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Emotional
disorders in Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine are
considered shen disturbances.
Shen has
many meanings but the simplest are mind and spirit. The
Heart is responsible for storing shen. Shen rules the
mind, mental activities, memory and the whole body.
A high
performance show dog was brought in for loss of
confidence and not performing well. The dog was
extremely timid on the first visit. I had to ignore the
dog because looking at the dog was taken as an
intimidating behavior.
The owner
reported the dog ran away from strangers and was in
general very insecure. The dog had been confident when
it was young but had experienced some emotional trauma
and lost her confidence.
The dog
was very scared of the new environment and frightened
when I touched her. Any movement on my part toward the
dog would scare her and she would hide behind the owner.
The owner was very diligent and knowledgeable with
homemade diets and had the dog on Duck and potato kibble
and cooling, yin foods such as spinach, brown rice,
kelp, strawberries and pineapple.
Evaluation
of the dog showed that she was of a fire and metal
constitution. The dog's tongue was red and dry, the ears
were hot, and the pulses were fast, forceful and
slightly weak on the left side. The dog had sensitivity
on the back points which correlated to the Heart
meridian. This animal had a shen disturbance and loose,
diarrheic stool. On a scale of 0-10 with 0 being the
worst and 10 being the best, owner rated the dog at a 3.
The TCVM
diagnosis was Heart Yin deficiency with Spleen Qi
Deficiency. Yin is the fluid and cooling aspect of the
body. The dog was too hot and was depleting its fluids.
The treatment strategy was to nourish the Heart Yin,
calm the Heart, and tranquilized the mind. Acupuncture
treatment was done and diet recommendations were made to
tonify the Metal constitution and tonify Yin.
On the
second visit, acupuncture was done and an herb was
prescribed to calm the Shen.
On the
third visit, four weeks later, the dog's quality score
had increased to a 6-7 and she had won second place in a
competition. The owner stated she would have won first
if she hadn't been going after other dogs. This dog was
no longer timid or scared.
Eleven
weeks after the initial visit the dog walked calmly into
a strange office and laid down on the floor. She
approached me, happy to see me. After I inserted the
needles, I had to walk over her to go out of the room
and the dog did not even flinch. The owner said the dog
was very friendly at the last show, was going up to
people and was much more confident. The dog had improved
to an 8.5 on the quality scale. The owner moved so the
treatments ended. This case illustrated how food
therapy, Chinese herbs and acupuncture helped resolve
the emotional issues in this dog.
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Sources:
Xie, H.
and V. Preast, Xie's Veterinary Acupuncture.
Blackwell Publishing
,
Ames, Iowa
. 2007, p.290.
Maciocia,
G. Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine, A Comprehensive Guide.
Elsevier
.
New York
. 2004. p. 31.
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