Welcome to the Soul Touched by Dogs Podcast, the show for dog lovers who
see dogs not as toys or tools, but wise souls worth our respect and care.
I'm an Herrmann, and I'm your host.
I talk to poor some humans, people who do great work for dogs and their people.
So come and join us for today's conversation.
Anke: Hello and welcome back, Dr.
Ed.
Lovely to have you here with me.
Dr. Ed: Thanks so much for having me back on your show.
It's always good fun and I'm really happy to be here.
Anke: Me too, me too.
I'm really happy to have you.
So for anybody who hasn't heard you on my show before, let people
know where you're based and, you know, what's your business for dogs?
Dr. Ed: So I live in regional Victoria in Australia.
I'm about an hour and a half's drive from Melbourne at a
little village called Tarradale.
Um, I'm a holistic veterinarian and I'm the founder of the whole energy
body balance method, which is a modality for pets, people, and horses
that integrates therapeutic touch, neurofascial, neurofascial bodywork, um,
intuitive perception and energy healing.
Anke: Mm.
And I, I still remember the day I stumbled across your work and it was on
Facebook and, you know, and it was, and it was about si silent pain in pets.
Yes.
And that got me because it was so, it was like, yeah, you're so good at hiding it.
Right.
So what if we had a way to, to actually detect that?
So it is really, really powerful work.
And I've been like in your world ever since I've had you
on my summit, and so now you.
written a book about it.
I'd be curious to hear, like, what inspired you to,
to write, to write the book?
Dr. Ed: Here it is.
Anke: Look at that little face.
Dr. Ed: Find and heal your pet's silent pain, learn how to hear your pet's
silent cries for help, never again miss hidden pain, anxiety and trauma.
So I,
I woke up, I got woken up to the fact that there is hidden pain in the necks
and backs of animals when I was only about a year and a half out, graduated.
And um, then when I started feeling into what is With an idea that I
might be missing something, so I got more curious and was exploring more
deeply and more intently, I pretty quickly found, um, that I'd been
missing a heap of neck and back pains.
So that's what I started off with, really focusing on the spine and um,
after some years I started noticing that there's all these soft tissues, all these
neurofascial tissues throughout the body.
And, um, realized that, you know, the spine, though it's probably one of the
most important parts of the body, it's not the only thing that needs help.
And then reaching out from that, I also then started thinking about emotional
silent pain, which is anxiety, trauma, things like that, which again, a lot
of animals have rumbling away under the surface and the humans just don't
really understand the signs to tell them.
So, um, yeah.
That the animals are trying to tell the people that they've got problems.
And, um, I also had chronic fatigue, um, for quite a long time.
So, I came down with chronic fatigue about four years after I graduated,
I think, and was unwell for decades.
And I also then got into the whole thing of, of energetic silent pain, because I
had a lot of pain, not just physically, not just mentally, emotionally, but
through the energy systems in my body.
So, that's what has led me to to create the whole energy body balance method.
But this particular book is really focused on bringing awareness into the world of
the undeniable fact that around 50 percent or more of animals have significant
pain that is undiagnosed, missed, that they show little or no signs of.
And this book's got a whole lot of information in to learn about what
the problem is and how to pick up the red flags, the subtle signs that.
A lot of people miss or don't understand and, and there's some core skills in here
to, to help you learn how to feel in the body to find silent pain and, and some
touch to help with anxiety and trauma and, and some other touch to help with
releasing at least the superficial layers of pain and tension out of animal bodies.
Anke: So it kind of seems to be mandatory reading for any, any pet owner, really.
And, and I would almost say in, in veterinary school, you
know, because I mean, that's usually the first thing, right?
If I'm thinking that, that there's, and that's been a big journey for me to kind
of realize that, you know, Yeah, vets don't always have all the answers, right?
So you go there and you get the wrong advice or they don't know
or, you know, so I mean, this stuff, like, they should know.
Dr. Ed: One thing I'm going to say is that vets only know what they've been
taught and they're highly skilled.
They have a lot of information and they In nearly all cases, though I have
met a few stinkers in my career, in nearly all cases, vets are devoted to
giving the best advice that they know with their understanding and with the
knowledge that they have for animals.
