. And I want to just say this parent being observer observers of their animals in terms of how they reacted to foods and things like that.
The book is definitely for everyone. It's for vets. Vet TeX's uh, holistic practitioners. Functional medicine doctors, and then the everyday average pet parent in that the things that it covers apply to all including our kidtie friends. You know, it is a reference book, but it's also a teaching book. Like the first part of the book, it's it's it's in two parts. The first part teaches you, you know, what is holistic herbalism, what a you know, what is my
opinion on evidence based medicine. You know, how to look at evidence space medicine so that you're not looking at a biased uh study. And how herbs are used in studies. Uh, it's not the herbs that you know, standardized herbs are has to be have to be used in studies, and those are they're they're a little different than than you know, your regular herb that you would gather outside.
But in the in.
The book itself, I deal a little a little with feeding diet is very important, especially for our indoor dogs.
And then and then I move right into teaching you you know, how to look at your dog as an ecosystem and an individual and going through the you know, the nervous system, the lymphatic system, the liver, the lungs, the heart, and that that's that chapter is called everything's connected, and that's really gonna it's very easy to read, and it's gonna teach you to look at your dog differently.
And when you start observing your and looking at your dog differently, things just really open up and you understand like that you can't do this without that right, and that herbs aren't really that this for that switch like a lot of you know, allopathy looks at when you look at herbs like well, I need something to replace this, right, right. Herbs go into the body and they fix things, They balance things. The body is always trying to get back
to being in balance. And it's tenacious, right. We beat the crap out of our bodies and our dog's bodies. And many of the standard of care pharmaceuticals in the veterinary industry affect the body for years. One of them is I talk about in my book is metronatazol, which is flagile and it's given in human medicine and also veterinary medicine, but it's it's the standard of care for diarrhea. Right, So if you bring your dog in for diarrhea, you're
gonna get flagile. And one of the things that flagile does is it turns on it genetically alters the gut, right, and it turns on inflammation markers. You know, does it create a polymorphism, I'm not sure, but it turns on inflammation in the gut. And almost every client that I've ever helped with herbs that has like ibd IBS severe gut issues. Dogs can only eat two proteins. Things like that,
I find the flagile in their history. And we kind of like, antibiotics have become so commonplace that we kind of just well, they had antibiotics, but that was six months ago, or that was two years ago. But until we do something to alter the damage that that antibiotic
has done, you're gonna see, You're gonna see symptoms. And my book is written on the premise of organ health because when you look at every single thing besides a genetic problem that you're born with, right, and even that can be related to the mother's issues, right, or the father's issues. But every single thing that you can think about your health and your dog's health is can be completely brought down to a single thing, and that's organ health.
You know, when our organs are working correctly, and organs being the gas to intestinal track, the lymphatic system delivered the kidneys, the lungs, the heart, the spleen. When our organs are working correctly, uh, we don't have ill health. Those symptoms aren't there. And so when you learn how to heal and support those organs in your dog, a lot of the symptoms that you're that's driving you and your dog crazy they disappear.
Would you say that you're suggesting that the user of your book be educated enough to As an example, steroids are used a lot with dogs for all kinds of conditions. So if the doctor says we're gonna recommend steroids, and one of your readers who's been up to data on this, says, well, can I try something else? Is that what you would call a complimentary alternative to a steroid or to a powerful drug? Is that? Is that what you're hoping to do?
Because I think what I'm getting from what you're telling us is this is like human beings, We get these powerful drugs that throw us way off equilibrium, and then we have to slowly come back with good foods, with exercise, with herbs, with vitamins and so forth.
Yeah, I definitely would say that it would be complementary. You know, you definitely want to do the steroids if it's a life threatening illness, you know, like right of course, like pneumonia or something like that, or you your dog is sucking air and they can't breathe, you know, you definitely And I talk about steroids in the book, like you know, yes, you definitely want to take the steroids. But if it's steroids for you know, something simple or
you know, my biggest issue is antibiotics. You know, antibiotics for just you know, bacteria between the paws, not life threatening, you know, for me, life threatened. Antibiotics should only be used when your dog's life is threatened because you know, eighty percent of your immune system is in your and including your dog, and dogs have very short gastrointestinal tracks.
