A RANT ON HOLISTIC HEALTH FOR PETS

ON HOLISTIC HEALTH – A RANT Comment from a pet owner: Emily, it is not just the animals that have to know what we are about. The public has to in order for us to grow. In order to do that, we have to channel our resources into the things that really make the public want to listen to us. I firmly believe that holistic healing is extremely important, but people will not respond to that. Response from PAWS Institute: [xxxxx]: I'm troubled by this statement. Our mission is to help alleviate the suffering of animals who cannot speak for themselves; holistic healing and education is totally central to what we're about and have been about since 1996. The rescue efforts were actually secondary to this and were a result of my work in the Hurricane Katrina encampments during the winter of 2006. As we changed and evolved, I saw where we could combine rescue and holistic healing by placing homeopathic remedies and dietary aids into the hands of shelter personnel, veterinarians, rescues, foster families, and new pet owners. So we are not, and never have been, just a "rescue." I realize that our audience is small for holistic health for pets. This is nothing new in the 20th and 21st centuries, and is mainly due to ignorance, apathy, and laziness. If you go back a few hundred years, you will see that people's pets lived wonderful, long lives on the "farm", and generally died of old age well past 12 or 13 years. They were fed raw whole foods, had clean air and chemical-free homes, and got tons of exercise; today they suffer from autoimmune diseases, diabetes, heart conditions, skin allergies, seizure disorders, and so forth; in other words, the fallout from the "industrial age" has passed these catastrophic "people" diseases onto our innocent pets. Traditional veterinary medicine has little to offer here; it is, at best, palliative and suitable for emergency trauma only. I believe that "disease prevention" and "allopathic veterinary medicine" is an oxymoron. When you said, "people will not respond to education [about holistics],” this statement totally negates my life mission. I will never stop believing that "when the student is ready, the teacher will come." I believe many, many beautiful students are ready - especially those who have seen their pets die horrible, tragic, early deaths from invisible causes like toxic exposures, over-vaccination, professional caregiver incompetence and apathy, poisonous food, and other fallout from 20th- and 21st-century living. These wonderful students are just a breath away from connecting the dots: our mission is to paint those dots in living color and give the student the vehicle to connect them. That vehicle will be a much more aggressive education campaign at this point to get our message across. But our message and mission will continue to be, as long as I am director of PAWS, as it is written in our mission statement. Signed: Emily B. Smith, Director, PAWS Institute and Rescue, Edgerton, WI