In High Praise of the Stinking Rose

I have a bunch of dogs (9, I think, though I stopped counting two or three dogs ago). In the area where I live, ticks are a terrible problem on pets. We used to give our dogs these injections that would keep the ticks away (really, I don't even want to know what poison was in those injections -- I'm sure it is horrible, but I figured having ticks all over the house -- especially with a baby -- was worse). The guy would come by once a month, inject all of the dogs, no ticks for at least a month. The last time he came, he said there was a new product out that would keep the ticks away for six months. Wahoo! we thought. Less poison in the dogs and more time until the next round of shots. Now, unfortunately, the shots did next to nothing for the ticks. They all still had ticks, and after a few weeks, had ticks as badly as they did when he gave the shots. Grrr....

Fast forward a month or so, and I've picked up a book called The Nature of Animal Healing by vet Martin Goldstein. It's fantastic, and for everyone out there with animals, I urge you to read this book. You may never feed your cat Friskies or your dog Alpo again! He also gives lots of ways to get rid of parasites naturally, one of them being fresh garlic. I thought, what the heck, it can't hurt. So we started with a little freshly grated garlic in each doggy bowl each morning, and after a couple of weeks of this, guess what? Not a single tick! Not one! No fleas, either! I'm so overjoyed I can't even express it. It's hard to get away from ticks here, but at least the ticks are away from us.

Now if I can figure out a way to make my own pet food AND make it affordable, I'd like to do that. At least the dogs get plenty of vitamin C by way of all of the mangoes they half eat and then leave lying around the yard. One cat, my 18-year-old Boo Boo Man, loves to eat veggies and cheese, so he gets a lot better food than the other three who only eat the canned tuna and dry stuff. When I have money, I like to get Tiki Cat for Boo, because it's nothing but fish, no by-products (think about how disgusting that word is for a minute) or fillers. And he's done incredibly well on it. A year ago, I thought for sure we were going to lose him. But an improved diet has completely turned him around, and though he's very old, losing his sight and hearing, in other respects he's like a two-year-old cat again. I know, of course, I can do better with my animals' diets, and I'm certainly trying to do so, one step at a time.