Narratives

I had my Veterinarian come out to see what was wrong with him. He was baffled; he said most people don’t let sheep get this old, so there really isn’t any documentation on aged sheep problems. All of Martock’s vitals were good, his physical checked out fine. The vet had two possible problems, neural damage from years of head butting with the other sheep and goats or a thiamine deficiency. Goats have been known to have seizures from thiamine deficiency; he thought sheep may be the same. I began giving Martock liquid thiamine, which he sucked up out of the syringe like candy, plus oats which are high in thiamine. When Martock would have a seizure I would massage along the bladder meridian, which would relax the muscle spasms and allow his focusing sight to return quicker. I would press the most common acupoints used for seizures as I didn’t know the cause. I was able to minimize his seizure discomfort with acupressure and his seizure frequency reduced. Not being tame I could not do the preventative acupressure on him that would have helped more.

Much to my surprise, waterfowl are very susceptible to having strokes. I can’t verify that was the problem, but it was my best guess, not many poultry doctors to call him to have him checked out. I massaged his Bladder Meridian a couple times a day and  for his heart. We also did rehab swimming in the bathtub for an hour a day. After about a week he was doing well enough to go back out in the pasture

She was walking holding up her left rear leg most of the time. The next day we went to the vet and he did a full examination on her. He said “it is her back let’s do some x-rays and see what’s going on in there”. The x-rays showed the last 2 vertebrae before the sacrum were broken and one was dislocated and twisted. The vet said he was surprised she was walking at all with that kind of damage. There wasn’t anything he could do for her other than medicine for pain management. I had him vaccinate her and check for a micro chip, there wasn’t one. He sent us home with Rimadyl for pain and swelling. He estimated she was about 10 years old, I named her Vega.

I started acupressure treatments on her daily while looking for her people. No one ever claimed her. After a month she stopped walking funny. After two months she was running and after three months she was able to jump up onto the couch. I did the treatments once a day for the first two months, it took about 5 minutes a treatment. After she started running I dropped the treatments down to once a week for a few months.
A year after I got her I took her back to the vet for booster shots. He was amazed and kept asking ” are you sure this is the same dog?”.

I went ahead fed all the other animals and went back to check on her and offered her some food. There was no change in her and she got angry at the food. I did the acupressure points again and went inside weight my options. Normally I would call the Vet out for a diagnosis and treatment and then add acupressure to that. With the pig I had another option, my sister who use to raise hogs. I sent her a text explaining the symptoms and went back outside to check on Penny. When I got to Penny she had started farting (good sign) and I got a response from my sister. She said Intestinal problems and told me the medicine I should get for her. I went and got the medicine and came home and tried to give them to her. Penny did not cooperate very well taking the medicine, I got some into her and continued the acupressure treatments. By evening she didn’t want her dinner but was up moving around, had stopped belching, the fever was gone and she pooped. She did eat a bit of the rice bran pellets I offered her. The next morning she ate some more of the rice bran and still didn’t want the regular pig food. I continued doing acupressure treatment every few hours for that day. That evening Penny seemed interested in eating her dinner but didn’t eat much. Sunday morning I went out to check on her, she hadn’t eaten much more of her dinner. She came up to me and grunted, I did the acupressure treatment and went to feed the other animals. After feeding she was waiting for me looking for attention which is out of the ordinary. I did the acupressure treatment again and she stood there very quietly until I finished. When I tried to walk away she got agitated and blocked my path. So I did more acupressure and then she was happy. Later I offered her some apples and carrots, which she had turned her nose up at the 2 previous days, she ate them right away. She ate her dinner that evening, not as vigorously as usual, but she ate it all. On Monday morning Penny was back to her normal cantankerous self.

WHAT I LEARNED: is how much fat slows down the movement of Qi. As you can see Penny has an abundance of fat. It took at least an hour to get her farting and about 6 hours to poop. In contrast to a chicken about 2 minutes after treatment it pooped. With a colicly horse it worked in about 10 minutes.

