Dogs Can Heal Themselves

Hello Wag Out Loud listeners. Many of you know that last year I took a job with Dr. Judy Morgan. And to be honest, it's been a lot of work doing that AND running my Wag Out Loud business. Something has to give. So I've decided that my last Wag Out Loud episode will release at the end of this year. And it's been a great learning experience for me. And I'm so proud of all the great content that I have shared over the last four and a half years. So if any of you are interested in taking over the pawdcast, please let me know. It would be a great opportunity for someone else as passionate about canine health and wellness to carry on this legacy. And I have everything in place that I could easily teach you the ropes. So let me know. Email me at krista@wagoutloud.com

According to the American Heartworm Society, more than a million dogs in the US have heartworm disease, and the sooner you get your dog treated, the better. Once your dog is bitten by an infected insect, it takes about seven months for the larvae to mature into adult heartworms. They take up residence in your dog's heart, lungs, and surrounding blood vessels and they start reproducing. Adult heartworms can grow up to 12 inches in length, disgusting, and live five to seven years, and dogs can have hundreds of worms in their system. And if left untreated, these worms can cause severe lung disease, heart failure, and damage to other organs in the body. But the good news is that most infected dogs can be treated successfully.

Welcome to the Wag Out Loud pawdcast, where we are obsessed with bringing you helpful tips on canine health care, nutrition, and overall wellbeing. If you'd like to support the show, check out the amazing online events, products and resources that I personally recommend on the Wag Out Loud website. I'm your host, Krista and I'm super excited to be bringing you yet another tail wagging episode.

As a professional animal healer from Ireland, Lisa Tully has an international practice working with all kinds of species using a multi-disciplinary approach. With a science background, she is grounded & informed in her holistic approach.

Hi there dog lovers and welcome to yet another informative Wag Out Loud pawdcast episode. And all the way from Ireland, today's guest is Lisa Tully. And she's going to be sharing how you've become so passionate about holistic animal healing options. We're gonna be talking about how dogs can heal themselves. So Lisa, first of all, thank you so much for being on with me today.

I'm delighted to be here Krista. Thanks for having me.

Well, we've had this on the books for quite a while we were joking about that before we hit record. So Lisa, why don't you give us some information about your background, which is fascinating in itself, and share why did you want to talk about how dogs can heal themselves.

So my background is I have a degree in science, in chemistry and biology. And I worked in the pharma industry for a while for quite a while. And I got to really understand that part of the world. And I then started to become more holistic in myself as a person. And I started to meditate more and travel more. And that led me down to realize I had the ability to connect in with animals on a very deep level, maybe pick up things from them that, you know, the average person wouldn't necessarily understand. And I started to apply that and build a practice around it. And I'm forever a student. So as I understood what was going on with the animals, I wanted to help them, okay, could feel what's going on for the mentally, emotionally, physically. And what do I do once I have this information? So I started to study and I studied how to use flower essences. And then that led me down the journey of studying zoopharmacognosy. And that's a very long word. And it basically means animals that know how to self medicate. And when I first witnessed this phenomenon, where a horse was selecting between different buckets of herbs that were put down in front of him, it absolutely blew my mind. You know, I was just like, Is this possible? So I went on, you know, and I did my training for all species, dogs, cats, horses, everything. All animals can do this . And this then when I understood the zoopharmacognosy side side of it, then my background deepened even more. And because what I did then was I studied five elements, Chinese medicine for animals. And what I found then was that animals were not only able to self medicate with botanicals, and that they can actually start to self select what food is best for their body as well. Because in Chinese medicine, you really go into the energy of food. Like duck as a cold meat, lamb is a hot meat. And depending on what pathology is going on in the animal's body. And, you know, you go down that that route, now I work alongside holistic vets here in Ireland. So I'm able to really, really understand both sides of the coin. And everything I do is, you know, it's perfectly safe because the vets are there keeping an eye on the animals as well.

