In Our Hearts

Samantha

Samantha was an 11 year old female spayed Maltese when I first saw her for “behavioral” problems. She was on the equivalent of doggy Prozac c for night time anxiety and pacing. No matter what her human parents did to calm her, she continued pacing, and jolting if someone tried to touch her.

The other unusual problem was that Sam had difficulty drinking water from a china bowl. The people didn’t know if this was due to Sam’s tag hitting against the bowl and making a loud noise. Because of this, Sam would hold off drinking until she was so thirsty, she drank a huge amount and choked it back up.

In examining Sam, which I did while her person held her, I found that the position on her pulse corresponding to the Heart was very weak. She was not showing any conventional symptoms of heart failure, but from a Chinese Medicine perspective, the anxious behavior and the pulse type, definitely indicated a problem with the Heart. From experience, I knew that if we did not treat the underlying heart imbalance, Sam might sooner than later begin showing physical heart signs.

In addition, the Doggy Prozac Sam was on appeared to be drugging her out. Now, even though she still seemed anxious on the inside to her humans, she had a “flat” type of outward appearance. Overall, Sam was just not herself and her humans really wanted another option.

Because Sam was not an acupuncture candidate, I suggested massage and acupressure between her shoulder blades and just under her chest to help calm her. We then prescribed herbs to nourish the Blood and Yin of the Heart and its relative, the Kidney, as the interaction between the Heart and the Kidney can create anxiety. Herbs were also prescribed to help move the Chi energy. Sam was weaned off the medication and calmed down enough to sleep through the night and returned to her normal self.

One year later, a heart problem was detected at the conventional veterinarian that could not be treated with western medication. In other words, the Chinese medicine diagnosis picked up a potential heart problem one year earlier, and kept Sam in balance for a whole year before physical symptoms arose. Unfortunately, now that there were physical symptoms, conventional medicine had nothing to offer. Since the previous herbal treatment had kept Sam going comfortably for a long time, we modified the prescription and added a homeopathic remedy. This combination extended Sam’s life comfortably for over a year and a half.