Holistic Medicine for Pets

  • Many holistic veterinarians think both dogs and cats can benefit from being fed fresh food. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:

Transcript

Veterinarians who use a holistic approach to healing make up only about one percent of
all veterinarians in the country. But their numbers are growing. And so is their
popularity among pet owners. The mainstream veterinary community wants to see more
science behind the methods used by holistic veterinarians. Kinna Ohman
reports:


The snow’s starting to fall as I arrive at a small, yellow farmhouse. I hurry my dogs up to
the front door and step inside.


(Sound of dogs)


This is the veterinary clinic of Dr. Konrad Kruesi. He’s a holistic veterinarian with a
different approach to animal healthcare. One thing Dr. Kruesi does is to take a lot of time
teaching clients how to help heal their animals. He says it’s hard work but most clients
embrace the idea:


“Nine out of ten of them do a wonderful job. They do make food, they learn
massage, they learn to stretch their animal, they’ll buy air filters for the allergic
individual. They see that healing is a progression.”


Pet owners who switch to holistic veterinarians such as Kruesi swear by this approach,
and Neil and Joannie Alcorn are perfect examples. They found Dr. Kruesi after the local
veterinarians said they’d run out of options to help their dog Poppy. Poppy developed
complications after picking up a rare parasite, and the veterinarians tried everything from
exploratory surgery to steroids. Neil Alcorn says after ten months of this, they told him
to prepare for his dog’s death:


“The vets were now basically saying you should get prepared for the fact Poppy’s
not going to last much longer. And they didn’t have anything else to offer.”


But the Alcorns decided to keep trying. They researched holistic veterinarians and came
across the name of Konrad Kruesi. Right away, Dr. Kruesi says he taught the Alcorns
how to prepare fresh, homemade food for their dog. They started with a simple puree of
natural foods and offered it to Poppy. Within a few days, their dog was showing more
interest in food for the first time in months. Dr. Kruesi then added natural supplements to
help build up Poppy’s strength. Neil Alcorn says the good results continued:


“It was so remarkable. Within between two to three months, she had been weaned
off of every single medication, including the steroids, and was beginning to function
again as a living being.”


Veterinarians such as Kruesi say this kind of care shows how a natural and holistic
approach should be part of standard veterinary treatment, but there’s no policy within the
mainstream veterinary community to link clients such as the Alcorns with holistic
veterinarians.


Dr. Craig Smith is with the American Veterinary Medical Association. He says most vets
are cautious about fully supporting holistic veterinary medicine until they see more
science:


“Unfortunately, for too many of the complementary and alternative veterinary
medical therapies, including some of the nutritional recommendations, we don’t
have the science. I’m not saying it doesn’t work, it obviously does work for some
animals. The question is how can you, as a practicing veterinarian, develop your
level of confidence to say this is going to work for your dog.”


So the larger community of veterinarians is reluctant to endorse holistic medicine as part
of standard animal care, but this doesn’t stop pet owners such as the Alcorn from
continuing to use the holistic methods for their animals. They’re much more involved in
their animals’ healthcare, from preparing meals to being part of decision making at the
local veterinary office. Neil Alcorn says they don’t need to go further than Poppy for
proof it works. She’s still going strong six years after the local veterinarians gave up on
her:


“She was sixteen years old this last September. This weekend I took her hiking for
several two to three mile hikes. And she still plays with us. She’s gray, she’s
showing her age but then so are we all. And we have every hope of sending birthday
congratulations to Dr. Kruesi on Poppy’s seventeenth birthday next September.
(laughs) Even to us, it’s a bit of an amazing story.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Beautiful Drafty Old Houses

  • Historic homes like James Boyd Brent's pictured above are beautiful, but not very energy efficient. (Photo by Diane Richard)

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:

Transcript

People who choose to live in historic houses tend to appreciate old-world
charm. But that charm often comes at the expense of energy efficiency.
Old windows and doors let in cold drafts and leak out warm air. So
homeowners are often forced to balance their interests in historical
integrity and aesthetics against their environmental principles:


My neighbor James Boyd Brent had me over to his house the other day.
He lives in a beautiful old farmhouse that’s about 130 years old. It’s got tall
ceilings. Rickety staircases. Original windows, floors and doors. But what
makes it cool also makes it cold. Really cold.