And when you take out the immune system, it dominoes to everything, like everything, and then your dog is more susceptible to fleas, they're more susceptible to tick born disease, They're more susceptible you know, to pathogenic overgrowth, yeast infections and these are ear infections. These are all things that really gravely affect quality of life for US guardian owners, right and our dogs.
So in the book.
I have a lot of lists in the Everything's Connected chapters, like how do you tell if your dog's kidneys are weak because or your dog's liver needs help, or the lymphatic system is stagnant. I'll tell you right now, almost every single dog out there, besides a working dog or like a dog doing agility on a weekly basis, is their lymphatics are stagnant and their liver needs support because of the amount of exercise. So the average American dog
gets less than fifteen minutes of exercise a day. You know, people are busy. They come home from work and they walk their dog around the block, or they just let their dog out to go potty, leave them outside for a minute, and then they come back in, eat their dinner, chill out, let them out again, go to bed. Right. So we all need age appropriate exercise to move our lymphatic system. And a lot of people don't you know.
At my events, I ask you know, I usually ask the question, does anyone know what the lymphatic system is? And usually the answer is no, or the answer is yes, but they don't know what it does. Yeah, and one and two dogs will dive of cancer. And that's one of the is that my next book is on cancer, and this book is like a you know, if you can improve organ health, cancers will go down.
Yeah, And.
So when you really let that sink in, right, one in two dogs will die of cancer. In two thousand and three, dogs didn't have cancer, right, they hardly ever had cancer. And now it's one and two dogs. So twenty twenty two years later, dogs one and two will die And you think, okay, so we spend more money on veterinary care in the United States than almost any other country. Something's not working, you know what I mean? Like,
something isn't working. And I think it's definitely a combination of food over vaccination and the misuse of antibiotics and stress. You know, our stress is their stress, and we are as humans, we are stressed out mess right now.
So are you saying that this cancer increases immune issue where they're being over medicated and the body is not being able to function in this normal state. Yes?
Absolutely, Wow. So when you destroy the microbiome, things start coming out of the woodwork, and you know, it usually takes about three months, so you kind of forget about those antibiotics, right, And also a lot of people because you know people don't a lot of people don't eat real food anymore. They also don't feed their dog real food. One thing about my dogs growing up and my dogs in life, give or take a few years of stupidity
or should I say ignorance, they eat real food. And dogs are being labeled as geriatric between eight and nine right now, and it should be between seventeen and eighteen in my opinion, Like, we need to get back there. It may take us another twenty years, right or thirty because it may take us another ten years to wake up, but we can get back there. We can turn it around. If it can happen, we can turn it around. And
I think people need to understand that. You know, kibble is a convenience and even my you know, I am not a kibble shamer by no means, but like my book deals with you know, if you're feeding kibble, here's to how to improve the bowl. We need to improve the bowl. We need to Kibble has no enzymes, right, so a lot of people feed kibble diets with no enzymes, and we need to If you're feeding kibble, you need
to feed enzymes. And the interesting thing is when you look at liver function, right, everyone should be looking at liver function. And when you look at liver function, it takes it takes close to ten to fourteen hours depending on the kibble to digest kibble for a dog and their gastro intestinal track again is short. So if you feed twice a day, that's all your dogs liver is working on is helping the gas to intestinal track with the gallbladder, the spleen and pancreas to digest that food.
Whereas a fresh fruit diet lightly cooked or raw or freeze dried or dehydrated, you know it is going to take between four and six hours, so then you only have you have a lot less time. And then you know a lot of people overfeed their dogs as well, which is super hard on organ health. So I talk I talk about that in the in the in the food section of the book book, and you know, and then the book is a grab a go to.
We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves and we will return shortly with my guest today, read A Hugan discussing her newest book, The Herbal Dog, will be right back.