I don't, no way am I ever going to join in with, um, Being unkind to pets in
any way because I know how stressful and difficult their job is, but there
is a yawning gap in knowledge and skill when it comes to silent pain in pets
across the board in pet owners, in pet professionals, whether it be groomers
or trainers or rehabbers or physios or Um, breeders or people showing dogs and
competing in agility and right through to veterinarians there is this complete
lack of understanding of the prevalence of and the seriousness of silent pain
as, as a very large problem that has really serious impacts on well being.
And a lot of the animals that I work with, we give them bodywork sessions
and suddenly they're a new dog and they're playing like they haven't played
for years and they're I don't know, sometimes naughty things like digging
holes that they haven't done for ages.
Um, and I had one greyhound I worked with who literally at the ripe old
age of 12 became a naughty puppy.
He never had any of these.
He started getting into bins and chewing things up and tearing things up and having
the best fun of his life when we set him free from an immense amount of silent
pain and trauma from a long racing career.
So.
It's still not taught at vet schools.
I was working in a clinic, oh, probably 18 months, two years ago.
I had a spell of about a year and a half working in a vet clinic.
We had a number of final year vet students come through and I told them about
this and they go, oh, that's awesome.
I've never heard of it.
And they're just about to go out into practice, so I can be reasonably
confident that even though bodywork, massage, physio, rehab, these hands on
therapeutic touch kind of modalities have become much more prominent in
veterinary science over the last 10 years than ever before, there is still
overall in the profession a big, big knowledge and skill gap because sorenpine
Not all animals show the red flags.
I mean, I've got a long list of red flags, which you'll, you'll read about in the
book so that you can see them and go, oh my goodness, my dog's doing those things.
That's a problem.
That's, they're trying to tell me they're in pain.
But, um,
to really consistently and effectively discover this kind of soft tissue neck
and back pain, the only way that you can do that is to pee onto the body.
to palpate through the tissues, to bring pressure and connection into
the pain and tension, and then be very sensitive to the animal's non verbal
communication while you're doing that because you get a sore spot and
they go, Oh yeah, it's sore there.
And that's what I've discovered.
You know, I've been really fortunate.
I've had a lot of fortunate circumstances and situations and,
um, you know, an early mentor in Dr.
Tom O'Hearn, who was a vet who'd worked out this way of working on horses necks.
And that's what got me.
Well, I thought, horses have swan eggs, what about dogs and cats?
And that led me into actively exploring the body in a, in a whole deeper,
more curious way than I had before.
And very quickly finding pain and tension.
And then when I found pain and tension, I wanted to do
something to help these animals.
So I started playing around with pressure and touch and movement because there
were no modalities available to learn.
You know, 25, 28 years ago when I started doing this, there's a wealth
of different kinds of things you can learn with your animals these days.
Massage, body work, energy healing, animal communication, um, all sorts of things.
But when I started out, I think I'm lucky that I grew up on a,
on a cattle farm and you just, If there's something that needs doing,
well, you gotta find a way to do it.
And I think that I'm fortunate to have that kind of patterning and background
as well, so that when I came to finding these animals with pain, well, I just
thought, well, I'll do something.
I'll try something, see what happens.
And pretty quickly, we saw animals responding to even my early Um, pretty
basic attempts, and the work has evolved through thousands and thousands of animals
over many, many years, teaching me what works for them, you know, telling me don't
do that, that doesn't, oh, that pressure's just right, and you know, you might try a
different type of movement or connection.
And the animal will melt, and I go, oh, that worked for that one, we
might try it for another few, and if it works consistently, then it
becomes a teachable, repeatable skill that becomes part of the modality.
Anke: I think the key piece I'm taking, there's so much hope in this, you know,
one is to almost simply accept that you can't just hand over or outsource the well
being of your animal to somebody else.
Because they don't know your animal and they might not even know the base.
So it's like you can't just go, Oh, the vet said he's all right.
You know, so it's almost like we know now that that's not enough.
So we have to take that, that ownership and that advocacy and, and.
You know, and do something and learn about it ourselves.
And, and it is beautiful when they kind of like, oh, they go soft and, and, uh, and
melt into, into, into your, look at him.
Oh, look at that face.