Wow, that is just fascinating. You've gone through a lot to get you where you are today. Wow. And would you say that over there in Ireland compared to the US, how are alternative therapies for our dogs? You know, is it more prevalent, less prevalent? Are we about the same as far as approaching within a holistic mind as far as health and wellness?

I'd say we're behind. And I think there's there's a lot more in the United States, and there's a lot more in the United Kingdom. So all the trainings that I did the professional trainings, none of them were in Ireland, I had to travel. And so you know, I am a little bit of a trailblazer here in Ireland. And there's more people coming up the ranks now that are studying with me, or studying with the teachers I studied with, so but when I started off, over, you know, 10 years ago, my practice here was pretty unheard of. And we definitely, definitely need more people to pick up the gauntlet, because I don't know about in the United States, but I know in the United Kingdom and in Ireland, we've got corporate vet practices that are just taking over. And our smaller single vet practices are being swallowed up. And people are becoming, you know, less disenchanted. You know, so we, that's why I like to work with the holistic vets that are here and we kind of spread the word.

That's great. Well, yes, unfortunately, we are having the corporate takeover with veterinary practices here as well. It's, it's happening on a rapid scale, actually. So well, let's get into this. You mentioned, when you talked about your background about the five elements in Chinese medicine? Could you dive a little deeper into examples of what that looks like? Because I don't even know because I have a dog. He might love to lay in the sun. But then he gets hot, and then he wants to be on the tile to cool himself off. So I don't know. Is he considered a hot dog or a cold dog? You know, what, should I be feeding him? So could you go a little bit more into those five elements?

FIVE ELEMENTS OF CHINESE MEDICINE

Yeah, sure, the five elements in Chinese medicine is you can have like a constitutional type or a personality type, let's say. So dogs can be a wood element, which might be the dogos there kind of be a little bit more labeled as aggressive at times or extra assertive. And they can have eye anomalies and different things like that. And they have quite a stiff looking body or even stiff feeling bodies, you know, touching them is a bit like wood. And but they're amazing animals in the sense that they will always go for an adventure, they love the challenge. So each element has its positive side and then the side that is looking to be healed. So that will be a you know, top top line stuff about the wood element. And then you would have personality types like the earth elements. And these dogs are a little bit pudgy, little bit lazy, might sleep on a little bit longer in the in the morning time. So even till lunchtime, and they're very Homeward Bound animals, they don't like change, they'll be very clingy to you. Or, or actually, they could just be super appreciative of your company. Okay, so they're the home birds, they like just things to be in routine, you know, a classic example and they're not all earth elements, but a classic example would be like a Labrador and you know, that kind of a dog or you know, a pudgy calf, am and then you would have the fire element types. So, the fire element types are are joyful, really, really get over exuberant when they're around other dogs too much, okay, they get super excited. And because they have so much joy and excitement, it can tip into anxiety, okay, and they tend to be have like really long limbs and be like a red setter, you know flowing flowing limbs or they are that type of animal where they just capture your attention, they might be a bit of a joker as well. And everybody loves them because they're very heart energy. So the woods dogs are more liver energy, the earth dogs are more spleen, pancreas, and stomach. And then the the fire are the heart energy and the small intestine. And then you have the water element type dogs, which are very, very interesting as well. And because water element types are, they're the type of dog that kind of always needs a companion dog beside