Tuesday 31 March 2009

Heidi's regime - what's yours?

Heidi gets the following every day (bear in mind she also has a heart problem - items specific to this will be marked with an “H” - so don’t be put off):-

CV247 - 3mls mixed with 1/2 scoop (provided) of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) until fully dissolved. I mix this on a saucer & add a little food to mop up the liquid then feed it to HRH. She usually licks the saucer clean.

Daily food ration (split over 3 meals) organic where possible:-

9oz boiled potato or rice (we alternate),

9oz raw carrot, lettuce, fruit etc. (we use apple, carrot & banana)

9oz cooked greens - we do a mix of cauli, broccoli (every 2 or 3 days so as not to upset her thyroid balance - remember it was removed), cabbage (as suggested) but also, spinach, celery, sprouts, etc. We steam these lightly over the boiing potatoes / rice.

9oz oat flakes or brown bread (we make up porridge cooked slowly as baking it is uneconomic)

4 1/2 oz chicken or rabbit - I chop it up small & chuck it in with the pots/rice for a few minutes (it doesn’t take long to cook through)

2 1/4oz slightly cooked egg or boneless fish. Again, these are alternated day to day. The egg is put in with the drained potato while still hot which cooks them lightly, or the fish goes in with the pots / rice for about 1 minute.

2 1/4 oz slightly cooked liver. In with the pots/rice for about 1 minute at the end of cooking or fish it out with a slotted spoon. I understand that JC recommended New Zealand lambs liver. A friend was told that the lamb there is grass fed & doesn’t get all the (GM) grains.

Mash the potato with the egg while hot. We whizz up the veg in a blender so it’s rough chopped & mix this with the potato & chopped chicken. The liver & fish also get whizzed & put into the mix along with the porridge. It can be quite gloopy so we add some of the liquor from the potato / chicken.

We tend to make up 2 days worth & chill it, but it would be easy to do a week at a time & freeze it down. Her bowl (ceramic - avoid plastic as chemicals can leak into the food) is warmed with hot water then the food put it & stirred around to warm it through. This avoids chilling her stomach. We finely grate apple or carrot over each meal, or sometimes add mashed banana.

Dry Mix -

1/2 tsp dried angelica (ground)

1/2 tsp dried dandelion (ground)

1/2 Vit. B complex (crushed) - stress vitamin

1 neem multi-capsule - immune boosting & heart support

1 turmeric capsule - anti-cancer, immune boosting, H

1 1/2 scoops Dorwest Herbs Keepers Mix - general booster & thyroid support

This all goes into a jar, is mixed up & shaken over each meal.

1 cap Vit E oil (H) & 1 cap Evening Primrose Oil (H) are put onto her lunch

1/2 tsp Milk Thistle tincture x2 daily - liver support

Motherwort & hawthorn 3 x daily (H)

PLEASE CONTACT A QUALIFIED HOLISTIC VET ABOUT WHICH HERBS / DOSES ARE APPROPRIATE FOR YOUR ANIMAL.

K9 Immunitas 1 capsule 3x daily www.petlabs.co.uk - immune boosting

Cottage Cheese & Flax oil

1/4 cup cottage cheese

1 tbsp organic flax oil

Both whizzed in the hand blender & given as “pudding” after breakfast with 2 x K9 Immune Factor (also Petlabs) which is Transfer Factor, reputed to be a good anti-cancer supplement. The amounts of the cheese mix vary with the size of the animal. Heidi loves her pud & is most concerned if I forget! Meg loves licking out the bowl afterwards too.

I sometimes drop a couple of Apricot Kernels in as an anti-cancer “treat”, but HRH sometimes spits them out so it’s quite ad hoc. Other animals eat them like treats so it will vary from individual to individual.

Heidi’s diet wasn’t a dramatic change from what she was eating before so she was able to go straight onto it, but to change an animal over to this one from a dramatically different one should be quite straightforward. Allow about 2 weeks (more if you are concerned that they will go off their food) & take out a small amount of the old, replace it with the new & mix thoroughly. This will allow them time to adapt to the new flavours, but will also enable their gut flora & fauna to get used to changing something different (they will have become specialists at digesting their old food & may find a change challenging). This is a good, simple, easily digestible diet, butmore importantly, it’s balanced. It appears to be fundamental to the CV247 efficacy & it’s surely worth a try, after all, you’ve gone to the trouble of finding someone to give you the CV247.

I’m sure that the method I have described above is a variation on a theme of what others are doing, I’d love to hear, but the principle is the same. Heidi certainly enjoys eating it & has not turned her nose up once - even on stinky fish day!!

Heidi 6

Heidi Heidi

March 30th - Day 18

You can go right off roller-coasters.

Heidi called to me at 5 this morning & I found her shaking all over, slightly chilly, with cold feet & very pale again. I sat quietly doing TTouch with her for about 5 minutes & she calmed. Her colour had returned so I went back to bed. At 8 this morning I found her shaking, pale & looking utterly dejected. I found no trace of any discomfort but gave her Arnica just in case, Aspen for the trembling & Rock Rose before spending about 20 minutes doing more TTouch; Chris joined us to do ear-work & she gradually calmed down. There was no sense that this was anything like last Thursday’s crisis, but I rang the vet for advice anyway. Once we’d established that she was eating ok (from a spoon though - she is poorly after all) it was decided we’d play the “wait & see” game that seems to go with this condition.

The day has been spent dodging up & down the stairs; 15 minutes work, 15 minutes with Heidi, 15 minutes back in the office, & so on - thank you self-employment! During one session I noticed how her coat has changed; it’s gone really curly (which it does when she’s under the weather), the skin around her ribcage is incredibly tight & she twitches when I stroke her middle back - unusual for her.

Her breath has been almost toxic since Thursday. It’s enough to make your eyes water but we go to great lengths to avoid making any kind of issue about it. I received a lovely e-mail form someone I met at a local show last year who is going through similar traumas with her dog & suggested that Heidi was “lysing”. Not heard of it so was pleased when Pam explained, “Lysing is when the body is overwhelmed by dealing with dead cells, some dogs have been cured by the Cancer but died of the lysing and post mortems have shown that the cancer had gone but the body just couldn’t cope with dealing with the amount of dead cells.” Cheering, but bless her, she did follow this up with the observation that Heidi seems to be coping with it. It makes sense to me & I look forward to hearing what Barbara feels.

With this in mind I have been giving her Crab Apple flower remedy through the day as a good cleanser. I will give her another dose of Milk Thistle at tea-time too to help her liver clear out the yuck. I have been interested that she has consistently rejected healing today, much preferring TT, strokes & tickles. She had her jumper back on for about an hour this morning as she was so chilly, but that came off when Chris lit the fire before lunch.

Lump update. The tenderness & pinkness has gone & the pouch has refilled to about half of what it was but it feels very different to how it was before Thursday (it’s ok, I’m not squooshing it around, just light strokes are enough to establish the changes). Before there was a definite “connector”, a bit like an umbilical cord, but now it just feels like fluid filled pouch.

HRH is much brighter this afternoon, even managing a little woof at the Postman, but is still on restricted exercise to allow her system time to deal with whatever is going on in it at the moment. Her eyes have remained bright throughout & she is still able to do vertical take-off & landings to the sofa.

Thank you everyone for your lovely messages & wishes. They mean so much.

R & H xx