TBH I'm not interested. I'm on here to help dog owners who are seeking opinions on health issue; not debate the finer points of medical science versus alternative remedies.

And FWIW I rescue street dogs as we have a huge population here. I focus mainly on sick puppies and struggling mums - all of which I treat using herbs and homeopathy - never conventional medicine. I do have a vet on hand for emergency stuff who very kindly comes out to them on the street for free.

Answered this post on another thread - will not repeat it here.

Ziva, am I correct in thinking that you take a holistic approach to healing?

I believe that in humans holistic doctors think that the mind and emotions play a huge part in illness. This is something I've experienced first hand and I firmly believe that many conditions are in the mind. I'm not saying we imagine them, but rather the mind/emotions....something produces very real symptom and illnesses as a result of emotional scarring. These (extremely common) conditions tend not to respond well to conventional medicine.

This is the area in which I think alternative therapies are very helpful, and conventional medicine can be increadibly harmfull. If I had an accute illness that doctors knew how to treat I wouldn't dream of trying alternative medicine. But in these chronic conditions that doctors don't understand it would seem that those that understand the mind/body link offer the best chance of a 'cure'. It's an area that we simply don't understand, but I do believe that the strangest of things can and do work.

My aunt was a christian scientist. Her religeon prohibits her from seeking medical help. As I understand it, she will be healed through faith. Some years ago she fell ill with what we all assumed was breast cancer. Of course, she wouldn't go to a doctor and the family accepted this as it wasn't a battle that we were conviced the doctors could win for her. It turned out that all she had wrong with her was an absess on her breast that would have been cured with a course of antibiotics. So an example of how the power of the mind/faith can kill unnecessarily.

I remember reading about a young boy with an incurable brain tumor. The doctors said nothing could be done and gave him a few months to live. The little boy spent all of his time imagining that he was a fighter pilot shooting down the cancer cells in his body. At his next hospital checkup the tumor was gone. Doctors could not explain it, but nowadays they are beginning to accept that thought can indeed cure things. So an example of how the power of the mind/faith can cure.

Do you think the same thing applies with dogs - is there a mind / body link ? Do dogs even have emotions ? You say you deal with street dogs. Presumably some of them have had traumatic lives. Do you see symptoms in them that might be a result of emotional (?) trauma?

I'd just like to add that I'm not suggesting for one minute that homeopathy is 'all in the mind' - studies strongly suggest (perhaps even prove) that this is not the case. I suppose I'm simply thinking that the cause of the illness will determine which treatment will work best. Homeopathy AND conventional medicine will do a lot of harm if used under the wrong circumstances. The question is, what circumstances does homeopathy work well under? Is it better for problems caused by the mind / emotions? Problems caused by poor diet? I understand that it's thought to work by strengthening the immune system - what causes the immune system to weaken and problems to develop in the first place?

Sorry - lost of questions, but hopefully you can grasp what I'm getting at.

Yes, I do prefer to use a holistic approach wherever possible, although I'm not the extremist that I won't use conventional when it's needed. I tend to rely mainly on herbs as I'm still learning about homeopathy, however when I've used it, it has made a difference. I'm also only mainly treating basic stuff like worms, fleas and general health.

I do think 'mind over matter' is very important in humans and that it can cure many ills if the person is strong minded enough. I read many years ago that some experts believe cancer cells lie dormant in all of us, and it just takes a certain trigger to set it off - one of those triggers was thought to be extreme stress or worry about an unexpected event. Don't know if true or not.

As with many things scientists do not fully understand the workings of the body, so many things are still unexplained about both illness and recovery. You hear all the time of old people "giving up" and dying when it was thought the medication would save them. I believe that you can "will" a lot of things.

For dogs, I think the same will be true - not so much as humans maybe, however I see it here in their eyes: Despair. And then with a little care: Hope.

I honestly don't know, however if you look at a more global picture, you see people in third world countries struggling to survive with enough food and they just get on with it, seemingly without emotional scars from the hardship. I think emotional trauma is based on what you know - i.e. for a westerner to be plunged into a third world country with no food, water or shelter there would be emotional trauma as we're not equipped to cope with it. I think it's the same for street dogs - they're too busy coping with the struggle of life.

I don't think homeopathy does any harm if used alongside conventional medicine - it will either help or not. It can be used for a wide range of things from emotional issues to a healing a simple cut. As I've said before it works by stimulating the body to heal itself - so it has to be accurately prescribed taking into account all of the symptoms, not just the most obvious ones.

For me, I've used homeopathy successfully for mange - that's a visual thing and I can see it worked. I've also used it for injuries - hard to gauge that one though.

Having said that, 2/3 weeks ago I found a juvenile male Shepherd seemingly hit by a car as his legs were lacerated down to the bone and he couldn't use his back legs - he was dragging himself. I took him to the vet although he couldn't stitch the wounds as we didn't know how old they were, so he gave him some antibiotic shots etc.

I didn't have the right remedy so I ordered it. As of 4 days ago (before remedy arrived), one of the deepest wounds wouldn't heal - it was still oozing and gaping. Four days later on homeopathy, it has started to dry and heal. Now that's not a clinical trial but it's good enough for me!

I'm also still learning about the immune system - from what I've read lots of things can affect it's ability to function properly; all toxin related - from polluted air, to topical applications, to vaccinations, chemical "medications", steroids, poor diet etc etc. All of these things are said to suppress the immune system and inhibit the body's ability to repair itself.

The arnica I use is Arnica 30c from Boots - in the Homeopathy section as a matter of fact. Yes It's a herb, but it is homeopathic medicine. I'm sure you would advocate the use of traditional antiinflammatories such as Rimadyl. I recently read that there is evidence to suggest that the repeated use of Rimadyl can cause lasting damage to the liver.

Interestingly I was thinking about this over the last few days.

Firstly as far as S Hahnemann would define homeopathy arnica is not a homeopathic medication even if you dilute it down to 30C.
If we are to use the law of similars then to cure bruising we would need to dilute a bruise causing substance to sub avagadros number concentrations. Arnica at herbal doses is used to cure bruises NOT cause them. Therefore it cannot according to classical homeopathy cure bruising.

Perhaps Aloe vera or witch hazel or any other "natural " extract which has been forgotten (or passed out of fashion) might be more useful. Though if the evidence for them is similar..........
http://badchemist.net/homeopathy/pea...a-and-bruising

Helping sick animals means debating these finer points in an effort to hone the treatment and improve it for all.

looking at data to decide when placebo is fooling us is not one of the finer points of medical science - It is a fundamental point

LOL a classical mistake in the common misunderstanding of how homeopathy actually works instead of how the sceptics think it supposedly works!

If you insist on commenting on such things may I request that you stick to the facts of homeopathy please which is readily available in many texts on the subject

I'm still very open to alternative remedies but had never really considered the definition of homeopathy before or understood the difference between that and natural/herb remedies.
So, I have just googled it and have read about 9 or 10 different websites, all of which have a definition as follows

Homeopathy: Derived from the Greek word homoios meaning similar-and pathos meaning suffering, homeopathy is an alternative medical system that treats the symptoms of a disease with minute doses of a natural substance or remedy. In larger doses, the remedy would produce the same symptoms as the disease or disorder that is being treated (1).

This would seem to support what Ebmedic is saying..

to help me understand, could you provide me with what you consider is the correct definition please?

Hali, your definition of homeopathy is a correct simplification of how it works, yes.

Mr Medics interpretation of arnica however, is not correct.