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I guess today is Rita Hogan. She is a holistic canine herbalist, and she is an expert with over twenty years of experience and helping dogs live their most fulfilling lives. I have to say this though, this is a huge part. You emphasize the fact that dogs are carnivores and that they pretty much in the natural state, eat raw animals, plants, and that's really their sweet spot is to live as
naturally as possible. But talk a bit about because you know, I think one of the big issues here I don't have a dog anymore, my family members do, is there's a responsibility that the parent needs to be recognized, is that don't just feed your dog kibble. That's not the way to go because that's going to But talk a little bit about the average diet and the problems associated
with just giving your dog kibbles. This is what my brother does is and his wife, they just give their dog kibbles four times a day and that's that's it. That's rough.
Four times a day is even worse because you know, just think about that's all that dog is doing, and that's going to cause you know a lot of that because of for liver health. I mean, if you're going to give your dog kibble, right, Yeah, like I can talk about in the book, Like if you're going to give your dog kibble, you need to support the liver, you need to support the lymphatic system so that the body can deal with that kibble more efficiently. And you
absolutely have to add digestive enzymes. And there's a kibble hierarchy, right, there's a kibble hierarchy. You want to give the best kibble that you can. On my Herbal Dog website, I have sourcing for you know, kind of the kibble hierarchy. Here's some good some good kibbles, and try to avoid, you know, try to avoid the rest. Basically, you know, you don't want to feed wheat, soy byproducts meat when it just says meat or animal fat. You know, there's
so many things. There's rendered meal and a lot of kibbles, and you don't want to feed kibble that uses rendered meal. These are things that dogs and cats should not be eating. Cats are obligate carnivores, which means that they don't need anything else but protein. They should be eating only protein. Dogs can have some vegetation, they usually eat it from their praise guts. But you know we feed way too many carbs, which causes aging. And when people are working
towards a better diet. You know, I think that baby steps are very good. Like one, you know, you start if you're on like a really poor kibble that has corn, soy those types of things in it. Not only are those ingredients bad for your dog, but they're completely saturated with pesticides, herbicides, glypeless ate like oats, if they're not organic, you're eating glypeless sate just you might as well be
drinking it. So and that's really it's a really sad thing because that's one of the things that has happened over the last twenty years. Right our food system is saturated with chemicals that we know caused cancer, and so you know, we know that it's in our atmosphere, now it's in our brain water. So like we know that we have to clean this up and so, but we
all have to clean up the bowl too. So you move to a better kibble, You add digestive enzymes, you get that done, then you aren't adding fresh food to the bowl. I have lists in the book of things that you can add to your dog's bowl to create a better microbiome. It has been scientifically proven and this is for humans and dogs that even one meal of fresh greens like sprouts, you know, organic kales, spinach, things like that, and you don't need a lot for our
dog can improve the microbiome exponentially. You know, it's not going to stay that way, but it's still going to cause improvements. You just have to give a little bit a few times a week to keep those changes going. And that's fascinating, you know, And there's so much we can do without stressing ourselves out to improve the bowl. A lot of times people will think, oh, well, I'll just give white rice, right, Well, white rice has no fiber in it and it turns to sugar in the body.
So you know, I feed my dog chicken and white rice. That's not a good diet. It's actually an inflammatory Dietriada.
There's so many conflicts in what I'm hearing from you. I mean, because there's some people that say, don't give your dog table scraps, and one will say give a little table scraps, but don't give them a lot of something else. If you were to come up with an ideal, of course, there's no idea because every dog and cat and animal is different. But if you were to say generally how much kibble how much wet food do you
mix in? Is there a standard that you can give or what would be a good suggestion for somebody who doesn't have a lot of time to cook like a meal for their dog, but wants to give an animal a good diet.
Well, you know, we want to work towards balance that it's balanced, you know, nutritionally. But there's tons of commercial foods on the market that are balanced that you can use that you can work towards. But you know a
lot of people get overwhelmed. Yeah, right, So I always suggest you know, baby steps, like doing one thing and then kind of you know, getting psychologically adjusted to that, and then you can add you can up your game and just keep up in your game to the point where you're giving a minimally processed diet as much as possible. And that could be a combination of things, right, it
could be a combination. I know a lot of people that will feed kibble diet and then add some like raw food toppers or freeze dried toppers to it to add more nutrition, or greens, green powders. You know, greens are great for dog. But you know, really like if you are out there feeding kibble, one of the most important things that you can do is one improve your kibble to a minimally limited ingredient kibble that you can
actually that you can actually read. Sorry about that, that you can actually read right, and then add digestive enzymes. That digestive enzymes are the most important thing when it comes to kibble. Yeah, and remember that you know, kibble is super dry, it's super drying, and and dryness is not good for the body. Dryness depletes kidneys, the kidney energy.