them. So if you're bringing them to the vet, you bring the companion dog with them, because they'll have a meltdown. And they're the dogs that if the guests come into the house, they're hiding under the couch, the fire element dog is at the door in the guests’ faces, and the water element is just sitting there going, when are they leaving? Okay, and the earth element is sitting beside the table, going when are they going to feed me, okay? And and the wood element might be growling at them a little bit. And then you have the metal element types, which are, they're really subtle in their energy. They're delicate in their nature, they're they're smart dogs, but they're very clear on their boundaries, they might not like other dogs coming up to their face and coming in too close. And they might give a little bit of a, you know, a little indication that they want them to go away. And these are the dogs that would grieve. Okay, so if their dog leaves, their dog companion leaves or their guardian passes away, they'll silently grieve, you have to watch out for those because they have, that's the energy of the lungs, which will be the metal element types, and the large intestine. So that's a snapshot of the personality type. But going back to your question Krista, where you have a dog that lies in the sun, and then that dog then decides to go lie on the on the tiles. So when you go much, much deeper into the five elements, and you go way past their constitutional personality type, and in actual fact, every animal has every element within them, because they have all the organs within them that each element represents. And when I assess an animal that has a pathology going on, I look to see which organs are out of balance by asking all these random questions, you know, how often do they go to the toilet? Or do they pee more than they drink? Do they lie in the midday sun? You know, all these different questions give me clues. So say for example, you have a senior dog, who is getting on a little bit in life isn't quite liking the cold, likes to come in little bit, arthritic, and wintertime really, really struggles in cold environments will actually bury under the covers, okay, they might even do that at a warmer time of year, but they're the dogs that are just under the bed. And then what happens is they're so they're a water element. They're looking like a water element type animal, but it could be just that their water element is out of balance, as well. Okay, we call it typology, as in constitutional personality versus pathology, okay, an actual imbalance in the water element. So if you have that same dogo that has the kidney cold within them, they're the dogs that are going to lie in the midday sun. Okay, they're there because what they're doing is deep down they have in a coldness in their body, they've got a deficiency more than likely this you know, every animal has to be looked at individually, but I'm talking top line stuff. So then they the what happens is the kidneys are getting a little bit tired. And the reason the kidneys get tired in all of us as we get older, is in Chinese medicine, the energy that goes into your kidneys that pretty much has to last you most your life happens at the time of conception. Okay, it's not an organ that kind of, you know, can boost itself back up again, like the liver or whatever. So this animal is low on kidney energy is a little bit cool. sitting in the sun, kidneys getting a little bit tired. And what happens is the kidneys keep the body cold. They regulate the temperature. But when the kidneys get a bit tired, the temperature can go up. Okay, and it can flip into an animal being too hot. So you might think Oh, that's a fire element type or are they wood? Well, actually, they're both. And everything is interconnected in this system. So you could very easily have an animal tip over into getting too hot because the yang energy has gotten too strong. Because the kidney energy, the yin energy is not strong enough. So it's about looking to see do we really help cool down he heat, the Yang, the that's come up maybe to the liver, or the fire element type? Or do we actually boost the kidneys and the kidneys will actually put out the fire. So that's where you have to really look at it on a case by case basis.

