Slow Awakenings

by AChinook  Dec. 10, 2008

It's human nature that personal experiences which don't necessarily reflect well on one are difficult to communicate, but they can be helpful to both the writer and the reader.  This is my attempt, regarding the path I and my dogs took to good health.   

Many years ago, I remember seeing an old Vet with a new puppy.   I don't remember if any vaccinations were administered, but I do remember the Vet telling me that all the dog need be fed was meat and bone.  I didn't follow through in the strict sense that the Vet likely meant,  and because of a messy breakup (is there any other kind) not too long after never saw the results of my ineptitude.  The point of relevance being that thinking back, no Vet I've seen since has given me similar advice.  

Because of personal and career obligations, it was almost a decade before I again took on the responsibility of a dog.  I know now I wasn't noticeably much smarter yet, despite what I thought at the time.    

This dog was a male malamute I named Chinook, and I did feed him meat whenever I could, albeit cooked, especially later when I was raising sheep and pigs.  He and I were pretty much inseparable, at least outside my career obligations which I tended to make more of than necessary.  He was always with me when we visited friends and family, and together we enjoyed backpacking treks in the White Mountains.   

Chinook had required vaccinations, and seasonal heartworm "preventatives," but nothing much else that I can remember.  He seemed quite happy, fit, and sociable, except for a heightened aggressive streak towards other male dogs in his latter years.  When he was twelve, for some reason he just seemed to give up and deteriorated within several months - the Vet's diagnosis was simply age.  Those of you that have had a lengthy close relationship with a dog can understand how I felt when he got to the point where passing on was a blessing.  

Grief, though never forgotten, can be dampened with new life, and it wasn't very long before I had a new puppy.  A female malamute, my wife named Daisy, that turned out to be what Jon Katz terms a "lifetime dog," the one a powerful, life-changing connection is found with.  It's not uncommon in life that those that give the greatest gift, pay the greatest price, and such was Daisy's fate.  

Daisy was a puppy mill, pet store product that gave new meaning to the term "hyperactive,"  being more than most would care to deal with, and at times bringing out the worst in my nature.  

Where Chinook had been a shy puppy, Daisy came on like a would be conqueror.  She was a wild spirit, and more insistent than any puppy I've ever encountered.  

To walk her on a leash was like trying to hang onto a living yo-yo.  She would run to the end of the leash, spin around, and charge back launching herself into me.  On unleashed walks in the woods, she would charge out into the brush at breakneck speed, circling around and passing by me some minutes or more later only to continue out again without ever slackening her speed.  Her level of energy seemed unabatable.  

I believed in Vets and their training at the time, liked the Vet I had gone to with Chinook, and followed his advice with regard to Daisy.  First there was the "quality" commercial puppy kibble, which was changed early on to a "senior" kibble to reduce her energy level.  There was also a very early spaying, all the "must have" vaccinations, various medications, heartworm "preventative,"   and flea and tick "preventative."  With my concern for Daisy's well-being, I was a very lucrative client, and unconscious of the harm I was allowing.  

Going on her second year, Daisy was quite spindly, not at all a malamute's physique, but very attached, and with the same excessive energy.  She wasn't mean at all, as the sheep coming up to her in the picture is meant to exemplify, but I couldn't put her in with the sheep because she would run them ragged.  

She went pretty much everywhere I went, and otherwise she was either curled up by my work bench, or on her tether outside the sheep pasture.  

A couple years later as she calmed down some, she started putting on too much weight.  We both tried dieting, eating enough carrots to grow rabbit ears,  but she just foraged more and you know what there is a lot of around livestock.  The Vet suggested a blood test and diagnosed thyroid disease.  He had done other blood tests, but never looked for a thyroid problem.  

With the thyroid medication, her weight did come back down, and while she was no longer as spindly she was even calmer, but she was also a lot more withdrawn.  By this time I was feeding her some meat also, actually splitting the meat I cooked for myself with her.  The subsequent blood tests with each new thyroid prescription indicated that she should be on two thyroid pills a day, but she was becoming even more withdrawn and developing a mean streak.  The Vet's answer for the mean streak was some sedative that left her zonked out, which even to someone as naive as me seemed wrongheaded.  I threw the sedative away, and cut her back to only one thyroid pill a day, which brought her back closer to her old self.  

