Natural Way To Deal With Worms?

[GeegLuvMyDogs]

Came home this evening and found that Ebony had made a "mistake" in the house.  Turns out her poo was rife with little white worms...about the size of a grain of rice.  So I'm glad I saw it..now we know what we're dealing with.

I searched the archives here but couldn't find anything on dealing with homeopathicall y or naturally, with herbs, vitamins or naturally occuring antiobitics. 

Any ideas?  Taking her to the vet is not a problem, I just don't want to strip her body of her natural immunities while getting rid of the parasite.

Definitely want to get this solved quickly so she can be healthy and also....so we can find her a foster family for her.

[GeegLuvMyDogs]

Ya, the first thing we thought about was garlic, but does it destroy the worms and their eggs inside the digestive tract?

[GeegLuvMyDogs]

Thanks Melissakins!!  Huge help!

My husband and I were just trying to figure out the biochemical benefits of garlic in the digestive tract. What you found makes sense.

She's not presenting as a clinially sick dog (altered bitch to be specific) at this point so we'll start dosing her big time with garlic.

Thanks for the research!

[Kermit]

Sounds like your pooch has tapeworms. This is usually a flea related problem, so if your dog has fleas, you will need to eliminate those or she will re-infest herself if she ingests a flea.
I have read that feeding a dog some raw pumpkin seeds every day for a while also helps scrape clean the intestinal walls, and that is where the tapeworm latches on.
  Good luck!

[cricket36580]

Try to find Diatamacheous Earth or DE.  You will have to look at livestock feedstores or online for it.  Get food grade, NOT pool grade.  Food grade you feed in the food and sprinkle it around your yard.  No chemicals, all natural worm killers.  It kills the parasites by chewing them up. Oh, and you can eat it too.  Keeps people healthy too.

[Nicole]

hehehe...I've gotta weigh in on this one, too! I'm not sure how credible this whole thing is, but a reflexologist and herbalist that I know says that Black Walnut extract will take care of a whole gamut of parasites. I think that it works the same way as garlic, making the host an unpleasant place to live. You can get it at natural food stores. You just drop a few drops in their water everyday. They don't notice the taste. (not in my experience anyway) We just started our cats on this, so I can't tell you any kind of success rate, yet.

And a note about the garlic, when I lived in North Carolina, I met a girl that was a vet student at NC State Vet School. She told me to be very careful about giving dogs garlic because too much can cause some type of anemia? So, once again, just something someone told me, but she was a vet student...so maybe look into that? I know that they put garlic in many of the premium dog foods, but my guess is that the processing probably takes some of the potency out of it...or maybe the girl was just wrong! hahaha! Always a possibility.

[Lyn]

I heard the same thing... I found this info. It seems that onions are worse. But garlic in large amounts are bad also. The amount of garlic in dog food is minimal.

Onion and garlic poisoning
   
Onions and garlic are other dangerous food ingredients that cause sickness in dogs, cats and also livestock. Onions and garlic contain the toxic ingredient thiosulphate. Onions are more of a danger.

Pets affected by onion toxicity will develop haemolytic anaemia, where the pet’s red blood cells burst while circulating in its body.

At first, pets affected by onion poisoning show gastroenteriti s with vomiting and diarrhoea. They will show no interest in food and will be dull and weak. The red pigment from the burst blood cells appears in an affected animal’s urine and it becomes breathless. The breathlessness occurs because the red blood cells that carry oxygen through the body are reduced in number.

The poisoning occurs a few days after the pet has eaten the onion. All forms of onion can be a problem including dehydrated onions, raw onions, cooked onions and table scraps containing cooked onions and/or garlic. Left over pizza, Chinese dishes and commercial baby food containing onion, sometimes fed as a supplement to young pets, can cause illness.

Onion poisoning can occur with a single ingestion of large quantities or with repeated meals containing small amounts of onion. A single meal of 600 to 800 grams of raw onion can be dangerous whereas a ten-kilogram dog, fed 150 grams of onion for several days, is also likely to develop anaemia. The condition improves once the dog is prevented from eating any further onion

While garlic also contains the toxic ingredient thiosulphate, it seems that garlic is less toxic and large amounts would need to be eaten to cause illness.

[Nicole]

Thanks, Lyn! That does clear that up!

So, a little garlic is OK, but not too much? So, that is kind of what that girl told me. She said that the amount you'd need to effectively take care of intestional parasites would probably be too much for the dog, and you'd run the risk of the anemia.

I guess the final note is to just be careful with the garlic! I've avoided it all together since she told me that, because I'm never sure what's "too much".

[cricket36580]

Black walnut will kill parasites but use a microgram too much and you kill the animal.  Too little and it doesn't do anything.  It's a very dangerous oil to use if you aren't familiar with it.  DE can be used without worrying you are going to poison any of your animals.

[Nicole]

Hmm...I don't have it in an oil. Its more like a tincture. Do you think that makes a difference? Its Nature's Sunshine brand and it is in a water and alcohol base. It is marketed as a dewormer, but also for human use.

[GeegLuvMyDogs]

Now would be a really good time to enlist to BPO a naturapathic vet who happens to own a big dog!

Maybe we could google "contraindicati ons of black walnut" and see what we can come up with.

Thanks for the info on onion.  I never knew that.  As for the garlic, Ebony is getting one TBS on her food in the morning and a TBS in the evening.  As of today, she hasn't eaten her a.m. food.  But she may be getting use to eating 2x a day again, and may not be hungry.  My cousin, for some reason, only feeds her dogs 1x a day so my dogs only were fed once a day at her house.

[Nicole]

I did a little bit of googling on the black walnut. I found that there is some toxicity, but it seems like its more in the oil form than in the more diluted tincture form. I'm putting like, 3 drops in their water dish. It seems OK.

[cricket36580]

Cool...