It's really hard on the lymphatic system. It's going to take moisture out of your dog's body to process that kibble, right if and it makes dogs drink a ton of water, but sometimes it's not enough to process the kibble and it will find the moisture to do it. So that you know, it's one of the reasons why cats dive kidney disease. So yeah, so very susceptible to dryness. It's one of the reasons why they get hyperthyroid and they also get kidney disease, and because it dries out their kidneys.
And so we have to be careful of that, and I explained that in the book very simply, and it doesn't need to be stressful. Right, And if anyone has ever made a cup of tea, right a lot of us have, then you have worked with herbs. You know, coffee is a plant herb, black tea, green tea. Plants and dogs are very conducive to water based medicines. I have a lot of them in my book. Where it's really as simple as simmering something on the stove or making a tea, letting it cool and putting it on
your dog's food. So it's you know, it doesn't have to be complicated for sure.
I want you to talk just real quickly about enzyme If you're the first person I've ever heard say, sprinkle enzymes on your animals dish on their foods. And is that because it's critical that the food is digested in a proper way or is there more to it than just digestion. Is it more wellness throughout the body that these enzymes are helping.
So enzymes help the bodies systemically, but they help break down that food because kibble is completely dead food. There's no life to it at all, Right, it's a difference between eating like a really cooked like an apple for apple pie, which is completely soft and devoid of most things besides tastes, okay, and then a fresh apple off the tree, you're gonna get enzyme, you're gonna get nutrients.
Dogs create some of their own enzymes through their pancreas and their stomach acid, and then they depend on a lot of it for their digestion through their food because also they don't have amylase in their mouth like we do. Like our food starts to break down as we have it in our mouth. They don't do that. It has to go into the stomach. And one of the things this goes with the everything is connected, right, A lot of dogs are stressed as well. If you're stressed, your
dog is stressed. And stress is one of the biggest things that brings down enzymes in the gut. It affects negatively affects stomach acid. And when stomach acid isn't working like it should, we get undigested proteins in them all intestine. When you know, when the stomach does its job, you get this stuff called chime, and it has amino acids of protein. Right, and when they're not broken down into
complete amino acids. What happens is is the immune system gets on alert and starts targeting ordinary things like chicken, turkey, broccoli, anything with any protein in it, even minute amounts of protein. It targeteds for termination, right elimination. And then you get a dog that can't eat hardly anything that's sensitive, itching, scratching, biting, licking cycle. You know, us dog has allergies. They don't,
They have sensitivities. And that's a big job of the lymphatic system, the liver system, and the gas to intestriginal track. So I discussed you know, allergies and sensitivities in the book and itching, scratching, biting. Yeah, but a lot of it comes down to digestion.
Wow, I love that. Uh. You have a section in your book that you call energetics, which I really love, and you use plant energetics, which is which you define as cool, warm, dry, moist, uh to define Why is that important in observing and how do you react to those those issues?
Energetics are really important because there it's plant language. So uh, you know, warm plants warm the body, cool plants cool the body neutral plants. Any dog can have. But the sicker your dog is, the more sensitive they are going to be to the same energetic and dealing with warm and cool right now, So a cool dog. Dogs are born either warm or cool, and they have a spectrum of heat. So when your dog gets sicker, they get hotter on a warm dog, and a dog that's cool, they get colder.
Let me just start for a minute, rita, how do you determine these types? Is there a type of animals so like a terrier or is it the breathe.