Wow. Well, you have set the groundwork for what we're going to be talking about today. And I think that this is a great place for us to stop and take a quick commercial break. So hold tight, everybody, we will be right back.

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And we are having an amazing discussion with Lisa Tully about how our dogs can actually self medicate. And we got the groundwork of the five elements in Chinese medicine. So thank you for that great explanation, Lisa. So we're going to talk about how they can actually self select, depending on what is going on in their body. So you already mentioned that they self medicate with herbs, maybe with essential oils. Probably medicinal mushrooms would also fit into that category of course, food. So why don't you tell us? How do they heal themselves? What is the process?

HOW DO DOGS HEAL THEMSELVES?

So when they have shown me that which meridians in their body from the Chinese medicine that are most out of balance and what their priority is, then I work with the animal and this is all done through photos. So I even have clients in America, then the animal shows tells me what botanicals it is they want to use to bring themselves back into balance. So everything is animal choice the whole way through that I work. And when they self select, they'll choose say for example, they might choose an essential oil like Yarrow, okay, so they have really bad arthritis go back to that senior dog that's a little bit achy, the water element is out of balance. And because the kidneys rule the bones, they might choose Yarrow, because Yarrow is an amazing oil that helps ease aches and pains. So basically, what you would do is I like to use essential oils with full awareness of what other drugs they are on. And I always dilute down the essential oils as well. And I dilute them down according to the dilution the animal wants. So you then go to offer the dog the Yarrow, essential oil. And what happens is they'll start to sniff the oil. And if it's the wrong oil, they will not sniff it at all, they'll immediately turn their head away. Okay, but if they do like the oil, they'll have a sniff, it can be lightning fast, they have a sniff and then look away and lick their lips. And this is a sign first of all, the fact that they've sniffed it as a yes, the fact that they've licked her lips, and then they might go back and have another sniff and keep doing that. And eventually they start to yawn. And what's happening is the essential oil is going up to the olfactory system, which is basically up to the nose into the limbic part of the brain, which holds the memories, the emotions, it's the oldest part of the brain and then it spreads down into the nervous system. It goes across the skin barrier goes into the blood, and then spreads out into all the organs and will target the organ or the part of the body that needs that essential oil. And this happens in seconds from one sniff. So it looks like not much is going on. But the animals are so aware, they're lightyears ahead of us. And if you put down three different oils, they will just go for the one they want, they won't go to sniff all of them. And but to speed up the process, you're actually able to tune in with the animal much earlier. And then the oils that I send people are very, very specific oils, I send three, but I have hundreds, you know, I could show up and offer hundreds that would take forever. So then they just let the oil work. And they go into a deep trance, a healing trance with the oils at the start, where they're really going in very, very deeply. And it affects them on all levels, mental, emotional, physical and spiritual levels. And what happens eventually, they'll go off that Yarrow. They won't want to work with it anymore. Because they know the oil has done its job. And then you do another assessment and you send them new oils. It's unbelievable, if I send out three oils to a dog, they might choose to work with two oils for the first week, and then switch to the third oil in the second week because they know what order they need to work to the oils in. And they know how long they need them for. And they know how much they need them. And they do that with essential oils, herbs, flower essences, homeopathy, food, pharmaceutical, I've seen them deal with all those things.

And do you think dogs have the advantage of the intense, amazing sense of smell, to be able to talk to the brain immediately when they are smelling the different options to them.

And I don't think it makes a difference what species is doing it, I've seen them all do it equally as well. And although zoopharmacognosy is based on the idea of smelling, when I started to really observe the animals in my practice, I started to notice that they were more than in the same level self selecting homeopathy and self selecting flower essences, which in itself are termed as vibrational medicine, quantum medicine, even energy medicine, and there's no smell. But if you put out four bottles of flower essences, they'll go for the one of them. Or what I do is if you have a sick dog, who has a few different things going on, I'll put out homeopathy different remedies indifferent sources of water. And the animal will come up and have a lick of one source or go away, come back half an hour later to have a look at the other one, hover over the one next to it, and then go back to the other one and have another lick. it is unbelievable.

Okay, so what does it look like? Let's say I hire you to look at my dog. And you said that you do an assessment, you would ask me a lot of questions about their behavior and their lifestyle. I would send pictures, then how do you tap into what is going on with them? Is it a form of animal communication? Or is it very science based? What do you actually do to to know what's going on with them?

WHAT IS THE PROCESS?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I have I have this animal communication skills as well. And so what I do is I bring together everything. First of all, I go into the left brain, and I assess the form I've asked you to fill out and I assess that with the Chinese medicine side of things. And I look and I try and identify what pathology is going on. Because there could be different causes behind the same condition in Chinese medicine. So I'm I'm whittling it down and I'm figuring that out, okay, where's that pathology going? And then I actually communicate with the animal and I also communicate with the, the guides of the animal, I bring that in as well. It's what I do. And I say, Well, what do you what's your priority? What's going on for you? And this isn't about communication in the sense of having, like, what's your favorite toy? Or like, kind of it's no, it's really deep, profound stuff. And often the animal will say to me, you know, I have this condition, but actually, my guardian needs this, this, this and this, okay, because they often mirror what's going on with their human. So I bring all these things together. And then what I do is it takes me about two hours to do a setup session because I'm really getting to the bottom of it. And so the animal communication then comes in on that side. And then what I do is I have what I call It's a meridian chart. So it's all the meridians in the body according to Chinese medicine, the small intestine, the heart, the kidney everything. And then I'll actually douse, okay, and the animal will show me which of their meridians are out of balance, and which is their priority. And then I formulate that together with the research I did in the Chinese medical side. And then I prescribe them a very specific diet if needed to and the animal then through the dousing, self selects, what botanicals flower essences, herbs, all that jazz, so and supplements, everything. So it takes the guesswork out of buying 10 different supplements for you know, that arthritic dog, like well, actually, no, they just need this particular one. Okay, they need a bit of Devil's Claw or whatever. So it saves time, money, and the beautiful resources of the Earth. And the animal is fully in charge. And what happens then is I ask the animal, do you want to self select any botanicals for your person? Okay, so if there is that mirroring going on. So what they'll do then is they might make up a mix of essences, or a mix of essential oil, flower essences, or a mix of essential oils for their person. And then they always tell a picture, or they paint an emotional picture. And I've to this day, I've never ever ever had any animal Guardian say to me, Oh, I'm not going through that right now. My dog selected the wrong mix for me.

