Image by Simon Elliott 

In This Article

• What it means to treat your dog as an ecosystem
• How terrain theory challenges germ theory in veterinary care
• The role of herbs and natural compounds in canine health
• How overuse of antibiotics harms your dog’s microbiome
• Tips for strengthening your dog’s inner terrain

The Dog as an Ecosystem: A New Path to Canine Wellness

by Rita Hogan. author of the book: The Herbal Dog.

Nature teaches us that everything is connected. The dog-as-ecosystem model of canine herbalism centers on your dog as a reflection of nature. Studying how the individual dog relates to its environment is a fundamental com­ponent of canine herbalism because the individual is a part of, rather than apart from, nature.

Animals (including humans) and plants have had an innate relationship since the time of our earliest ancestors. Today, holistic canine herbalism works by acknowledging that relationship, using both the tools of measurement given to us by science and the immeasurable aspects of plant intelligence, intuition, and vital force.

While walking the plant path and learning about chronic disease, you’ll notice how subtle changes can positively or negatively affect your dog’s eco­system. When herbs enter the body, they clean, balance, support the assim­ilation of nutrients, balance energetic patterns, support organ health, and strengthen the immune system.

The body is always trying to cleanse and balance its ecosystem. A good visual example of this comes from spiders. Yes, you read that correctly, spiders. A spider spinning its web is the perfect example of building, cleansing, and repairing.

When I lived on a farm in the hills of Tennessee, I would sit on my porch at dusk in the fall and watch brown spiders spin their webs. The web-spinning process is rhythmic and orderly. When they were finally done, they’d sit and wait in the middle. I’d throw small pieces of debris into a web and watch the resident spider hurry over, kick it out, patch up the web, and return to the middle. They would do this repeatedly. Luckily for them, I bored quickly.

Building and Balancing, or Rejecting and Repairing

When something enters your dog’s body—food, medicine, parasite, splinter— either the body recognizes it as building or balancing or the body works to kick it out, repair the damage, and try to restore balance.

Plants have balance too. They are filled with naturally occurring chemical compounds that can number in the hundreds and even thou­sands. Each one of these chemicals has a specific function. For example, many plants have constituents that modify the effects of other constitu­ents to reduce their side effects. Even though herbalists and scientists don’t understand all plant constituents and how they work, it’s apparent that many of them are far from benign.

Whether taken on their own or in combination with other herbs, plants work on the whole body. This is an essential aspect of herbalism because their whole-body effect can work positively or negatively depend­ing on how the body and plant(s) come together. This is one of the reasons why we need people practicing holistic instead of allopathic herbalism; a plant consumed by one individual may produce a completely different out­come for another.

Terrain Theory

Holistic herbalism considers how herbs affect not only the body’s physi­ological processes but also its terrain. We can think of terrain as the body’s internal ecosystem—all the processes, factors, compounds, microbes, pat­terns, and energetics that, through their relationships with each other, pro­duce a living, working organism. When we consider the dog-as-ecosystem model, we are in effect talking about your dog’s terrain.

The idea that we can keep dogs healthy by controlling bacteria, viruses, and other microbes is maddening. This type of medicine presumes that we have dominion over the microscopic world, but that will never be true. A dog’s world is saturated with microbes; working against them isn’t the logical answer.

A dog’s inner terrain should instead be the focus. We can fortify the ter­rain without detrimental side effects and without depleting the overall health of the dog-as-ecosystem. Healing from the inside out by supporting balance in the terrain is the key to maintaining a long-term balance with microbes. We do this by focusing on the terrain of the individual dog, including the dog’s diet, immune health, mitochondrial strength, and vital force.

Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard

Terrain theory isn’t new; it came about in the same period as germ theory. In the mid- to late nineteenth century, Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard, French contemporaries in the fields of medicine and biology, came to different conclusions about the origins of dis­ease. Pasteur believed that disease was caused by pathogenic micro­organisms. 

Bernard had a different theory: He believed the internal terrain, not microbes, caused disease. Yes, microbes could cause diseases like tuberculosis, but disease wasn’t inevitable for every individual carry­ing those microbes. A deficiency in the terrain, Bernard said, allowed a microbe to become out of balance, initiating the disease process. Like Hippocrates, he believed that good nutrition and immune func­tion were crucial for keeping the body healthy.

