Understand your pet’s constitution and you’ll be able to make lifestyle changes for better pet health and happiness!
Transcription:
What is your pet’s constitution? A quick guide to the Five-Element Theory and how it relates to your pet.
Hello ladies and gentlemen, I’m Dr. Marc Smith, practicing veterinarian and creator of PET | TAO Holistic Pet products. What I’m going to do in this Slideshare is I’m going to tell you how the Five-Element Theory and your pet’s constitution are important.
What is My Pet’s Constitution?
I’m going to tell you how to identify your pet’s constitution, and how you can use that knowledge to help your pet be happy and healthy. But first, let’s talk about what the word “constitution” means in the context of your pet.
The way you need to look at “constitution” is personality.
How does your dog act? Is your dog timid? Is your dog fearful? Does your dog act confident or lack confidence? Is your dog happy and healthy?
All of these personality traits are what we term “constitution”. And the Five Element Theory helps us identify a pet’s constitution.
The Five-Element Theory
The Five-Element Theory helps to explain the intricate relationship between all of the naturally occurring elements in the environment.
The Elements
Those elements are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water.
The Five-Element Theory is one of the two guiding philosophies, theories, or principles in Eastern medicine, the other being the Yin/Yang Theory.
Understanding the Five-Element Theory
Furthermore, the Five-Element Theory helps us to understand not only the relationship between all of these elements but how all of these elements promote each other or restrain the growth of one another. The Five-Element Theory is a powerful theory in regard to foods.
To take it a step further, each element in the Five-Element Theory corresponds to an organ in the body. Fire corresponds to the heart, earth corresponds to the stomach, metal corresponds to the lung, kidney corresponds to the water, and wood corresponds to the liver.
Five-Element Associations
Other naturally occurring events also correspond to each element. For instance, the kidney is associated with the water element. The water element is also associated with the emotion of fear, the north direction, and the season of winter.
So if we dig a little bit deeper and get a little bit more philosophical, fire burns and creates ash.
Over time, ash creates mountains that contain metal.
Metal parted the mountains, giving rise to water, and water contributed to the growth of trees, and trees were the kindling for the resurgence of fire.
It’s a continual cycle, the Five-Element Theory.
So, what is your pet’s constitution? The main thing that you need to remember is that each element is associated with a certain emotion, with certain personality traits, and with certain characteristics that are readily identifiable in each and every pet, or for that matter, person.
And knowing your pet’s constitution can help you identify subtle dietary needs and necessities.
The last, and maybe the most important thing that you need to remember is that each constitution type is predisposed to certain diseases. And this is where food can become a powerful treatment or preventative treatment for diseases in your pets.
So now we’re going to go through the different or the five constitutional types, and the first one starts with fire.
And remember that each one of these constitution types can apply to really any animal, but specifically, we’re going to talk today about dogs and cats.
Fire Animals
Fire-type animals are usually animals that are happy all the time. They tend to greet you in the exam room, they are playful, they want and seek attention, and they seem to be somewhat hyper, and they are just happy-go-lucky dogs.
Fire-type dogs usually deal with diseases of cardiovascular origin. They seem to get restless easily, they may deal with separation anxiety, or any diseases really related to the heart.
Wood Animals
The next constitution we want to talk about is wood.
And typically, these dogs are very confident, they are very assertive, they’re decisive, they’re strong, they’re athletic.
Doberman pinscher type dogs. They have big eyes, a thin, strong wiry frame, and a wiry body.
Typically these dogs succumb to certain diseases such as eye and ear problems, allergies, ligament problems, and liver problems.
Earth Animals
The earth dog is our next example, and the best way for me to describe an earth dog is a dog that’s easy-going and it’s an easy keeper. It’s a dog that kind of stays a little bit on the heavy side all the time, but not really too heavy.
They tend to be sociable, they tend to be very food-oriented. Earth dogs are easy dogs to train with food.
They are loyal friends, they’re easy-going, they’re quiet, and they’re supportive. They are just good dogs.
And these earth dogs tend to suffer from gastrointestinal problems. Maybe a loss of appetite, periodic vomiting, they’re slow to move around sometimes, or they’re slow to respond to stimuli. They can get gum disease, weak muscles, and sometimes, since they’re those easy-keeper type dogs, they tend to get obese rather quickly. The earth dog.
Water Animals
The next type of constitution is the water constitution.
And actually, in my practice, these by far make up the majority of the dogs that I see in my practice. And typically they’re kind of marked by being timid or fearful. They are cautious. Water dogs are the kind of dogs that will hide under the chair or the exam table in the veterinarian’s office.
They tend to be, you know, a medium body size, quiet, kind of carry their head down low. But I’d say that the biggest thing that identifies a water dog is one that tends to be a little bit scared all the time.
And the diseases these dogs typically suffer from are going to be arthritis, typically arthritis in the rear end. Sometimes they’ll get depressed, they may have chronic urinary tract infections, they may go deaf, they may be hard to breed, and from a veterinarian’s perspective, a lot of these dogs bite out of fear. They tend to be aggressive when they’re approached because they are fearful all the time.
Metal Animals
And the last constitutional type is the metal constitution.
And the easy way to identify these dogs is that they’re confident, and they tend to obey. They seem very structured in what they do. They’re independent, they follow the rules, typically they’re very well manicured and maintained.
They have good vision, they’re smart dogs, and they tend to kind of be military-type dogs. They’re just very structured and sound in everything that they do.
The diseases these dogs tend to suffer from are typically diseases related to the lung. Diseases such as asthma, sinus problems, maybe nasal congestion, cough, frequent colds, some even have dry skin, and some also tend to have skin lesions or dry coat, kind of that type of thing.
In Conclusion
So this kind of goes through, we’ve been through the five different constitutional types.
Again, they are fire, earth, metal, water, and wood.
And knowing your dog’s constitutional type can help you identify diseases that your pet may be predisposed to.
So, which element summarizes your pet’s constitution?
Again, look through our examples and see if you can identify your pet’s constitution. Because if you can, then you can learn how to feed foods to offset potential diseases that your pet is predisposed to.
It’s pretty simple.
I hope you have enjoyed this Slideshare, share it around with your friends and other pet lovers.
If you have any questions just let us know! We will help you identify your pet’s constitution to keep your pet happy and healthy.
Again, thank you for listening and we will see you soon.
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