So we should take our dogs to Las Vegas then is what you're saying to Las Vegas? Yes. Because they could pick the numbers, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So that yeah, that's it in a nutshell, then. And I post the botanicals wherever they go around the world. And then I teach to people on a video call, how to offer them.

Oh, my gosh, this is so fascinating. Well, I know on this show, you know, we all geek out about, you know, science like this with how to heal our dogs. But examples are the best. So I know that when you and I spoke before you talked about Bailey and his chronic ear infection. Can you tell the listeners about what happened with Bailey?

CASES

Yeah, so Bailey is an interesting case. And Bailey had been to two holistic vets before me and the the Bailey's guardian is also a homeopath in training. So the and the regular vet, everything had failed, this dog was having really bad ear problems, where the ear would get so inflamed, and it would actually get ulcerated, and it would have lots of wax going on in the ear as well. So this had been going on for a very long time, and the dog was shaking their head scratching. And then of course, the dog's Guardian was just driven demented. And, you know, really, really worried. So what I did was, I said to the Guardian, look, you've tried everything I said, but the one thing you haven't tried is asking Bailey, what Bailey needs. And this this particular story is I bring in the emotional side of it as well. So with ear problems, this would be the animal communication side of me, I have the right brain and where the ear problems represent not liking what you hear in life, okay, and then infections and ulcerations or that kind of stuff is anger. Okay, so I said to the person I said, Is there anything going on at home and there was okay, let's leave it there. There was there was not peace in the home environment, okay, there was words being said so, so that made sense. But then to go into the science of it and to go down into the left brain side of it. When an animal has these kind of ulcerations and this heat and this rawness coming up in the ear, for Bally's in case it was actually false heat rising up in the body that was coming from an imbalanced liver. So I had to support the liver. But you know, the ears themselves are actually ruled by the kidneys and in Chinese medicine but the liver can still have its input. So I was keeping an eye on the kidneys as well but I was I work with the animal as they present each follow up session. Okay, because they're showing me what the priority is. Okay, I could treat treat the liver I could treat the kidneys. I could treat the spleen, pancreas which because she was having gunk in the air. And there could have been also an involvement with the spleen, pancreas, but really it was the liver and the kidneys. So I had to rebalance the liver. I looked at the diet. Okay, I took out the hot meats. She was on a bit of lamb I took lamb out of the diet. I took out duck okay, because duck was too cold. I wanted to give her neutral meats like chicken, turkey, rabbit, you know all this kind of beef, port, these meats that are easy to digest. And I gave her guardian some flower essences to help her emotionally because what was going on externally around Bailey. And then Bailey then self selected some essential oils as well. And I've been working with Bailey now for about four months in and going from extreme chronic ear problems, she now just has the odd flare up. So we're still working, you know, it's just it takes time, that kind of a condition takes time, because it's it's internal imbalances going on. But I believe with Bailey now, we're actually at the point where her organs are so much more imbalance that we really, really have to watch now the emotional side, and what her guardian is doing because if her guardian starts to panic, or starts to get angry or agitated, Bailey's so close to her that her ear can flare. Okay, so when when you get to that point, I asked the Guardians like, take, keep a diary. Okay, so every time the ear flares, what's going on in your life, you know, and then it just becomes a point of self reflection. Because animals and especially dogs are so unconditional, that they'll constantly mirror back stuff to their people until they get it and they'll mirror it to a point that the animal will actually die from a condition I think, until the person learns the lesson. And if they don't, the next dog to come in and have the same condition.