The Trouble with Allopathic Medicines

Germ theory believes the body can’t protect itself from foreign microbes without scientific intervention. In other words, your dog can’t survive without medical intervention, regardless of diet, lifestyle, and immune health, and your dog must be protected against all pathogenic microbes. Allopathic veterinary care is very busy controlling microbes! Antibiotics are often overprescribed or given preventively, even though science has ver­ified that the digestive system’s microbe colonies are responsible for more than 75 percent of your dog’s immune system—and antibiotics decimate them. Yes, antibiotics are lifesavers, this can’t be argued, but they should be given only when all other treatment has failed due to their devastating impact on a dog’s internal microbiome.

I once took my pug puppy to an emergency veterinary center because he was having unexplained facial swelling. The vet gave him a shot of anti­histamine, which I agreed with. Then, after the swelling diminished, the vet recommended a steroid shot and a seven-day course of antibiotics “just in case.”

What about the consequences of giving a four-month-old puppy antibiotics? Shouldn’t we wait to see if he needs them? Giving antibiotics to a puppy can cause issues like fear, food sensitivities, allergies, diarrhea, and autoimmune disease. If the swelling affected my puppy’s breathing, I would have agreed to the steroid shot, but his respiratory system was unaf­fected. I declined both the steroid and the antibiotics. My pup recovered within a day.

The Power of a Healthy Terrain

Without germs, life can’t exist! Your dog’s body is teeming with microbes and is exposed to trillions more each day. But these germs are opportunistic, meaning they wait to take advantage of deficient immunity and vitality. When you help your dog maintain a strong immune system and vibrant vitality by focusing on your dog’s toxic load, diet, stressors, and inner terrain, you have control over their health.

Pharmaceutical-based vet­erinary care is helpful if you need it, but only if you do. Medications like antibacterials have helped lower mortality rates, but so have emergency medicine, improved sewage systems, and personal hygiene. Allopathic medicine is great at saving lives with surgery and medication for acute conditions, but it is failing dogs in terms of preventive care and longevity.

A holistic approach to canine health care includes a minimally processed diet, low stress, and support for a balanced terrain. This puts your dog’s health back into your care. As I said earlier: A healthy dog is a way of life.

Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved.
Adapted with permission of the publisher,
Healing Arts Press, an impint of Inner Traditions Intl.

Article Source: The Herbal Dog

The Herbal Dog: Holistic Canine Herbalism Applications and Practice
by Rita Hogan.

In this comprehensive guide to holistic care for dogs, clinical canine herbalist Rita Hogan explains that by looking at dogs as individual ecosystems with unique personalities, physiology, and needs, we can select effective and personalized herbal remedies to support their constitutions and provide relief from many different ailments.

The author, who has spent more than two decades working with canines, uses energetic principles (cool, warm, dry, damp) to reveal how herbs are not "one size fits all" and how to find the root cause of chronic imbalances. She discusses in depth how a dog’s main organ systems work, how they are connected to each other, and why we need to understand them when choosing specific herbs and foods

.Presenting safe, clinically proven, and effective protocols for common canine conditions—from acid reflux to allergies to itching, scratching, and yeast—Rita presents a wide variety of holistic and herbal remedies: from herbal tinctures, glycerities, and phytoembryonics to flower essences, essential oils, medicinal mushrooms, and homeopathy. Her comprehensive materia medica of canine-specific herbs that she uses in her practice details what herbs are good for which conditions and why, what types of energetics are involved, safe dosage recommendations for each herbal remedy, and when to discontinue an herb.

Allowing each of us to take a hands-on approach to our canine companions’ health and longevity, this herbal guide outlines how to help them live their best lives by our sides.

Click here for more info and/or to order this paperback book. Also available as a Kindle edition.

About the Author

Rita Hogan, C.H., is a clinical canine herbalist with more than twenty years of experience specializing in holistic canine herbalism. An educator, speaker, writer, and herbal medicine maker, she lives and practices in Olympia, Washington.

Author's websites: https://www.canineherbalist.com/