Foreword by Dr. Ricardo Orozco, translated by Daniel Kai
Singing Dragon, 2011
ISBN: 978-1848190757
Reviewed by June Raymond
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This is a most welcome book as in my experience animals respond extraordinarily well to Flower Remedies and it will give confidence to many people who would like to use them on their pets.
The writer has an excellent understanding of the remedies and explains them well. He describes how each remedy can be useful for animals as well as for human beings. (In this context I found it interesting that Pine, for feelings of guilt, and Wild Oat, for the need to find direction, are the only two remedies that apparently have no useful application for animals).
In the book there are sections on common behavioural problems, two sections on case studies, one on ‘useful formulas’, additional notes on how to prepare and administer remedies for animals and a section suitable for animal shelters and another on neutering. Altogether it is a thorough and detailed study.
The author has clearly dealt with a great many traumatised animals in particular rescue animals; he shares some of his extensive experience and provides detailed case studies. While not every practitioner would necessarily come to exactly the same conclusions as he does most would feel confident using his recommendations. My only questions concern the preparation and dosage he uses. The traditional usage using the original formula would be to put no more than 4 drops of 5 or 6 remedies at the most into a prescription bottle and to give them give up to 4 times a day. Homedes puts as many as 7 essences into one remedy, keeping to the traditional 4 drops, but administering these 5 or 6 or even as many as 10 times a day.
He prefers to use what he calls the direct method of administration, namely putting drops directly into the animal’s mouth rather than putting them the water of a drinking bowl and using between 5 and 15 drops depending on the size of the bowl. In my own practice with animals, I put 2 to 4 drops in any bowl of water with completely satisfactory results. In my experience it makes no difference how much water you use since as the remedy is vibrational and not chemical.
Another area which I found interesting was in the use of creams. I have only used these on human patients and use methods closer to those described by Dietmar Kramer in his ‘New Bach Flower Body Maps’ and so I do not feel competent to comment on his work with animals although again I do not increase the number of drops according to the volume of cream.
The Bach Flower remedies are now made in various different ways and Nelsons who make the remedy with an official ‘Bach’ name now sell it in dosage strength rather than as the original concentrate. The remedies I use are made according to Dr Bach’s original method. It would be interesting to know which supplier Homedes uses, as he puts many more remedies in a prescription and expects them to be administered more times a day than would traditionally be normal. Also I would expect to see results sooner than those recorded in the book.
Despite these reservations I would have confidence in recommending this book. I would make the proviso that a practitioner should use the quantities which work for them and not necessarily the ones in the book. I would add that in most cases animals respond excellently simply to rescue remedy. So for example I and several of my friends have found that dogs are completely cured of terror of fireworks or thunder storms with 4 drops of rescue remedy in their water. When the problem is deep seated, as it is in many of the case studies, we could need a more experienced voice and in this and other respects this book will be a valuable addition to the literature on Bach Flower remedies.