Sugi’s recipe for hot, waxy ears

  • Lesson from Sugi: don’t give me too powerful medicines
  • Sugi says: “I’m a sensitive guy…”
Sugi often gets hot waxy ears sometimes when he’s having an allergic reaction, or if he’s stressed. If there’s lots of wax he can develop a candida infection in his ears and they become itchy and painful. A couple of months ago we had to have the vet remove his ear hair and flush out the wax. Argh! it was an ordeal for him and he spent a few days recovering from the anesthetic. I’ve tried using different solutions and medicines in his ears to flush out the wax and/or relieve the pain and itch. He either reacts allergically or the medicines are too toxic (cortisone, etc) to use repeatedly.
I recently consulted with a great book called “Four Paws, Five Directions” by Cheryl Schwartz. For waxy build up she recommends using a natural remedy solution of lavender, calendula and agrimony. This solution seems to ease the itching and calm the ear from producing all that wax. Here’s my recipe:
  • 1/4 tsp lavender flowers steeped in 1 cup hot water
  • add 10 drops of calendula tincture (the hot water from the lavender tea will evaporate the alchohol
  • 1 drop agrimony tincture
Once the solution has cooled, use a cotton ball to dribble into ears (maybe a 1/2 to 1 tsp per ear). Massage the base of the ear to get it down into the canal. He will then shake out the excess. Gently clean out the excess with a few cotton balls.

Sugi’s itchy feet – part II

  • Lesson from Sugi: avoiding allergens and keeping an eye on symptoms can help…but maybe there’s something else at work…
  • Sugi says, “My feet are still feeling better!”

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story: Sugi’s feet have gotten much better and he does not have the terrible rash. Now and then he licks them a bit and they seem a bit pink between the toes, but so far he’s free of the rash that I described in the previous post.

In the previous post, I had speculated that his root rash may have been caused by the carpets which may have had debris left in them from a recent flood. Since that time, we had the rugs professionally cleaned and Sugi’s feet improved!

But that’s not really the end of the story….

While Sugi had his foot rash, Greg too had a rash on his hands! Sugi’s rash started on his front right foot at the knuckle area and between his toes. At the same time, Greg had a rash on both his hands also in the knuckle area. Sugi’s rash cleared up at the same time Greg’s rash cleared up!

I am proposing two hypothesis: 1. either it was a coincidence, both of them suffering from the same malady manifesting a skin reaction in the same physical location (perhaps both allergic to the dirty rugs); 2. or Sugi and Greg are entangled (this idea is based on research into areas of quantum physics and theories about the zero point field.)

In addition to Greg’s and Sugi’s connection, I’ve noticed over the past half year or so a link between Sugi’s and my own state of health. When I manifest symptom, Sugi manifests a similar physical symptom. More on this in the next post…..

Sugi’s itchy feet

  • Lesson from Sugi: allergies sometimes show up on dogs as a rashy inflammation on their feet. This can be managed by avoiding the allergen and keeping the feet soothed with calendula and hypericum.
  • Sugi says, “My feet feel better!”

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story: In early February we noticed that Sugi was obsessively licking his front paw. He also seemed to have a bit of a limp. We examined it and saw that there was red, inflamed skin around his toe nails and between his toes. On a back foot that he was also licking, the area between the pads was red and inflamed. He must have been licking these for a few days because they were quite sore and bruised.

Because the front foot was raw and had broken skin, we first treated it with polysporin. We washed the area, dried it and applied the polysporin, and then wrapped his foot in self-adhesive gauze and cloth tape. Whenever we would take him outside, we had to remove this bandage and then clean, reapply and rebandage when he got home. We did this for 2 days. We then tried a few herbal tinctures , including lavendar and goldenseal, on the effected areas. These did not have a lasting effect and he would just get itchy again after a few hours.

We finally started using a herbal calendula ointment. This worked wonders! In addition we put baby socks taped at the ankles on his feet instead of the costly  bandage. We did this for about 5 days until his feet cleared up completely.

During this period, especially at night, he would lick the bandages as though he was still itchy or sore. When it was really bothering him, I would give him homeopathic hypericum and he calmed right down and stopped licking. It must have been a big relief because he would often roll on his back in bliss! We could see that he was much calmer.

Trying to find the problematic allergens, we eliminated a high-lignan flax oil from his diet which was something I had recently changed from his usual flax oil. However, we had also heard that dogs can have a skin reaction from an environmental allergen. Two weeks before we noticed Sugi’s foot problem, we had a flood in the main floor of our suite. All the rugs had been soaked and the water had seeped under the floor boards. We had vacuumed out all the water and dried the soaked areas. We dried all the rugs but maybe they contained some nastey stuff from the flood. After we noticed Sugi’s foot problem we had all the rugs professionally cleaned.

His feet cleared up when we removed these two allergen sources and treated the itch!

I’m still not completely sure what caused his foot rash. I will re-introduce the more refined flax oil with him in a couple of weeks and see what happens.