James recently had an energy audit done. Today he’s showing me all the
problems he needs to fix. He greets at the door me wearing a knit hat. And, even
though he’s lanky, he looks a bit padded.


“Well, I’ve got a vest, like a t-shirt, a shirt – a very thick shirt, actually –
then a sweater and another sweater. So that’s just four layers.”


That’s because it’s really cold inside. James is a Professor of Design at the University of Minnesota. He has a
taste for beautiful old things. But that puts him in a bind. Does he sacrifice
what he loves about his old home to improve his green cred? Or does he
simply live with the howling gales blowing down his hallways?


It’s a dilemma he confronts every winter. Preserving aesthetics versus
conserving energy. He says it’s not a strict either-or. And he’s willing to
install modern conveniences when it makes sense:


“I’m not interested in being faithful to some sort of bourgeois idea about what
history is.”


To prove it, he shows me the ultra-high-efficiency furnace and water
heater he recently installed in his basement. But I notice something else
down here:


Richard: “I see light coming through there.”


Brent: “Yeah. Exactly. That’s daylight. There’s not even a window. There’s
nothing. There’s just a hole.”


Upstairs, it’s bad enough. James’s house rarely tops 60 degrees. Down
here though, I can see my breath:


“Last year it froze down here. Rollicks’s cat water froze solid. I saw her
once sort of tapping it with her paw with a look of irritation.”


We leave the basement and its gaping hole for another day. Today’s chores start in the
kitchen:


“Okay, first of all, I’m working on this door here. Actually, as you can see, I’ve
sealed this all around in layers, actually. But I’ve just decided it’s not
enough. It’s still letting in great currents of cold air coming through. So I’m
going to actually seal the whole thing, right on the outside here. I’m just
sticking that down here a bit more strongly on the bottom. Because actually, that’s where
the cold air is coming through.”


The energy audit helped James figure out where he was losing the most
heat. Windows, doors, baseboards, walls and attic all were culprits:


“The basic thing is, that’s what came out of the energy audit. That all of
this sort of stuff that I’m doing now is basically, um, the sign of a complete
loser.”


Richard: “What do you mean?”


Brent: “Well, in the sense that it’s taking up all of my time and I might as well live
in a shack.”


James is not alone. Lots of people are in the same fix, loving their
beautiful home, hating that it’s as drafty as a barn.


I talked to Paul Morin about James’s frustration. Paul is a home energy
expert. He says the taping sheets of plastic over old doors and windows
should pay off:


“That really reduces the amount of air infiltration and also adds another
insulating layer. So that’s very effective.”


Paul says there’s lots more James can do, but taping up things is cheap and easy. Now, James is not looking forward to pulling down all the film next spring. But
he’s willing to keep doing it, because it’s the only way he can
balance his appreciation for the past and his commitment to the future:


“I mean, obviously I could heat this house just by cranking up the furnace and
not worrying. But it would cost literally thousands of dollars a quarter.
And also it’s just a complete waste of energy. I do have a sort of sense of
the connection between wasting money, and also wasting energy, wasting resources
and being wasteful.”


So, like a lot of people who love their old homes, James’ weekends will
be spent sealing up his house. It’s that or spend a lot of
money on expensive upgrades, or wasting money on heat that escapes
through the drafty windows and doors. And that big hole in the
basement.


For the Environment Report, I’m Diane Richard.

Related Links

Who Should Watch Big Farms?

