We came home from vacation last month to find our dog, Creasy, suffering from an eye infection. While we were unable to determine the root cause, the dry summer causes so much dust to be stirred up it’s not much wonder those with eyes close to the ground suffer more. I thought it looked better the second day, less swollen, and she seemed to have it open more. There was a lot of discharge, mucous and such, but as we settled back into life at home I neglected to pay much attention to her eye for a couple days.

Two days later, however, we realized it was time for action. The eye was swollen again, the mucosa pink and the mucous had returned. She needed help and she needed it now. My mind spun; I couldn’t wait to brew a fennel, rose and plantain tea and let is cool before I could wash her eye. I chided myself for waiting so long. I consulted Juliette de Bairacli Levy’s book The Complete Handbook for the Dog and Cat a wonderful resource from a vitalist and herbal tradition. Levy recommends raw milk for eye afflictions and as luck would have it I had picked up some raw goat milk from a neighbor earlier that day! I poured some chilled milk into a shot glass and took Creasy outside. Tilting her head back I gentle dropped some of the RAW milk into each of her eyes, letting her blink profusely and repeating several times.The key here is that the milk be raw. No, your Organic, co-op bought milk will not work. No, your Wal-mart skim milk will definitely not work. Sorry. And I’m even sorrier to tell you how difficult it is to find raw milk, but that is for another post.

With eye afflictions, as with ear afflictions, you want to treat both sides even if only one is bothering you. The results were almost instantaneous. The chilled milk soothed the irritation within about 20 minutes. Her eye was open and obviously feeling better. After the first night she looked and felt almost totally normal. As with all tenacious infections you want to continue treatment past the point of obvious recovery; we used the milk treatment about 3 times a day for 3 days total.

creasy doggie

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Backyard Chickens and Super Immune Stock

Written on May 16, 2010, by admin in Blog

Part of our continuing quest for a more sustainable homestead is adding chickens to our family. Our family recently swelled to a record 53 members now that we have 50 chickens! We purchased some additional chicks this year to add to our other 8 working ladies; other chicks were gifted to us and raised by their mom as shown here. What a difference there is in the chicks raised under a lamp and those who had the warmth, protection and instruction of a parent! Nature sure does know what its doing. However, for the time being we have chosen to keep a rooster free coop.