Not specific, No, it is how they deal with heat, so you just observe them. There's lists in the book to help you figure that out, but it's really how they deal with heat. So a dog that's cool really loves to be covered up. He loves to be covered up. He loves to lay in the blankets. He might love a really warm like orthopedic bed that's made out of membrane foam, which is very heating. He might lay on a heating pad. He might lay in the sun until
you forcefully take him out of it by even panting. Right, he'll lay by the fire and bake himself. A warm dog will lay by the fire, not gonna lay too long. You know, they're gonna get warm, and then they're gonna move away from that heat. Course, they're not gonna stay out in the sun for a long time. They'll maybe stay out for ten fifteen minutes and then go seek the shade. They might depending how hot they are, they
might you know, get warm very easily. You want them to sleep on the bed, but they are gonna sleep on the cool floor. They may sleep on the bed for a little while. Everything is in a spectrum or a range. And I have like little diagrams on in my book to kind of give you a visual of that. But you know, if you have a dog that, like, let's say a warm dog that gets arthritis, they're not gonna be a healthy warm They're gonna be more on
the hot side, okay. And if you give that dog, let's just say, a mixture of turmeric and green lip muscle, which turmeric is very warming and green lip muscle is a protein, and it's very okay. You give them that supplement every day for a long time, it is going to build heat. And then if you say that you fed them a lamb food or lamb in venison, right, that's a very hot food. And so you are putting all of this heat into an already really warm dog,
and then that's where you start getting issues. And like I said, I've been doing this for twenty years.
I know I can just tell you. It's like you got to go with the flow. But the huge thing about it, read it is that you need to be constantly observing your animal, right.
Well not constantly, but at least a few times a week, and you know, and the dry and the damp. This is a just a visual like a little story recently on my on my California like California, Oregon, Washington book tour. Part's gone for about six weeks. And I came home to my bass At Hound and she hasn't been my dog very long. She's elderly, she's like fifteen. And she came with a lot of lypomas. Those are fatty tumors, right, They're benign and you can get your hand around them,
and they're just lumps and bumps. And I came into the house and I noticed how much bigger they were. They were a lot larger, and I thought, what is happening? And so I asked my brother, who was taking care of them. I said, you know, what's going on with Lola. Her fatty tumors are a lot bigger. And I've only been gone six weeks. What's going on? I don't know. And I said, well, what have you been feeding her? And he said, I've been feeding her pork. And I said,
you can't do that because pork is dampening. Okay, it adds a lot of moisture to the body. You know. If you look at pork, it has a lot of fat on it, you know. So he was giving her pork and lipomas. A dog with lipomas is what you would call a damp dog, Okay, they have too much damp in the body. And I explained what damp is in the book, and this is more advanced, right, this is more advanced when you go down the rabbit hole with your dog. But you give a damp dog damp food, right.
It made the lipomas bigger. So what I did is I went home and I switched her diet to a drying food boat. I switched her diet to goat and some drying herbs and drying vegetables, and the lipomas got smaller over the next three weeks. And that again a little more advanced. But you can see how much diet affects the body and when you and it's just a it's a language of opposites. So in a dog that is damp and you say, well, how do you tell if your dog's damp? I have lists like if your
dog has hypothyroid, they're damp. If your dog gets hotspots, they're damp. If your dog has lepepomas, they're damp. And here's you know, ten other symptoms of dampness. Right, this is how you tell it your damp.
And this is the beauty of your book too, because if you go to the vet and the vet says your dog has this issue, you can look it up right so that you know where you're at and then address it.
Yes, yes, now. And so sometimes you can unknowingly negatively affect your dog's ecosystem by just things that we think are fine, like you know you're feeding a hot dog, lamb. Things are gonna eventually get worse because what do we do as humans. We tend to feed the same thing day in and day out. We're not giving a lot of variety, yes you know, and so it makes the energetics of the food, which I have, the energetics of almost anything you can think about in the back of
the book, like what they are. The energetics of the food needs to be the opposite of what your dog is for consistency, because energetics is only about consistency. It's not about the pup cup at the Starbuck, or the treat at the bank, or grom bringing over some special treats for your dog. That's not consistent. I'm talking to stuff, the food, supplements and herbs that we give day in and day out.
We're gonna take a short commercial break to allow our answers to identify themselves and will return shortly with my guest today, Rita Hogan discussing her latest book, The Herbal Dog. Will rejoin you shortly. My guess today is Red Hogan. She has written a new book called The Herbal Dog. This is an excellent primer on how to supplement your dog's food to give them the best quality life possible.
