The End Of The Journey...

Hello blog....sorry I have not visited for awhile...but I know your always here...waiting for my next entry...

I wish I could post more often...but every key stoke is a drop of energy that I have not had available to share with you.

This is an important time for me...I am a graduate and hold my masters degree in Traditional Chinese Medicine.

How odd it is for me to be at the end of the road...I can turn my head to the side and see where I was...I can now face forward and see where I am going to.

What an exhilarating time...to have finished such a long term goal.

However, I am not quite done. I am studying for those state board exams Aug 5th. I have not even been to the gym....its all about getting completed. This exam is extraordinarily difficult and takes hundreds of hours to to prepare for it.

I also have to feel very proud of PawHealer. I now have three employees and getting ready for the fourth.

Once I finish my exam, I can then dedicate full time to my labor of love...and make PawHealer what it is meant to be!

Bye blog...I will be back soon...I promise.

This is our PawHealer Chart....its so interesting because I attract a group of 50+ women that are highly educated....

I wonder if its because I am 50+ and a woman that this occurs....

I have learned about internet marketing...that you just really never have a clue.

For instance, I recently made a change to my website, and I didn't think anything about it...but for a few weeks after that, the on line sales dropped dramatically....then one night I was sitting there and thinking about it...and it dawned on me that the drop had been since I made that change to the navigation.

I changed it the other day...and wahmmmm....the e-sales popped right up again.

The internet is such a weird phenomena

Final Year ends...Graduation

O my.......this morning I start taking my finals for graduation. Sometimes I feel like crying....

Between working on PawHealer, and trying to wrap up school, I feel overwhelmed. But I seem to be making my way through it all.

This morning I go take the first of several exams...the good news about this one is that I can retake portions of whatever I don't pass...But still...

So how about some laughs? Here is a new diet that I am following because my butt continues to expand!

The Dawn Keye Diet

Anger Management

Anger Management

Husband says: When I get mad at you, you never fight back. How do you control your anger?

Wife says: I clean the toilet.

Husband says: How does that help?

Wife says: I use your toothbrush.

The Story Of Lollo & Her Liver Qi Stagnation

I by accident posted this from my herbal blog to this blog...and I was going to delete it, but it is a great cat story...so I've decided to leave it. I think "The Food Lady" did a great job with Lollo's story and its a cute read....

"bj@juno.com" <bj@juno.com> (Add as Preferred Sender)
Date:	Fri, Mar 27, 2009 4:18 pm
To:	holly@pawhealer.com

Hello, I'm Hedgie. Before the food lady contacted PawHealer, I was miserable. I was so grumpy that I seldom got any loves. When the food lady did try to be nice to me I was so irritated that I couldn't stand being touched. I squealed, scratched her and even bit her once. Nobody wanted to be near me because my breath was so bad you could smell me from two feet away. My coat was really ugly, so much so that the food lady took me to the groomer. (I was nice to them and they loved me and and that really ticked the food lady off.) The truth is, it's hard to live in a house with 6 other cats, when you want to be number one all the time. And, I should be number one, because I came to live here when I was 4 days old. The food lady fed me with a bottle and gave me loves every 2 hours. But then as I got older the time got to be less and less and I had to share more and more of the time. It was all down hill from there.

My health problems started about a year and a half ago. The food lady took me to this place where there were lots of others like me and some other kinds of creatures that made some kind of silly barking noises. They stuck needles in me and made me go to sleep. While I was sleeping they hurt my mouth and said that my bad breath was from sores in my mouth caused by bad teeth. Within months of that ordeal, the food lady took me back again and I had to go through the whole thing all over again. That time I had to stay a whole week because I won't let the food lady give me medicine and the people at that horrible place had to do it. In the end it did no good, because within a few months nobody could stand to be near me again.

