Food Therapy

As we continue our journey with our Asha, we have embarked upon another new adventure!  Food Therapy.
Trevor and I deal in nutrition for humans at our business, so this is something I am totally comfortable with. I understand what food can do for a person, not just how much you eat, but when and what.  I have many food intolerances and know what that has done to me.  I expect its the same for animals too.

I am embarassed to say that we have not been as vigilant with what we feed our pets as we should be.  We buy kibble for both the dogs and the cats.  In our defense, our animals have lived long lives, but now that we have a multitude of issues its time to get serious.

The Dr who does Asha's accupuncture and Chinese medicine has a food therapist on staff.  Yesterday, I took all three dogs to see her.  Asha is a bit overweight and obviously has her behavior issues.  Maggie is quiet a bit overweight and has always had food issues.  Buster came along for the ride.  He seems to be the perfect weight.

We talked a lot about our routines, the dogs' personalities, their histories, their histories with food and weight, their relationship with each other, with us.  My head was spinning.  Trying to explain our routines to someone else is overwhelming (probably for her too).  This is all very Chinese medicine based and so we focused on the dogs' constitution based on the 5 elements - Earth, Wood, Fire, Water, Metal. I know about these things through Asha's accupuncture and herb treatments.   Its fascinating stuff.

I was there for over three hours.  I got a new perspective on our pets and how they related to the world and to each other.  While I am often exhausted with Asha, I totally love the things she is leading me towards.  I love that I am able to learn new things, to get a new set of eyes on our situation.  I am able to look at the relationships and interactions in our house in a different light and they make much more sense to me when I see them this way.

The dogs were so great.  Buster just layed down and slept. Maggie wanted to do the same, but Asha thought they should play.  Maggie LOVED these little cushions and said "see...I'm not overweight".

Eventually Asha went to sleep.

By this time, Buster was in my lap, so no picture of him.

It was exhausting for all of us!  By next week we should have a food plan for all dogs that should allow Maggie and Asha to lose some weight.  It will also include foods that will help them get back in balance, calm them, heal them.  Oh man....I can't wait.

Happy Birthday Buster!!

Our sweet little man turned 5 on Wednesday.  We celebrated all day long!  I am totally in love with this dog.  He is the best dog I have ever known and I cannot believe how much I love him, how much more I love him with every passing day.

The day was Buster's and we did all his favorite things.   We went for a long car ride. Buster LOVES to ride in the car. He settles down in the passenger seat and closes his eyes. Every now and then he looks up at me with eyes full of love.

 I let him lick my face for as long as he wanted.   I gave him a special bone, that he didn't know what to do with because he doesn't usually get bones.  We sat out on the back deck and just enjoyed life.

Buster is so special in many ways.  Perhaps the most special thing about his is how happy he is to see us.   Always.  We can be gone for 5 minutes or 5 days and when he sees us, he explodes with happiness. He runs and wiggles, his little body can't contain his excitement.  And he is always smiling.

Buster had three homes before he came to us. The thought of him being taken and dropped off at the shelter is more than I can bear because I know his heart was broken.  They must have yelled at him before they took him away because if I raise my voice at him or disapprove of something he is done, he gets really sad and upset - like he thinks I am going to send him away.  I would never send him away. Ever.

I want Buster to live with me forever.  I don't want time to pass, I want to savor every second with this little guy.  When I look at him its like my heart is living outside my body, inside his heart.  When my cat Gus died, I said that he gave all the other pets some of his duties.  He gave Buster the job of best friend.  And Buster has taken on that responsibility. He is my best friend.  Happy Birthday buddy.  I hope you have 100 more.

What it all means

Over the last six months, we have struggled to get Asha to sleep though the night. We've tried medications, calming sprays, sleeping on the floor with her, getting her tired during the day.  Nothing has worked. She wakes up every night at the same times, like clockwork.   We could not figure it out and it was so frustrating.

We started Asha on accupuncture several weeks ago. At the same time, we also started her on some Chinese herbs.  These things have really started to make a difference in how she behaves during the day.  It was also making some difference at night, but only for a day or two after her accupuncture treatments.  About two weeks ago, her nighttime behavior got even worse. She seemed to be refusing to sleep upstairs with us. Instead of getting up at her normal two hour intervals, she was up non stop.

