The acupuncture seems to be helping. Thirteen definitely rests easier and falls down less for a couple of days after her appointment. This time we did electrostimulation instead of moxa. Moxa is a little sort of incense cigar that they press against the needle tips to get heat into the pressure points. Electrostimulation uses a machine called the "acupunctoscope" to provide electrical stimulation (thus the name). It's a very low current: I held a couple of the needles while it was running and I couldn't feel a thing. Thirteen looked kind of funny with wires hooked up to her acupuncture needles, but it seemed to have a calming effect. After it was turned on she put her head down and went to sleep.
I also discussed chiropractic with Dr. Pagel. I don't think chiropractic is the panacea some chiropracters claim it to be, but I do think it has a proven benefit with back pain. Which is what Thirteen has, so it's worth a try. Dr. Pagel said it's OK to do chiropractic and acupuncture at the same time so I'm going to call the Durham chiropractor Lisa B. recommended.
She also recommended homeopathy, which I am not going to try. I'm willing to accept the possibility that there may someday be evidence that homeopathy is effective against something. But I don't believe such evidence exists now, and I seriously doubt it will ever be proven effective to treat spinal pressure. I just can't imagine a mechanism by which that would work.
The second strike against homeopathy is that I've already had a consult with the guy she recommended, and it did not go well. It was many years ago, back in the day before Advantage and Frontline had been invented. I didn't want to use flea poisons which also poison the dog, and there weren't many other options. (There was a pill that made fleas sterile, but it didn't do anything about the fleas already on her; it just cut down on future flea populations. Except if she picked up new fleas at the dog walk, then it was totally ineffective.) So, Thirteen had fleas. And she had a terrible allergic reaction to flea bites. She used to chew herself raw and pull out her fur. [grossout alert] At one point it got so bad that she abandoned her bed and started sleeping on the bathroom floor overnight. We knew she was sleeping in the bathroom because of the blood smears on the linoleum. [end grossout] I fed her garlic, spread diatomaceous earth on her bedding and the yard, bathed her every other day, spread goo on her poor bald itchy skin, basically anything and everything that might help.
Which is why I took the advice of my vet (Dr. Koontz at Durham Animal Hospital, he was great, I still kind of miss him) and called the homeopathic vet. I'm not going to mention his name because I'm about to trash him. He lived out in the country so he did consultations over the phone and sent the homeopathic remedies by mail. In other words, in most cases he never sees the animal. He told me that excessive vaccination was the cause of most cancer in dogs, and that I should stop vaccinating Thirteen. She was less than 2 years old at the time.
He also told me that for the homeopathy to work, I would have to stop all flea treatments based on traditional medicine, but it would take a year to see any result from the homeopathy because the traditional medicine had to get out of her system. But I still had to start buying his homeopathic powders right away, a year before even he thought they might do any good.
Did I mention that the powder was expensive? And that I was broke? At that time I couldn't even afford a doctor for myself, much less quackery like that for my dog. Yet I paid for the phone consultation -- not even the initial consult was free -- and I let him talk me into buying the first dose of placebo. Oops, I mean homeopathic remedy. I'm still kind of ticked off about that. More mad at myself than at him. What can I say, it was a long time ago and I wasn't self-assured enough to call a quack a quack.
Yes, in my considered opinion, the guy was a quack. Maybe not all homeopathy is quackery, but he was. Thank god Advantage was invented later that year, and Thirteen's flea reaction never again got so desperate. I told Dr. Pagel about this incident (though I didn't use the word "quack") and she agreed that he hadn't presented a viable solution. She still gave me his name and phone number though. I wish I had remembered to tell her the thing about vaccinations. I don't think she should recommend someone who advises pet owners to stop vaccinating their dogs. Maybe he doesn't say that any more. It has been almost 15 years. I'm still not going to call him.
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Actually, in the last several years even some veterinarians have begun to believe that we are over-vaccinating dogs. They don't argue that we should just stop, but that there are a lot of annual vaccinations that could be given a lot less frequently. Some vets will take titer tests for immunity instead of doing annual vaccinations. Here's a link that discusses the issue:
http://www.canine-epilepsy-guardian-angels.com/titer_test.htm
So just because a quack first said it to do doesn't mean that the idea is totally crazy. I agree that homeopathy is a crock, BTW.
I didn't know that about dog vaccinations. I thought the homeopathy guy was advocating I should act like the parents who don't vaccinate their kids because there's so little risk of getting polio, whooping cough, measles, etc. I think that's an incredibly selfish behavior because it only works if everyone else still gets vaccinated. So the anti-vaccination people are reaping the benefit of vaccination and relying on everyone else to bear the burden for them. The approach you mention sounds much more responsible.
I'm glad to hear the treatments are having a positive effect.
An episode of the BBC's Horizon science documentary (many of which get redubbed and shown as Novas on PBS) featured James Randi offering a million dollars for scientific proof of the efficacy of homeopathy.
The results: homeopathic treatment performed no better than the placebo -- plain distilled water -- which is all that homeopathic remedies are.
I'm glad that the acupuncture seems to be working, though.
Hi Claire! I read that in the early 1990's there was some noise that homeopathy might possibly perform well in scientific experiments, but that all recent studies had shown it to be totally ineffective. Which, as you say, isn't surprising considering the nature of homeopathy.