It's also great for animals who have illnesses. One of the things that you emphasize throughout the book is animals' emotional health. And I want you to talk a little bit about how our animals mirror our emotional health. And so if we're having if we're depressed constantly, we're having a hard time. The animals gonda emulate that a little bit. Talk about the emotional health.
Yeah, So you know, there's this great research institute called the heart math Institute. I think it's heartmath dot com. And you know, they have proven that our electro magnetic field of our heart system goes out between six and eight feet. And you know, our dogs are usually near us all the time, and our dogs, you know, are interacting with us. And a lot of times we think that we speak dog's language, right, but our dogs don't speak to us the way that we speak to them.
They interact with us through smell. They are constantly smelling us, smelling what's going on in their environment. You know, they can smell down the street, right, So when we're stressed, we smell like cortisol and adrenaline. And the unfortunate part is that we are very stressed out human beings right now. We live a very stressed stressed lifestyle. Electronics, social media,
Wi Fi, our cell phones, they all create stress. Even the act of scrolling in social media puts us in a low level of fight or fly, right, that's been scientifically proven that crazy. So you know when we are when we smell unsafe, our dogs feel unsafe, so they really do mirror our emotions. And I talk about the vagus nerve in my book, I talk about the nervous system and how important it is. And on page one thirty seven of my book, I tell you how to
heal chronic conditions. And the number one thing before you ever deal with what is actually happening is you need to stabilize your dog's nervous system. And I tell you how to do that. But because of the fact that when we're in fight or flight, even a low level fight or flight, our liver is offline, our kidneys are working at minimal capacity, are gas testinal tracks, they're not digesting. You shouldn't eat when you're stressed. That's when you get
major amounts of stomach upset. And when we're in fight or flight, we can't heal. We have to be in what's called parasympathetic activity, and that is our rest and relaxation digestion state, and our dogs have that same regulatory system. It's actually quite beautiful, but a lot of dogs get stuck in what's called sympathetic excess, and that is being in fight or flight all the time. Not only is their ball under the couch and no one cares, right,
but they're also dealing with all of your baggage. And so you know, thousands of people say, rita, what is the best thing that I could give my dog to help them live longer? And I will tell you right now, it is not an herb oh. It is to get your stress in hand, figure out how to breed, figure out,
get more exercise, calm yourself down. You know, if you have an emotional support dog or support dog, that dog needs support really badly because they're taking everything in and dogs are really good at that, but at a cost because again, when our when we're stressed and our dogs are stressed, you cannot heal your body. You can't even hardly digest your food. And a lot of times when I get a dog that I'm helping, you know, I
help a lot of vets with like hard cases. When I get a dog, I look at their stress level and a lot of times I'll deal with that and like their reactivity goes away, they're cooping in the house goes away. The dogs it's peeing everywhere. You know, they can't say hi to someone without peeing on themselves in
certain types of incontinence. It's all from stress. And also like dogs with nutritional deficiency that are on really good diets, it's because they're not assimilating their food because they're eating when they're stressed. And so I talk a lot about stress in my book and stress as a mirror to what is going on in our lives. And it just can't be it can't be underestimated it or over emphasized. You know, we all know that we need to take more time for ourselves. We need to do self care.
You need to you know, it's a cliche, but you need to put your oxygen mask on before you can help anyone else. And it's you know, and a lot of people won't do something for themselves, they'll do it for their dogs.
Yeah.
Also this comes from love. Get off the phone when you're with your dog. They know that you're not present, ye, right, And most people who are on their phone are in a level a low level of fight or flight, right. And dogs dogs want to be safe. We all want to be safe, right. Safety is one of those things that we need as a human species, and safety is also sought as a dog, a cat, or other, you know, creatures,
and we don't smell safe to our animals. You know, make when you walk your dog, make it your your self care time. You know, bond with your dog, interact with your dog, get out, leave the phone at home, put it in your pocket, put it in your bag, do whatever you you know, lock it in your car. I don't know, but being available twenty four to seven is stressful.
It's amazing. The books called the Herbal Dog Holistic Canine Herbalism. Uh, my guest today has been Rita Hogan, Rita. You have a portion of the book and you call it herb Protocols, and you say, every protocol is a success. What does that mean?