For a while now, Trevor has been wondering how she would do if she slept downstairs. I wasn't sure it would work because she seems to always want to be with us.  I was hesitant to try it because we were getting a couple hours of sleep and when we try something new, it often means we get no sleep and that just makes me angry.

Out of desperation, one night, I took Asha downstairs around 11.  We had been in bed since 9:30 and she was up every 15 minutes.  I got her down on the couch. She jumped right up and snuggled in behind my legs....and we both slept until 6 am.  I woke up and could not believe it.  The next night, I ended up doing the same thing.  The third night, we all went upstairs.  We got Maggie and Buster settled and then Asha and I went back downstairs. She hopped up on the couch.  I layed with her for about half an hour.  Then I got up and went to bed.  I woke up at 4 am and Asha was coming upstairs.  She has slept for almost 6 hours on the couch by herself. She came up and put her head on the bed next to me as if to say "I woke up and you weren't there".  I went back downstairs with her and got on the couch. She jumped up with me and did my favorite thing - laid down against my legs and put her chin on my foot.  Then she sighed...that sigh of contentment.  I love that.

The accupuncturist/Chinese medicine doctor that we've been seeing was asking me questions about Asha's sleeping environment - are there any power lines near our house, anything that turns on and off during the night.  I said "no...no...no", I couldn't think of anything off the top of my head.  Then I started thinking, really thinking about it.  She is waking up at the same time every single night so there must be something.  Then it hit me...the train.  There are train tracks a couple miles from the house and you can hear the train in the distance.  Its not that loud and Asha can't hear, so that cannot be it.  Or can it?

Now that Asha is sleeping downstairs, she makes it through most of the night.  But she wakes up at either 3 am or 4:30 and always within a couple minutes of those times.  The other night, Trevor was letting her outside at the time and he heard the train.  A couple days ago, I was out on the front step with Asha in the early evening.  She was resting her head on my lap and then she lifted it up, kind of startled.  In the distance, I heard the train.

The bathroom attached to our bedroom, where we have been trying to get Asha to sleep for six months, has a skylight.  You can hear and probably feel alot in that room that you don't get in other, more insulated rooms in the house.  I feel terrible.  I've been frustrated, even angry with her at night for months because she wouldn't sleep. I was losing my mind with tiredness.  Now, she climbs on that couch and is out like a light. That's all she has needed...a change in sleeping venue.  It makes me want to cry.  I don't think she holds it against me and when she lets out that sweet sigh of contentment, my heart melts into hers and all is right with the world.

Now...if I can just get that train schedule changed.

Asha knows

Trevor got me a new phone and I now have the ability to video things.  I love that. There are so many things that happen every day that I always wanted to share and now I can.   I was able to capture Asha being her usual self this morning....

Every day when we leave, we give Asha toys/treats to keep her busy.  Her absolute favorite are these bones -

The ends screw off and you put those little rawhide disks on, then screw the end back on. These used to keep Asha busy for a while, now she eats them up in just a couple minutes.  We give her three bones.  She can smell when we are getting them ready.  We also throw them onto the couches in the front room. So as soon as she smells them, she'll run into the front room and start searching for them.

Today I got the bones ready and was finishing up getting myself ready. I put the bones in a bowl on the counter.  I was at the sink and heard a loud noise. I turned around and caught her in the act.  She had taken one bone, two were left. I stood there with my phone and waited for her to come looking for the other two. It only took a minute and she did.  She cannot see or hear, yet she knew EXACTLY where those bones were.  I love the look on her face while she is doing this...

Play

When Asha first came to live with us, she had a tough time playing with Buster. He likes to move around alot and she wasn't able to keep track of him. It made us sad because he wanted to play with her, but he didn't understand why she couldn't do it.  Over time, Buster has figured out how to play with Asha. He stays close to her.  Often, she'll put her paw on his back so that she knows he is near.  I love watching them play.

The things we do for love

Trevor and I have really left no stone unturned in our quest for a peaceful household.  Asha has challenged all the "easy" fixes, so we have decided to reach out to alternative forms of healing.  Our minds have opened to the idea that there may be an answer outside of all things rational.

