You’ll become better at keeping her well by identifying early hints of internal imbalance.
Your pet’s symptom language will also help you manage her health challenges.
Learning how is simple and easy. You don’t even to know the meaning of the “words” to get started.
Here’s how:
Changes are key. They help provide the context needed to understand the symptoms.
Observe and record the symptoms and what’s happening in the environment whenever you see change. Write down the details as described below in your journal, calendar, the Evernote app, etc.
Significant environmental changes in lifestyle include anything new in the diet, extra (or too little) exercise, treatments by your veterinarian or other healer, and any changes in you or your family. This becomes important for specifically interpreting what the symptoms are saying.
Even seemingly small lifestyle factors can cause (or resolve) internal changes.
Recording them will help you put the symptom words into the context of the full sentence. You can then better understand them. It’s hard to understand a new word out of the context of the full sentence.
Everyone can learn how. You don’t need a medical degree.
Your pet speaks to you through these symptoms. Understanding their significance allows you to respond correctly.
If you’re too harsh, judgmental or worse, yell back at your pet’s body to “shut up” (which is what suppressing symptoms can do) you can slow and even stop the normal functioning of the body.
Gentle and open-minded communication using the six Ps is key.
The first two are the most critical. Using them allows you to understand the others:
- Patience: Communicating in a foreign language can be slow-going at first. Don’t expect to understand immediately or jump to conclusions. Expecting the quick fix leads to the error of suppressing the symptom language.
- Perseverance: Don’t give up. Work through the symptoms while you try to understand them. Put them into the context of your pet’s overall health.
We all try to be patient with children just learning to communicate and with others just learning to speak your language. Our pets deserve the same.
Here are four more Ps that will help you translate the symptom language and know what to do:
- Problematic: Is this symptom life-threatening like bloat, inability to urinate, etc? Do you need and ER visit ASAP?Does it even bother your pet (or just you)? The more problematic the symptom, the better you need to understand it.
- Persistent: Is this repeating multiple times a day? A few times a week? Just once? The more often that a symptom word gets repeated within the context of a sentence, the more significant it is. A one off occurrence is worth noting but is probably not the key to understanding what to do.
- PROMINENT: Usually, the louder something is shouted out the more you pay attention. However, you don’t necessarily need to focus on or fix the loudest symptom word just because it is yelled at you. The opposite may be true. Prominent symptoms like itching or a discharge may actually be good signs. When interpreted in context.
- Peculiar: How odd is the symptom? Are you seeing, feeling, hearing or smelling something that you’ve never seen before in any other animal? These unusual words can unlock the mystery of the sentence you are trying to understand. So even though your conventional veterinarian may roll her eyes when you mention the loud and room-clearing gas that smells like onions but only after drinking, you’ll know that it’s important.
Cherish the words spoken by your beloved companion animal’s body. Preserve them (another P!).
Patiently persevering while you record and interpret them will help you build health and vitality,
But just like learning any new language, there are lots of subtleties if you want to be fluent. Our next article is your basic dictionary to better understanding them.
Be well.
Drs. Jeff and Christina