They are here to teach us. we have to listen. Well, we are just about out of time, Lisa, but I want you to give another example. I know you have Bella, Toby, Max, or maybe a newer one. Give us one more quick example of the before and the after.

Toby is my neighbor's dog and during the winter time, he was on a walk and he got attacked by a much larger dog. And the dog put his his dog Toby just a little terrier. So he was literally picked up from his hind end and kind of shook right and he ended up being in the vet practice and you had to have surgery, extensive surgery and he had to have drains put in to you know, for a few days so I was treating him with botanicals and he was self selecting. And what happened then was he went back to the vet’s, got the drains taken out and we then got snowed in. Okay, we're up here in the Wicklow Mountains and we don't have jeeps with fancy you know Ireland we're not as organized so so we found ourselves snowed in and I noticed that where the drains had been taken out that Toby’s sides had started to build and swell out again at points and I just went uh oh, now this is a very dangerous place to be because animal bites are so toxic that actually what can happen it looks like things are okay on the surface, but underneath the skin layer is actually rotting away and they can die from sepsis very quickly. So I immediately worked with Toby and he self selected helped me self selected the ingredients to make up his own clay mix. Okay, his own essential oils with green clay in it, and with flower waters as well. And I packed that clay around the entrances of where the bite wounds were and where the drains were and I kind of reopened the skin. And what the clay does is it acts as an actual drain and it pulled all the puss out. So as the clay dried around the entrances, it started to get wet during the day as the body acts like the clay extracted out the infection. And he selected a homeopathic remedy silica which pushes the infection out. So we were pulling and pushing at the same time. And until the snow cleared for about three days. I kept washing his wounds each day offering oils. By the time he went back to the vet. So that was just like these wounds are perfectly clean. Tell me about this green clay.

There you go.

Yeah, so even in emergency Yeah, in an emergency like that. They'll show you the way. stay calm. Listen to the animal.

OFFER

Well, I think we've piqued a lot of interest here, Lisa and I know after this call, I'm going to talk to you about doing a consult for myself and our new dog Dutton. But for our listeners, I know that you have an offer. And this is so exciting. Lisa is going to offer you guys 10% off any consult with her. So the discount code is all uppercase. The word PODCAST. And Lisa how can people Not only find out more about you, but book a consult, where do they go?

My website is https://animalhealing.ie. So ie is at the end of our websites here in Ireland. And you can find me there, super easy to remember and all the information’s there all the different types of readings I have. But if people want to you can also book in a discovery call with me through my website also.

Okay, and I'm going to have all of these links to the website and all of her social media will be in the show notes for you guys. So we are going to sign off now Lisa, is there anything that you would like to leave us with today?

Your Social Media URLs or Tags

         Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/animalhealinglisatully/

 

         Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/animalhealinglisatully

 

         LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/animalhealinglisatully/

I just wanted to say that if people are ever worried about their animal family out there is like, try your best to stay calm, and no matter what the situation is. And talk to your animal like you would talk to another person, and they understand every word you say.

Thank you, Lisa. This has been enlightening. And I am so excited to work with you. So thank you so much for being here today.

Pleasure, thank you so much for having me and to everybody who's listening.

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Thanks for listening. You'll find some helpful links in the show notes and if you enjoy the show, please be sure to follow and listen for free on your favorite podcast app. And please, please share your feedback. Visit WagOutLoud.com for great product recommendations with discounts, amazing online events and fantastic resources. That's also where to visit our Bark About It page where you can suggest topics, guests or products. Be advised that this show offers health and nutritional information and is designed for educational purposes only. You're encouraged to do your own research and should not rely on this information as a substitute for nor does it replace professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. If you have any concerns or questions about your dog's health, you should always consult a veterinarian or a nutrition expert. Have a tail wagging day and we'll catch you next time.

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