As I've discussed before, Asha has a traditional vet, a behavioral vet and a trainer that all help us with her.  Through them we have been referred to an animal communicator and an acupuncture/Chinese medicine veterinary practitioner.  Everyone seems to believe that a combination of eastern and western medicine will be the answer for our special case. Asha defies all reason when it comes to her treatment. She is so sensitive to things. She has the rare side effects and does not react to treatment the way most animals do. I know that this is both frustrating and interesting to all the people who deal with her.  I get a lot of "wow...that's interesting" when I report her response to things.  For example, when she was prescribed a sedative that should have made her sleep for 10 hours and it didn't affect her at all, the vet said "wow...that's interesting".

Asha's case has been circulated to so many different people.  Friends of friends, colleagues of colleagues.  I figure if we get enough eyes, ears and minds on the case that eventually we'll hit on something that works.  And things are working.  Little things here and there add up to a dog that is much better than I ever expected she would be.  But we all believe that she still have room to improve and this is not as good as it will get.

The appointment with the animal communicator was fascinating. I'll admit, I was and still am skeptical about it, but I am glad we did it and we'll surely do it again. The communicator lives in Puerto Rico, we sent a picture of Asha and some questions we wanted her to be asked.  Jessica, the communicator, was going to meditate and spend the day with Asha's spirit. Then she would send us a report.  The day came and went and we joked about how Asha's spirit had an appointment.  I anxiously waited for the report.

The report came while I was teaching a cycling class, Trevor read it first. When he told me the report was there, he said "you'll cry".  And he was right.  We had given Jessica very little information about Asha, I was careful to not give away too much, I really wanted to see if she was talking to our Asha.  I believe that in some way she was.  She said that when she called Asha's spirit and Asha came to her she would not look her in the face, Asha turned her head away in every direction. That is exactly what Asha does when we get home every day and she runs to us. Once she gets to us, she sits down and if we crouch down to her level, she will not look us in the face.

One of the first things that Jessica reported was a special message from Asha. She said that Asha had given it much thought and she did not want to live if she couldn't live with us. So if a time came where we couldn't keep her, she wanted us to release her from her vessel. She said that Asha was not sad about this, she just wanted us to know.

She then went on to talk about how Asha feels out of control, how she can't sleep because her skin feels like its crawling - which is interesting because when she tries to sleep at night, she'll jump up like she has been poked, like her skin is crawling.  She said she likes to jump off the deck because she gets a rush when she hits the ground.  If you watch her, you can tell this is true.

She also said that Asha is happiest when she is asleep, she is healthy in her dreams.  Every day when I come home, I know this is true because I see this...

If nothing else, it made me feel more compassionate towards Asha.  In the day to day, its sometimes difficult to remember that she is frustrated too. She is trying to make sense of her world and communicate with us. She can't see or hear.  Sometimes I think about that and it really stops me in my tracks.  Imagine....not seeing or hearing....what would that be like?  Her appointment with the communicator has helped us all in many different ways and while it may seem like new age horse shit to some people, I'm glad we did it.

The really crazy thing is that Asha had been sleeping pretty good leading up to her appointment with Jessica, that night, she was all out of sorts.  Her energy had been messed with and she did not like it.

Our next adventure was a meeting with an accupuncturist. We've been wanting to try this for a while, but our behavioral vet wanted us to wait until we stabilized her medication.  After our last appointment we agreed we were at a point where it made sense to explore some Chinese medicine.

We made our appointment.  Everyone who knows Asha and knows anything about accupuncture was sure that she would never allow anyone to place needles in her.  We all expected that she would get started on some herbs and in a couple weeks we'd go back and try to do the accupuncture.

The practitioner we met is a friend of our regular vet and she already knew all about Asha.  That was nice because she had already been formulating a plan.  She felt confident that she could start treating Asha right away.  And she did. The first appointment, she placed 25 needles.  Asha walked around the room and while the Dr would follow her, putting needles in. Asha would growl and bark and cry and fight. Once the needle was placed, she would settle down. When most of the needles were placed, Asha laid down and slept for about 20 minutes.  She seemed relaxed and content.

We also started Asha on some herbs - twice a day - that should help cool her "fire" and calm her.  We have been giving those to her twice a day.  We have been back for two more sessions and have another planned for this week.  After the sessions, for a day or two, Asha gets some relief and sleeps much better during the night. Then on days 3 and 4 she is a little worse.  This treatment is cumulative and so are the herbs.  So the real results will be seen over time.