To her credit, the food lady didn't want me to have to go through that again, so she looked for an alternative that would be less stressful for me. She found PawHealer and told them all about me. They told the food lady that it was not my teeth that was causing my problem, but that I was a very angry kitty and my liver had become toxic. They sent her some Chinese herbs and I have been eating my food with the herbs for one week now. In that short time my breath has improved 85% and I am feeling so much better. I have been getting lots of hugs and loves and I have not felt like scratching or biting. I also have not minded the company of the other cats and, in fact, I actually felt like playing with Lena yesterday. I hate her.

So, here I am sitting on the porch, enjoying the sun, the birds, the sound of the wind in the palms. I'm loving life and the food lady so much more. I can't wait until next week.

Hedgie (Lollobrigida), Lollo for short.
My food lady is Jean T from Miami Springs Florida

Thank you PawHealer

Can You say Tired?

OMG....I feel as if I am barley going to make it...this is the final semester with two weeks to go.

business has been doing great....10 hour work days and being available 7 days a week...

IS MAKING ME TIRED!

Deep to the bone tired....

And still life is still up in the air...

I am considering moving to Maryland if things do not work out with my house. At this point, after looking around at making a completely new life on the other side of the country where housing is dirt cheat....I'm not so sad! (also I can acupuncture pets)

I have seen the most beautiful homes for lease as well as rent to own, or for that matter for sale and that are like what I live in now..but at a fraction of the cost.

But....I have been wondering if owning is something I really want to do at this point. I'm thinking

SAVE SAVE SAVE....

EGADS....our world is upside down.

I went and saw a cute movie last night called Sunshine Cleaning...a small cute film...

Every weekend I go to the movies all by myself...sometimes twice in the same weekend. I'm making up for all that time where I never went because I felt I had to have my nose in a book.

Ahhh...I forgot the other benefit of moving out of state is that right when I get out of school and take the national exams...Wa La...i am a certified acupuncturist...it does not take near the hours of study as is does to get certified for the state of California...

so....not sure why I'm even hesitating at this point....

I have to add this video...i love weird dog videos...

When You Least Expect It

I had to laugh at this one......

I received a request form a guy who wanted herbs for his dog that had started to have some problems. So, I gave him a call and we started talking about the dog...

He then mentioned that he had seen my picture on the About Us page on my website.

Heheheheh...that was 18 months ago...before I got PawHealer up and running and became totally consumed.

Thinking back to that time, and looking at my picture...I remember thinking how I was "too fat" or not fit enough or whatever the crap that cycled through my mind at the tim.

Ahhh how I now long for those far away gym rat days....

Anyway....so I started talking to him...and he seems really nice. The conversation was interesting...and he then tells me he had looked at my picture...and he thought I was nice looking.

Well I was at the time! Now....as I have said...life has set in..on my ass!

Anyway...Later that day I received an e-mail from him...it's a picture of his dog, him and his daughter...and the entire family is adorable.

He is extremely handsome..and on top of it he's 50...OMG. I couldn't believe it.

So I sent him back an e-mail that I don't know who is cuter, his dog or him....

He sends me back a response telling me that he considers me a "hottie"....OMG as I roll my eyes...

That's so much pressure!

To be considered someone's "Hottie"...and 53 years old?

I don't do well under pressure.......

February

Hello Blog...It's been awhile, I loved this picture and had to post it.

It's hard to write after a full day of work and then a night of school....

None The Less Time to check in....

Last semester of school...hurray.

Business is doing pretty good considering that there is a depression going on. Just my luck that I start a business and the bottom falls out of the economy. But I shouldn't whine because it's paying the bills and it's growing and I really enjoy doing it.

Trying to decide my next step....what doctoral program to enter....

Pinky and Daisy are great....and healthy...and so is that Bad Dog Chico Martini

I started dating the ex-BF again...MISTAKE.

All it took was about 2 weeks and I new I had made a mistake. It really is true that you just can't go back....

So I am happy and single, and I really mean it, I have no desire to date. I am too busy to have to "give"...I know that sounds selfish. So Be It.

Finally spoke with my mom after 6 months. Its really very sad...now she is hunched over and slanted to the side like the wicked witch of the North...notice I did not say west. She looks just awful, it's as if every bone in her back has crumbled.

