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Head To Tail: Holistic Pet Care
Household pets have long been considered as much a part of the family as people, and with the passing of time, we have devoted a great deal of thought to making our pets’ lives as comfortable as we can. There are now state-of-the-art veterinary clinics and hospitals that ensure that our beloved pets lead disease-free lives as far as possible. In addition, we receive more and more information with every passing day on exactly what we should feed our pets, how much and what kind of exercise we should give them, and how we should train them.
All of which is fine, but there is still something lacking. As has been the case with humans for some time, a lot of people have felt the need for a ‘holistic’ approach to pet care rather than the disease-specific approach. How does one define ‘holistic’ when it comes to pet care? Well, much like the use of the word in other contexts, holistic pet care signifies that the treatment and care of an animal will focus on the whole rather than the parts.
Therefore, holistic pet care focuses on finding the cause of the problem and eliminating it, rather than merely focus on removing the symptoms of the problem. The idea is to bring about an overall improvement in the quality of life of your pet. Therefore, in addition to traditional approaches like antibiotic medication and surgery, holistic pet care also advocated the use of acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractics, herb therapy, and nutritional therapy.
Annabelle Dyson of Wichita, Kansas has been taking her whippet Beanpole to a holistic pet care practitioner for the past six months. “Whether there has been any long-term benefit is difficult to tell at this stage, but I can definitely say that Pole has not had as much as a single antibiotic tablet in the last six months, and fingers crossed, I can’t see that he’s any worse off for it,” says Annabelle.
Naturally, with holistic pet care, a practitioner (always a qualified vet, mind you) looks at the broader picture. Therefore, among the information that the vet will ask for is a lot of seemingly irrelevant stuff like the usual environment in which the animal lives, its relationship with various members of the family, its normal behavior pattern, and problems if any with other animals in the neighborhood.
The idea is that just as humans are affected by factors that are not always necessarily physical when it comes to ailments, so are animals. Therefore, holistic pet care is all about medical as well as emotional relief for an animal. So while antibiotics are not entirely discarded, holistic pet care practitioners lay greater stress on alternative methods that address the causes rather than the symptoms of an ailment. So treatment may incorporate behavior therapy as well as a series of acupuncture sessions.
As you can see, therefore, holistic pet care has a great advantage over traditional modes of treatment in that it tries to eliminate the root of the problem. Which is why, though it is still a relatively a new concept, it has already acquired considerable popularity the world over.