All I know is that we love Asha and she loves us.  Her world is so chaotic and random, the only things she knows for sure are me, Trevor and the other animals in our home.  She knows that she is safe with us and I do believe that she knows we are working hard to help her.  She's changed my life in so many ways, some good, some bad.  But like every important creature in our lives, she is teaching me things about myself that I would have been able to ignore otherwise.  She is teaching me some things about myself that I honestly don't like.  I've had to come to grips with my obsessive need for control and order.  I am learning that most things are actually out of our control and that doesn't have to mean that they are bad or wrong.  I am also learning that the life you have isn't always the life you think you want....and that's okay.

I have struggled since we got Asha, wondering if she was happy with us.  I can now say that I know she is.  I see joy in her every day and she smiles a lot...just like Maggie and Buster and that makes my heart want to overflow.  Its hard work, but most things worthwhile are hard and there in lies the reward.

Its taking a village

Yesterday, Asha had her three month follow up with the behavioral vet. Dr Pachel is located at Rose City Veterinarians down in Portland. We've only been there once to see him. Asha wanted to drive, I told her maybe on the way home.
All our contact with Dr Pachel since the first visit has been via email. Dr Pachel has certainly earned his keep on this case. I bet I emailed with him just about every day for a while. We have made many different changes to Asha's medicine over the last three months. We've tried at least three anti anxiety drugs and more than 5 sedatives to help her sleep at night. Asha is a mystery...to everyone. She does not respond to anything the way we expect and so we are constantly looking for answers.

Our regular vet is always reaching out to other practitioners, our trainer does the same and our behavioral vet is always asking for our permission to share Asha's file with his colleagues. We've taken Asha to a friend who does Rieke (she hated it) and she even had an appointment with an animal communicator (that was fascinating). Many people tell us what great dog parents we are....the truth is that Asha is so distruptive that we'll do just about anything to find peace and quiet! Actually, we love Asha will all our hearts and we want her to have a good life. When she isn't sleeping at night and she runs and barks all day long, none of us can have a good life. And so we search.

Asha is SO much better that I ever could have imagined she would be. I believe we have really hit on an anxiety drug that can work for her. Yesterday when I asked Dr Pachel about getting Asha to sleep he told me that there may not be anything we can do to make her sleep. We've tried 5 different drugs that all work on different parts of her brain and nervous system and nothing has worked. We are making a dosage change to her anxiety drug and perhaps that will have an effect.

Our regular vet has been telling us for a while that we should try taking Asha to an accupuncturist. Our behavioral vet wanted to wait until we got her meds stabilized. Yesterday, he felt like we were at a point where it made sense to start looking at non traditional medicine. Asha has an appoint on Saturday with an accupuncturist and I am actually really excited to see how she'll respond.

Everyone LOVES Asha. Everywhere we go, people just want to touch her and know about her. We have only been to the behavioral vet once and yet they all remembered Asha. When we arrived, the front desk girls called to the back "remember that blind, deaf Aussie who sees Dr Pachel? She's here, come say hi!". They asked if they could take her picture and post her story on their facebook page. Here it is:
I worry so much about Asha. Is she happy with us? Would she be happier some other place with some other family? She has so many issues that its hard sometimes to not think that maybe its us. Yesterday Dr Pachel told me that the thing he loves most about Asha is her face, she is always smiling. I told him about my worries and he said "She can have all these issues and still be happy." He said he sees a lot of dogs and one thing he knows for sure is that Asha is happy with us. I was looking through my pictures of Asha and noticed that she is always smiling....



Last weekend, we took all the dogs on a hike by a creek. They LOVED it. Asha had never been there and seemed to take it all in. She walked along beside me enjoying the day. The breeze blowing made the tufts of fur behind her ears move. She would hold her nose up to catch the smells in the wind, then put her nose down to smell the earth. She walked into the creek and moved against the current. Her little paws spread in the mud. She liked the way it felt between her toes. It hit me that she was experiencing something new. I love when we can give that to her. It made me so incredibly happy.

We were talking about it and Trevor said that its like Asha is writing her story. She has a big box of crayons, but she doesn't know that all of the colors exist. She has a blank page and every day she colors it in. When she has a new experience, she gets to use a new crayon and sometimes that new crayon will become her favorite. I loved the thought of that. Sweet Asha, coloring away. I can't wait to see how her story progresses.