Annual Review

A few days ago I brought Sabrina and Riley to see the Kind Vet for their annual checkups. I used to do this with Riley every spring and fall ensure we were healthy going into tick season and that we were healthy coming out of tick season. But now I'm content to just test him once a year. We are going on 3 years without any type of flea/tick control, yay!

The vet did a blood panel on both kids and ran a Snap test on each too. The Snap test tests for heartworm, Lyme's, Ehrlichia, and something else I can't remember. Looked like a pregnancy test. Good thing they came out all negative considering we had a real mild winter where the temps stayed warm enough for the ticks to survive. I have been feeding the furkids minced garlic in their meals the past couple of weeks and will be running tick checks when they return from running in the woods. If it starts to get really bad I will have to dust them with DE to take care of any buggers in their coats.

On educating my allopathic Kind Vet:
Last week I brought Mei Mei and Little Li to see the Kind Vet for their annual checkups too. I was concerned about their teeth. Everything checked out A-OK with them except that Mei Mei had a case of tapeworms much to my surprise. Where did that come from? Well, apparently the type she had was from ingesting a flea. Perhaps a lone critter that came home on one of my dogs that jumped on her. Who knows. And while grooming, she accidentally ate it.

So the vet offered me two choices, an injection of stuff I've never heard of or two large pills she had to swallow twice a day. Uh...can you say no thank you and no thank you? So I told her I would call my holistic vet and I was sure there was a natural way to eliminate these worms. We aren't talking a life or death situation here so I opted to wait to hear from Holistic Vet. She was highly intrigued and wanted me to let her know what the outcome was.

In the back of my head, I was already thinking what I could use if it were my dogs (grated carrots and ground raw pumpkin seeds) but I wasn't so sure about cats and whether I could get her to eat carrots and pumpkin seeds!

It turns out I was right. I checked in my bible Dr. Pitcairn and Mei Mei's been treated. Now my vet wants a copy of this book so she knows more natural ways to treat animals. Isn't that just grand?! I'm so happy to have found a Kind Vet who doesn't think she knows everything and is willing to learn. It really doesn't get any better than this.