Well, what it means is if you try a protocol and it doesn't work, right, Yeah, you can look at the herbs in that protocol, go to the back of the book, and it's very easy to figure out herbs
using my system in the book. Go in the back of the book, look at those herbs, look at the everything's connected chapters, and you'll figure out, Okay, these herbs didn't work because and when you find out the herbs that don't work for your dog, you can write them down and then try to use probably the it's probably going to be the opposite of those herbs. You know, if you're just picking herbs out of the sky, you know, you got a fifty to fifty chance that they'll work. Right.
And I don't like the kitchen sink dogs either, So we're not going to give like fifty teen herbs. We're going to give like three or six herbs or maybe one formula, and we give it for you know, six to twelve weeks. And if we don't like, if you don't have success in six to twelve weeks, if you're not moving in the right direction, then either the dosage is wrong or the herbs are wrong. So I think
you can utilize that information no matter what. I'm not suggesting herbs in my book that are highly toxic that are going to harm your dog. The signs that things aren't working are pretty simple when it comes to dogs. And this is after three days because it takes three days for things to kind of settle in the body. But itching, scratching, fighting, diarrhea, constipation, vomiting, those are not
like horrible vomiting, just you know, easy vomiting. It's easy for dogs to vomit it's not like not like us. They just puke very easily. And you know, those are those are the things that you look for when a uh an herb isn't working, or if you know you can always give too much herbs and idea. I have this section called Expectations and Healing in the book, So I think expectations are really important in patients, like this
is what you look for. But if like you're on an herbal program and you up the dose and your dog's hair starts to thin and they might be start to shed considerably in one area, then you probably have too high of a dosage.
Yeah.
Yeah, oh, I explain all those things like when to stop an herb, when to start an herb, how to know if an herb is working, how much do you give? I take the guesswork out of that. What type of herb do you give? What form you know? Do you give a powder, a glissert, a tincture? You know? All of those questions are answered in the book.
Yeah, and I have to say this, it's a wonderful reference because if you're just beginning, you can read the effects of each herb and add it lightly as a supplement and then watch it. One of the other things I want you to talk about real quickly as we're concluding our time together read it is the fact that when you use a drug, which is the allopathic method, you're going to have an immediate effect pretty much, and where you have herbs, it's more of a slow unveiling
and you have to take it takes more time. And I think the big key you're saying is with herbs, patience is very important. Talk about yeah for a minute.
Yeah, it's it definitely is you You need to have patients. These are not pharmaceuticals. They don't work like pharmaceuticals. They slow and steady wins the race. However, in the back of the book, like the herbal resumes, I like to call them the herbal resumes, they have this list of cofactors and that's the symptoms that your dog. Symptoms are conditions that your dog has or has had. And the more matches in that list of cofactors that your dog has,
the better that herb is gonna work. So you know, you first checked the energetics of the herb. Is it warming, is it cooling, is it neutral? You know, and if your dog is cool and the herb is warm. That's a match. So you know that you can look at that herb. So if you had a cool dog and you were looking for something for yeast in the gut and you looked up alive leaf in the back of the book, it's going to say that that that herb is warming, your dog is cooling. Your dog is cool,
and that herb is warm. So that's a match. So you say, yeah, I can use olive leaf with my And then you look at the cofactors and you have eleven symptoms or conditions that kind of apply to your dog. That's going to be a pretty good herb for your dog, right, But if you are looking at another warming herb and your dog only has one match on that cofactor list, I'd probably look for a different herb because there's so
many and I also include pharmaceutical interactions. Yeah, and if that herb can be used for cats.
Amazing, What a fascinating book I just started. I got to chapter six. I was like, oh my god, did you do an audible version of the book? Iriata?
Yes, it is coming out. I do not know, probably in the next few three monks.
Fantastic. That must have been a bit of a labor to do that.
While yes, I read it myself.
All those diary how do you read a diagram that's pretty tough.
Oh my god, you have to go U extra small dog, two drops, medium dog, four drops, after dog six drops.
Yeah.