I wrapped him in a towel and took him to the emergency animal clinic. The doctor at the ER didn’t give me much hope and suggested I put him down. I asked her to try to help him. An hour later she told me he had puss coming out of his ear and his brain was probably infected from a deep inner ear infection. The infection had pushed his eye out. If he did survive the night he would most likely be blind and brain damaged. I asked her to keep working on him and I would take him to my regular vet in the morning, she agreed. As I was waiting I realized in my panic to get Hypno veterinary help I didn’t do any acupressure on him to help him and I didn’t want to leave him there until I did. After about another hour the Doctor came back and told me they had taken Hypno off of oxygen as the breathing problems had also been caused by the infection and now that it was draining he was breathing better. She suggested I go home and get some rest and offered to let me go see him before I left. I jumped at the chance so I could help him with some acupressure before I went home. I did the opening and closing massage of the bladder meridian on him a few times, to send his Qi through his body. I also applied pressure to the acupoints for infection. I then felt better about leaving him there, and going home for a few hours. When I got home I didn’t rest, I did some research on ear infections in cats and then picked him up in the morning. When I went to my great regular vet, he was on vacation and I got his fill in. She had read the report from the ER vet and agreed that Hypno would not survive or be severely brain damaged after examining him. She tried to talk me into putting him down and when I refused she insisted he go back on oxygen. I explained to her the ER had had him off oxygen hours ago and she wouldn’t listen. I asked about ear polyps that I had read about. She told me it wasn’t that. Thankfully my regular vet is also my friend and I am allowed to be in the treatment area. I watched as she did virtually nothing for Hypno other than what the ER had already done. She X-rayed him again even though she had the x-rays from the ER, and then redid the blood work. I worried about his eye drying out, because he couldn’t close his eyelid. I asked her about it and she had a tech put some ointment on his eye. By the end of the day I was quite frustrated with her and asked to have Hypno released so I could take him home. She told me I had to take him back to the ER for the night. I said I was taking him home. She insisted I would end up back at the ER that night if I took him home. She begrudgingly released him and didn’t give me any antibiotics or eye ointment to take home. I asked her for some and she then gave Hypno a shot of antibiotics and said you will be back at the ER in a couple hours and that will hold until then. I took him home, did the opening and closing massage and acupressure points on him for ear infections. A half hour later he was up and about and drinking. He acted like he wanted to eat and kept smelling the food but didn’t eat. I realized that he probably couldn’t smell because of the infection and cats won’t eat if they can’t smell. I searched the internet for an acupoint to help restore the sense of smell and found one. I used it on him a couple times that evening and then he started eating. The next morning he was playing with a feather before he ate breakfast and his eye was almost back to its proper position. I did have to take him back to the vets office because they didn’t give me any antibiotics to take home. The fill in vet thought I would be back in with him from the ER first thing in the morning and had called the office to see what happened with him (she wasn’t working that day). The other regular vet, who had been doing surgeries most of the previous day, was there for the follow up. He had seen the shape Hypno was in the day before and had tried to reassure me the fill in vet would do a good job. As I didn’t show up first thing from the ER and I called for an appointment, they were surprised he was still alive let alone almost normal. The doctor said he couldn’t believe that it was the same cat he had seen in the oxygen kennel the day before. He gave me some take home antibiotics and I continued acupressure treatments at home for a week. Later the next week the fill in vet called and asked about Hypno. She couldn’t believe what the other doctor and the techs were telling her and she wanted to see him. I took him down for her to see and she couldn’t believe it. I told her I did acupressure on him at home and it turned him around quickly. Her response was I guess it didn’t hurt anything. Needless to say she will never touch one of my animals again. The ear infection wouldn’t totally clear up and I took him to my regular vet (when he was back from vacation) he found an ear polyp. He did an operation and removed it. Hypno is neither blind nor brain damaged and has made a full recovery.

The ER doctor had asked to let her know how Hypno did as well. I did go back and tell her everything that happened and she was very pleased at his recovery. She told me she is planning on taking classes to do acupuncture for animals and has seen that work very well. I told her I was thinking about putting together a book of charts because the other books were so hard to follow. She greatly encouraged me to do the book. She was so excited when I finally showed up with a book to show her and she bought one of the first copies, which led to a couple more sales to the acupuncture vets she knows. Hopefully Hypno’s unfortunate misery has led to many more animals being able to be helped by acupressure at home