Still not sure if we're going to salvage the ole brokne mansion on the hill...we are in an official class action law suit. The housing situation being so undecided is a heavy load...it should be resolving one way or the other very soon.

That's it for now blog...tah tah

Can Cats Do This?

Hehehehehe...I only wish.....not so with my three....I am entertainment director, provider of food, and yes...the poop picker upper, I believe I am also low man of the pack....

The Human Condition

I work with people and I work with pets. Happily I get ready to sit for the national boards by this February as my career begins to take shape. It's all about me getting in the study mode.....I love the direction I have taken, I love working with pets and yes....even people.

But there is a frustrating element when working with herbs....and that's our overall mentality which comes from the culture of the past 50 years...This is the expectation that if we take one single pill we can then fix everything.

With herbs...sometimes one single formula can indeed work....and in other instances it may take a couple of tries at getting it to to change the condition.

But when sitting back and thinking about it is can we really say that it is really any difference than western medicine?

Not really.

Every day I work with so many people in which the dog has not been responding to western drug therapy. This is because either the drug just does not work, or the pet has become resistant to the medication.

And for some reason people give a lot more allowance if you will, to western pharmaceuticals...this can be confirmed by the gigantic veterinarian bills that I hear that people have paid.

By the time people have found me...they want ONE formula to work God Damn It!

Or they believe I have scammed them, yes name calling is a regular occurrence, even if I offer to give them a FREE second formula based on the results of the first formula....that just sucks...can you imagine?

It's okay, because 90% of the time we benefit the pet and they improve at least 50% and everybody is happy as the pet finds it's way back to good health.

But I can't help but feel discouraged sometimes....Mostly at the current human condition.

I don't understand why people can't see that too many drugs can actually hurt their pet...not to mention themselves....people are taking way too many prescriptions and its spilling over to our animals. It seems to me that no one is holding our doctors or our veterinarians responsible for this state of affairs.

The other day while at my acupuncture clinic, I was treating a man that was on 26 different medications. The side effects were taking an incredible toll, because by now, he can barely walk or get out of bed each day.

It's not my place to tell him he has to reduce the drug load....it's obvious that he is dying a slow medicated death...

As its not my place to tell pet owners that their lovely little family members are breaking down under the load of numerous meditations and they are also dying a slow and complicated death.

It doesn't matter, animal or person.....too much of a good thing can be bad.

So where does that leave us?

We have to work at getting better.

We must work on what we and our pets eat. We must view everything that we put in to our collective mouths as the opportunity to heal ourselves.

We must also find herbal remedies that can work in conjunction with our medications...they can actually help to minimize the drug side effects, and may actually help to reduce the required western medications, which indeed are a great thing, but given in large quantities, and for long periods of times, will begin to back fire...

In other works herbs and meds can work together, so we don't have to choose...why does our society believe we have to do one or the other? I ponder so often about that.

I just wish people would be as tolerant when working with herbs as they are with western meds....

When people call me...

I have one single shot....and if my one single shot does not work...people become angry...they call me names and just shit all over me...but that's okay...because there are people out there who have greatly benefited...so I continue on....

Even being called names is okay because you know what? I know I have a responsibility to these people who believe in this type of healing, and because the bar is set so high for me....I do a great job... because peoples high expectations are making me into the best herbalist I can be...

I love meeting expectations...every day I work to be the best there can be and I love when I hear the sweet sound of a pet owner telling me that the dog or cat they love is doing much better. It is like music to my ears....

Now it's your turn to work at getting better and time to open your mind....

Don't turn away from something that can work...

Have a little patience...

I promise we can make a difference (I'm writing this to the 10% out there that have no tolerance!).

Give herbs the chance that you have given the western medications...if you give equal time to the herbs, you will get the result you seek.

This is because in my humble opinion they are fantastic.....but take heed, I'm not saying they are a magic bullet....I think it's important for all of us to keep the following in our mind;

There are no wise men and there are no magic bullets......we must work at good health, we can not find it in a bottle or a pill...and that is the sad truth for our dogs and cats.