No, the engineer and I had to go to a studio and it took an entire week to read this book. And again it was something and I'm sure I'll have to go back and make some changes, you know. They then it goes to it like a audio editor, the engineer and then someone who listens to me talk and then reads the book at the same time.
Yeah, we don't have enough time to cover the whole book. Rita has a section on essential oils using homeopathy and again the herb Protocols, which are fantastic. It's very very well written. I believe. Really it's for the beginner, or I call them the advanced observer, someone who really knows their animal very very well, which is excellent. So again, the books called The Herbal Dog just came out and
it's a fantastic book. And and I would imagine the audible version has references to your website so they can see the charts and diagrams.
Right, yes, And in the book it says you know, seetherbaldog dot com for more information like where to get herbs, where to source herbs in all different countries. My book is available in Australia and England and all that stuff. And you know, if people want to connect with me, I have a podcast of my own called Dogs or
Individuals that's every week. I have I'm on Facebook and Instagram as canine Herbalist, and I have a teaching platform where I have courses and I have a like an advisory subscription group where I answer questions for a couple hours a day, every day, every day, Monday through Friday. That's like twenty five dollars a month. And you can ask me anything even about human medicine because we work with humans. And I have some courses on there. It's
canine Erbalism dot com. And then I have a store and consultancy at canine erbalist dot com.
What's the website. What's the main website.
Again, canine Herbalist or canine Erbalism.
Okay, okay, you have both of them. Let me just ask you read it. Some of you might be listening that may have a real serious problem with their dog. Do you do consultations as someone who's really got some problems?
I do, And I also work with a network of students that have been working with me for five years, like every single week, so and I have some great holistic that's that I refer out to if it's more complicated than something that we can handle, you know, because we don't. We don't treat disease, but we help balance out those organ systems.
Yeah, fantastic, wonderful cover. By the way, The Herbal Dog just came out and it's available on Amazon or wherever you get your books. Rita, thank you and much success on this wonderful book.
Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate the conversation.
You know, as I was reading this book, I was like, this is way way too much. And then that was the beginning and then you go to the back where the references is and she really makes it easy and simple to apply. You can start with real basic herbs like making tinctures, or you can make tea, like just boil some water and put a tea back in and then pour that over the food. And it's much easier than I had thought. And that's the real thing is
people just don't have time. And that was a little bit of a worry for me when I was reading this, I was like, Wow, my god, this is gonna be too much. But the book's very easy to read. It's very simple, it's not that complex. And the beauty of it is she lists the various health issues and I'll tell you it's so easy just to defer to your vet. You know, my dog's vomiting, my dog's got a skin issue, my dog's got something going on with his eye discharge something.
You know, so many things happen with your animals. And with this supplemental tool, this herb book, you can do a lot to really enhance the treatments that your vet is suggesting. In fact, in some cases you get so good that you can defer. Rather than saying, hey, we want to the vet wants to give your dog a vaccine or steroids or something else. You can really look at the possibilities of working and being very much in part with your dog's treatment programs. And that's really critical
because these drugs are very toxic. I mean, I've seen more animals fade because they've been giving these powerful drugs, and it's the same kind of thought form that I always talk about the allopathic approach of drugs, drugs, drugs, and then God help you. If you have a dog that has cancer, then it's like just it's dire because you can be charged thousands of dollars for a treatment program and then dog lives a few a few extra
weeks or months. And I think that you can avoid some of this issue if you take on supplementee your animal's health with with herbal remedies. So check it out. I think you might like it. And hey, go to her website too. And by the way, if you're one like me and you're not big on reading, check out her audible. I love audible. Audible is fantastic. So the
herbal dog holistic canine herbalism read a Hogan. I love that we're gonna have her back when she finishes her dog cancer book, because that's an industry on its own. It's really a tough industry. When you get that prognosis from your vet, that's just sad. It makes people depressed. So somebody can we'll have her back for We'll have read her back for that material. Okay, that's it for this episode of Destiny. I want to think. My guest today,
Rida Hogan in her new book The Herbal Dog. As always, the team of Gail tor Mark Foster and everyone who makes this thing happen. You guys rock all right, Take care of you well, and we will talk to you next time.
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