Page 9 - Spring 22

An enormous amount of time has always been, and still is, spent on client and public information education. A life of constant environmental activism against an increasingly toxic and unbalanced planet is woven among the fabric of everything else.
Extensive hand-outs and/or references are provided on proper nutrition, habitat requirements, and behavioral enrichment in captive and natural environments. The main holistic modalities used are homeopathy, non-GMO nutrition, chiropractic, physical therapy/laser, and nutraceutical/botanical supplementation.
So many of the SRP animals are presented with serious life-threatening conditions because caretakers waited too long or didn’t realize there was even a problem until late in the condition. The other scenario is that serious injury or illness has occurred (toxicity, starvation, parasitism). Sometimes the best solution for the patient is a gentle, painless, and aided transition to an otherworldly existence.
There is more death, and euthanasia with these types of animals than in regular domestic species. It is unfortunate; but it is the case, that in our designer world of shrinking habitats from human encroachment, our wildlife and exotic pets will get stuck in the middle. People will bring in sick or injured wild or non-domestic animals for care. Thank goodness some of them recover and can be rehabilitated. Many do not, and they can suffer miserable existences and starvation before they transition.
Many of the caretakers love their avian or exotic pets no less than the family cat or dog, and they go to great lengths to provide them with a quality life, and wholesome nutrition. Wildlife rehabilitators do the same for their patients, but there is a different kind of human-animal bond in this relationship. I spend much of my time with these folks and their pets, along with injured, sick, and orphaned native wildlife. Most of my clients understand when they walk in the door that the main types of care
provided are assorted holistic modalities; those that don’t know are quickly enlightened. My staff or I spend a fair amount of time relating with and to the clients, and very rarely are conventional drugs used or needed. We make sure that bone fractures are repaired, soft tissue injuries are bandaged or sutured, and diagnostic radiographic and clinical pathology information is obtained.
Sometimes this data is useful, but as more homeopathic experience is gained, objective data is often found to make little difference in how the homeopathic case will be managed, or what prescriptions will eventually be provided. Indeed, data seems to matter very little in how the case will respond or heal in the end.
To this end, this paper and presentation will address the treatment by homeopathy of acute self-limiting conditions, with some chronic follow-up in those species that are considered exotic or wild; this can include reptiles, amphibians, pocket pets, other mammals, insects, arthropods, arachnids, crustaceans, aquarium fishes, rabbits, rodents, ferrets, hedgehogs, all birds, marsupials, and anything else I have left out, and of course free ranging, but maybe not so free anymore wildlife, not owned by anyone.
DEFINITIONS Vital Force
The concept of the vital force, the chi, or the defence mechanism is an age-old belief in the body’s self-guiding intelligence. The life force or dynamic principle (wesen), is that part of the entity responsible for directing growth and repair. It is also involved in aiding recovery from ailments and maintaining homeostasis in normal function. It seeks to promote life and health and includes the maintenance of resistance to illness regardless of the causality. It cannot be measured with conventional scientific tools, but it is often intuitively measured by the practitioner by
evaluating the elicited response to treatment. Good homeopathic treatment will strengthen and enhance the patient’s vital force. In the normal healthy animal, the vital force can respond and direct recovery from common acute, self-limiting conditions.
Health
Health can be defined as a holistic balance, or a state of complete freedom on all levels. These levels are interrelated, consisting of the realms of the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual or ethereal. Health consists of physical vitality with no physical malfunction, or pathology. There is an emotional harmonious peace, and freedom of expression, with mental clarity and creativity. In other words, ‘out there doing what nature intended’ the animal to be doing, by carrying out its highest order of function, and interaction with its peers and with the environment.
Symptoms
The organism with the aid of its own innate vital force will work to keep itself healthy and in balance (lack of susceptibility). When the body is threatened (by deficiency, imbalance, or excess of nutrition; by exposure to contagions/miasms; by traumatic events, mental and/or physical; by toxic or poisonous influences; or by environmental challenges, including global or local climate changes), the vital force enables the body, mind, and emotions to produce symptoms. These symptoms have a purpose — to restore health and balance. For example, pain warns something is wrong; lack of calcium (or poor assimilation) in an infant causes soft bones to enlarge with fibrous tissue to maintain strength and mobility; fever and inflammation stimulates the immune response while also inactivating many harmful microorganisms; mucous discharges, vomiting, or diarrhea carry away offending material and eliminate toxins, and so on.