Of course the Vet got all huffy with me, and that pretty much ended our relationship.  I started seeing a new Vet that agreed that watching her overall state was as good or better than going by only the numbers of the blood test.  This new Vet had a much better "bedside" manner, but also had a much fancier "store-front."  ;o)  

A few years later, Daisy developed a malignant tumor which the vet was able to remove.  Then about a year later she developed lymphatic cancer, which seemed too come on in a matter of days.  The Vet's suggestion was to get her on chemotherapy immediately, but I knew that such would do more harm than good, and to do so for just a few more months of life expectancy was, I felt, selfish and inhumane.  To lose Daisy this way, and in an even shorter time span, left me very angry with the world in general, and suspecting that something wasn't right in the way veterinary medicine was practiced nowadays.  The evidence of malfeasance was there all along, if only I had been responsible enough to see it.  

Backing up to several years before Daisy's passing, my own health had hit a low point.  I weighed around 300 lbs, and had a number of serious problems that included spinal cysts, and type 2 diabetes.  Yes, I had created the problems with my diet, lifestyle, and mental state (as in bordering on bipolar), but the predominate issue I saw was that despite the doctor's efforts I wasn't getting any better.  I was passed around to various specialists so everybody got their fees and pharmaceutical incentives, but the benefits didn't extend to my health.  

The short of it is that I started doing my own research and study.  Early on I came across the phrase "good health makes a lot of sense, but not a lot of profit"  which prompted me to study not only medical aspects, but also how they were intertwined with economic development.  Several years of digging and study coalesced into a perspective of our "advanced" development being based on an unsustainable consumption based (greed and excess) economy, with a core of chronic illness industries.  If you've studied business economics with an objective mindset, you might understand that chronic illness is a superior (short term profit-wise) consumption based business plan, as opposed to sustainable good health.  

With a more natural, nutritious diet (sans any of man's synthetic medicinals), more exercise, sufficient rest, and a positive mindset, I've recovered to the point, where once I could hardly walk, of running with my dogs for the joy of it, and I've weighed around 180 lbs for a couple years now without any commercial diets.  The medical "industry" played no role in this, other than what I learned about the economics of such, though my early upbringing in a more natural setting likely laid the foundation for my being able to recover as much as I have.  Organic vegetables and fruits for me, and grass-fed/free-ranging livestock for me and the dogs costs more, even with growing some myself, and I'm still forced to subsidize industrial agriculture through my tax dollars, but my net costs are less because I no longer have all the medical expenses.  

When Daisy passed on, I had one of those duh moments which clarifies just how lacking our "superior" intellect really is.  I had been doing all this study of human physiology and metabolism, as if we were some singular life form, rather than just another adaptation of the many higher life forms.  Daisy broadened my focus to all life forms, and especially what our domestic dogs really are physiologically and metabolically.  Daisy's contribution was to make me acutely aware of human impact on the overall natural ecosystem, and our responsibilities towards the other life forms that constitute our being as we know it.  

Having developed a more objective understanding of just how unimportant our good health really is in our "advanced" economic model, I became more aware of the much greater acceptable latitudes of malfeasance with regard to other life forms in this economic model.  We are cell exchanging life forms, but without proper respect and understanding of other life forms, we are diminishing, and hastening the demise of, our own in the overall natural ecosystem.  

With respect to our companion carnivores, our naivety is manifested in our callous and/or unconscious treatment, most commonly by the diets we feed, and the unnatural chemical concoctions we subject their bodies to.  However, even with the unbiased scientific evidence available, and other objective minority voices trying to impart some reason, I have no illusions that my voice will make any difference in the grand scheme, given the exponential onslaught of unscrupulous and manipulative commercial misinformation.  

Thus, the best I can do alone is to concentrate on the natural well-being of my current companion carnivores.  Our time together on this earth is measured,  but the  quality of that time is enhanced with a properly respectful symbiosis.