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This blog has been around for almost twenty years at this point. It's hard to believe. It's been through sinuses, iodine, various health issues, vaping, Covid, technology, and everything in between.
Along the way Google took away it's ability to generate revenue, not that there ever was much, $80.00 US or so after seventeen years - at least something like that. Probably because I wrote that banning gas stoves was nonsense.
There is much news on the health front - too much to cover in one post.
While the various processes I documented here for stopping sinus infections have worked flawlessly for both me and Mrs. Wolf I was never able to eliminate the on-going between-infection sinus pain. It seemed like stuff was clogged up in my sinuses continuously.
About November of last year I finally bit the bullet and succumbed to the paste band wagon. We've had chickens and dogs for some time and as the lady in the "Chicken Forum" stated "If you have dogs and chickens you have parasites."
Nothing could be truer.
Following numerous sources of information I decided on a "once a day pencil eraser sized" horse paste dose. Using the 6.08g standard paste at 1.87% there is approximately 114mg per tube. The "eraser sized" dose is probably 2-3mg.
Wonder of wonders within a week or so a number of changes occurred:
- Sinus problems completely vanished. No more pain, no more infections requiring flushing, nada.
- Significant urinary improvements.
- Significant bowel improvements.
- Significant change in how my body handles cold. In past years I had to wear heated gloves when walking dogs in temps below 20°F. This year -8°F using standard gloves was no problem.
I personally did not notice any direct evidence of parasites. However, Mrs. Wolf did.
Recently of Facebook - of all places - a variety of "forums" related to cancer treatment and parasites have popped up - as well as a number of other informational sources. I will talk about this in the future.
Back to horse paste.
One of the dogs, Cookie, was diagnosed with an on-going case of anaplasmosis. Anaplasmosis is caused by Anaplasma phagocytophilum, and babesiosis - something similar - is caused by Babesia microti. There is no canine test (at least not cheap "at the vet" test) for babesiosis but there is for anaplasmosis. Cookie weighs about 45kg and ended up with a doxycycline dose of 400mg/day. This dose should have been enough for either disease.
Cookie was somewhat "draggy" (taking careful steps) when walking - not running ahead, pooping out before the end of walk - more "quiet" than usual and we were suspicious, having lost another dog last year to what we believe was either anaplasmosis or babesiosis, that Cookie's lethargy was taking her down the same path.
One of the key takeaways in my view is the way the dogs walk, as in how they place their feet. An "ill" dog will do what I call "taking careful steps" with their head down. Almost as if they are looking for the best place to place their next foot or they are in pain (which may be the case) and they are attempting to pick the least painful place to step. You have to watch this over time because on a daily walk of 1/2 mile or so on a steep 20° grade not everyone is 100% spunky the whole way every day.
We walk multiple dogs at once so the "lagginess" becomes somewhat apparent. But again, all of them can lag from time to time so it's only important over a period of time, like weeks.
Cookie was also diagnosed two years in a row with anaplasmosis.
The diagnosis in and of itself is close to meaningless without other data. We have a number of other dogs also with multiple years of diagnosis of both Lyme and anaplasmosis. They seem totally unaffected.
In any case after a little less than a week in on the doxy Cookie was only "weakly" getting better. Better but not as much as she should have been.
So six days in I added 10mg/day of Ivermectin to the doxycycline (both doxy and paste split into an AM and PM dose).
After three days Cookie is a new dog. Within a day she perked up significantly. Eyes were more alert, less lethargic (this is hard to tell on the way down - dogs kind of "slow" down very slowing in this situation - so much so that you barely notice the changes). Cookie again leads the walk. She does slow down still on the way back but then again Charity, her daughter, is laggy up the hill (Charity is a much heavier dog so she's always needed a "warm up").
Ivermectin is not a standard anaplasmosis treatment - so I suspect Cookie also has babesiosis which does react to ivermectin.
With out extensive, expensive tests its very hard to say exactly what was wrong or what we "fixed" in Cookies case.
Regardless the Wolf family is now far better off health-wise than it was.
The revelation of what Ivermectin does and could do is well beyond one post.
More to come...