  • Hog manure being injected into the ground and tilled under. The manure fertilizes the crops, but if too much is applied it can foul up waterways. (Photo by Mark Brush)

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:

Transcript

Big livestock operations can raise thousands of cows, chickens or pigs
under one roof. It helps keep the price of food lower. But neighbors
complain the government’s not doing a good enough job of monitoring the
pollution these farms produce. Rebecca Williams reports there’s a
debate heating up in several states over who should be regulating these
big farms:


The days of small farms with different kinds of livestock grazing in
the pasture are fading from the landscape.


They’re being replaced by farms that specialize in one kind of animal –
and raise thousands of them. They’re called concentrated animal
feeding operations, or CAFOs.


There are battles in several states right now over who should be keeping an eye
on the CAFOs. Usually, the state departments of environmental
protection have power under the federal Clean Water Act to enforce laws
and issue permits. But in the Midwest, in states such as Ohio and
Michigan, and in the West, in states such as Oregon and Idaho, they either have transferred or are working to transfer oversight power to the state agriculture departments – and get U.S. EPA approval.


Jerry Van Woerkom is a Republican state senator in Michigan. Right
now, the state Department of Environmental Quality – or DEQ – has the
oversight powers. But Senator Van Woerkom is sponsoring a package of
bills that would put most of the state’s big livestock farms under the
Department of Agriculture:


“Those people tend to be supportive and come with the attitude of we’re
going to try to work together to solve this problem. Whereas when they
work with the DEQ the attitude is more like we’re coming with a
hammer and if we find anything you’ve done that’s out of line, we’re
going to wop you with it.”


The CAFOs are in the spotlight because they can produce tens of
thousands of gallons of urine and manure each day. That liquefied
manure is eventually spread onto farm fields.


The Environmental Protection Agency says that waste can wash from
fields into streams and creeks. That can cause fish kills. Animal
waste has also gotten into drinking water and made people sick.


Lynn Henning runs a small farm. She says there are 13 CAFOs within a
10 mile radius of her Michigan farmhouse. She says the manure odors
are overwhelming:


“We can’t hang laundry when the emissions are in the air. We have
severe fly outbreaks. We’ve had family farmers that have been diagnosed with hydrogen
sulfide poisoning from emissions from the CAFOs.”


Henning says the current oversight system is weak. She says the
Department of Environmental Quality doesn’t have enough funding to
monitor the CAFOs. So that job often falls to residents like her. She
says putting the Department of Agriculture in charge of oversight would
make the problems even worse:


“The MDA has no enforcement authority and they promote agriculture in
Michigan. It’s like putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.
You can’t give authority to punish to an agency that’s promoting.”


But it could become a wider trend if the states that are proposing the
switch now actually make it happen.


Karla Raettig is an attorney with the Environmental Integrity Project.
It’s a group that’s been critical of weakening environmental laws.
She’s been tracking trends in enforcement of livestock farms:


“I think the Farm Bureau and other really large industry advocates are
seeing a chance to get regulation that is perhaps more cooperative,
less regulatory and less on the enforcement side. It isn’t totally
nefarious but I think it could have outcomes that are not anticipated.”


Raettig says you have to wonder what will happen without the threat of
enforcement from an environmental agency.


But Senator Jerry Van Woerkom from Michigan argues that farmers are
more likely to do the right thing if they’re overseen by a friendlier
agency, as he proposes:


“I mean you’re not able to cover up problems that happen, it gets in
the newspaper, people know when problems happen. But I believe that the
agriculture department will work with people, especially if people are
getting a bad reputation. I think they will work with them and if
those people do get out of line, it’s back to the DEQ.”


Environmentalists and small farmers are worried about the idea of
states handing off oversight of CAFOs… from their environmental
watchdog agencies to their agencies in charge of promoting the business
of agriculture.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Hazelnuts Crop of the Future?

  • John Munter grows hazelnuts on his farm in northern Minnesota. He says the bushes are better for the environment than corn or soybeans, and that hazelnuts could be an important food in a future of climate change. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

You might have tried hazelnut flavoring in your coffee. And we all know about the hazelnuts in European chocolate bars. Hazelnuts – or filberts – are traditionally grown in Turkey, Italy, and Oregon. Now, researchers are developing varieties that could thrive in more challenging climates, such as the Great Lakes region. A man in northern Minnesota is growing hazelnuts. It’s part of his attempt to live off the land. And he says hazelnuts are the perfect crop for a future of global climate change. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill visited his farm:

Transcript

You might have tried hazelnut flavoring in your coffee. And we all know about the hazelnuts in
European chocolate bars. Hazelnuts – or filberts – are traditionally grown in Turkey, Italy, and
Oregon. Now, researchers are developing varieties that could thrive in more challenging
climates, such as the Great Lakes region. A man in northern Minnesota is growing hazelnuts. It’s
part of his attempt to live off the land. And he says hazelnuts are the perfect crop for a future of
global climate change. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill visited his
farm:


John Munter lives on 40 acres of hay fields and woods. He and his wife and their four children
live in a ranch-style house in the middle of the fields. Munter works at a Northwest Airlines
reservation center. But his heart is here at the farm. It was settled by his grandfather, a Finnish
immigrant, 90 years ago.


Munter has a full beard. He wears round wire-rimmed glasses. And when he goes out to do the
chores, he puts on a fraying denim jacket that must be 50 years old. It belonged to his great-
uncle.


(sound of Munter walking outdoors)


“Here’s our maple sugaring operation… this is the garden here, you can see it’s pretty small.
We’re so busy it’s hard to spend a lot of time gardening… and to my right is the log sauna…”


John Munter has a lot of projects. He wants to be as self-sufficient as he can on the farm.


Twelve years ago he planted some hazelnut bushes south of the old farmhouse. They’re protected
from the north wind here, and they’ve grown to about seven feet tall.


This is a new crop for northern Minnesota. There are wild hazelnuts growing around here, but no
one had tried the newer varieties, that are bred to produce more and bigger nuts.


Four years ago, Munter’s bushes began producing nuts. He’s especially happy with one of the
bushes.


“It really just pounds out the nuts. They’re not real big, but they’re plentiful, last year we got
maybe two pounds of nuts from this little bush right here… Now this bush here produces nuts
early. They’re a signal to me because when the squirrels start attacking my nuts, they take after
this one first because they ripen earlier. You can see a bush loaded with hazelnuts, and the next
morning it’s stripped. And then they go to the next bush, and the next one, and so on. (Hemphill:
‘Then how do you get anything out of them?’) Well, I’m letting the animals have them at this
point, because I’m too busy with all my other projects to process all these little nuts.”


You have to take the long view with hazelnuts. Right now, these bushes are 12 years old, and
they’re just beginning to produce nuts. But Munter says in ten years, he could get hundreds of
pounds.


He could sell them to candy-makers, or just eat them. They’re high in protein and vitamins. And
Munter says the oil is as healthy as olive oil. Most hazelnuts come from Europe and Oregon.
John Munter is determined to show they’ll grow in northern Minnesota.


“They’re great for climate change too. Because they bend and don’t break… in hurricanes,
tornadoes and wind storms, whatever… if a forest fire burns it over, they’ll pop back up from the
base there.”


John Munter says hazelnuts could be an important source of food if the climate gets harsher.


Munter’s not the only one in the Great Lakes region trying out hazelnuts. Some researchers say
they’re the crop of the future. They say the bushes are better for the environment than corn and
soybeans.


Hazelnut bushes stay in the ground for years, so the soil isn’t eroded by plowing. And they’re
very good at absorbing fertilizers. That means excess fertilizer doesn’t run into nearby streams.


A few farmers are planting them, and thinking of switching gradually, from corn and soybeans, to
hazelnuts.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.