Dr. Ed: Oh, I
Anke: haven't seen them in so long.
Dr. Ed: Here's Jen.
Our little bit over one year old Whippet.
Jem's very sad because we lost our beautiful pet last week
to a snake bite and Fred was Jem's best friend in the world.
Now Jem has been ratty and mad and has peed on the couch and has been super
demanding of attention because she's got lots of big feelings and she doesn't
quite know how to deal with them.
So I've been using the whole energy body balance work, relaxing touch
and energy healing and things like that to help her through this.
And yeah, I absolutely, the more that people can become empowered to work
with their animals, with healing touch, with healing energy, all these different
kinds of things, it doesn't mean that you're not going to have a vet, but
it means that you can do a whole lot with your animals that otherwise.
You couldn't and your animals, you know, they might, they might be
at home when you're at work and sleep when they jump off the couch.
They might be playing and have a, have a bit of a crash with their friend.
They might just sleep in a funny position and wake up with a quick
neck like I think every human on the planet has that feeling of waking up
and stretching and something going ping and it's like, Oh my God, that hurts.
And, um, with my animals, you know, I get my hands on them all the time.
And.
That means that I pick up hidden pain rapidly.
It doesn't stay there to get worse and to cause suffering and I can do something
straight away to make a difference.
And I think that's the beautiful thing.
Not only that, this kind of work is incredibly strengthening of your
relationship with your animals.
The whole modality is a relationship first modality.
Everything we do is focused around.
Working with the animal, making the animal feel safe and secure and able to relax and
allow us to engage with pain and tension.
Some animals it takes, you know, a few weeks or a month or two to
teach them to, to allow therapeutic touch with painful areas.
So let me back down on my bed, please.
I've been working with a traumatized, um, anxious reactive dog with quite
high levels of pain, especially in this dog's lower back, and it's taken
me three or four sessions to get to a point where I can actually treat it.
even rest my hand on the lower back for any period of time.
It requires
Anke: a lot of sensitivity then, right, to really take in the reaction that
comes back, to not just kind of go and,
Dr. Ed: you know.
Absolutely.
But I find that people know they're animals and they tend to learn
how to have this adaptive touch.
So your animal does something and you, that's the communication and
you communicate that you've heard them by changing the quality of
touch that you're engaging with.
So it's not to learn.
If you're willing to put time in and, um, practice and learn,
it's, it's actually really simple.
Anke: I love the simplicity of it too.
So if, if a dog, for example, that dog you just described who
has, you know, was like, I don't really want to let you there.
So how do you go about, you don't have sessions, but you sort of
gently get closer, or how do you go about, um, teaching them that it's
safe to let you touch that area?
Dr. Ed: Well, with this particular dog, I started off by getting the
owner to be holding and cuddling the dog while I started working.
So holding the collar and the front end and comforting the dog
while I do some gentle touch to a level that they can tolerate.
And then I, I teach the person how to do a particular relaxing touch
skill and get them to do lots of that, or at least some of that every day.
And then each session builds more trust and connection.
In the most recent session, um, This dog would get up on the couch with me and we'd
actually be able to do some meaningful kind of really engaging with pain,
intention, touch for a period of time.
Then she'd be like, Oh, I need to get off the couch.
That's a bit much.
No, you can't rearrange me and ask me to stay there.
That's too much.
And then we'd get back on the couch and then we'd get back on the couch.
And after three or four rounds of that, I could actually start to,
when she got down, pop her hand over.
the other side of her lower back and ask her to stay with me and not, not scoot
her back end around and get distressed.
And she ended up being, being able to allow that, which was a huge step for this
dog because she's got a really serious traumatic history and a lot of pain.
So it's a, it's a start, it's a gentle, slow process of building trust through
letting the dog know that you're really deeply listening to their responses
and responding to their responses.
Anke: And I think that alone creates a lot of safety already and I think
that alone is already helpful.
That the dog learns to understand that you're actually listening because I guess
when you, if you look at the world through a dog, it's like, yeah, you know, humans
are probably the weirdest things for them or just don't get it a lot of the time.
Dr. Ed: Yeah.
Look, I think humans in general are not great at understanding dogs.
Yeah.
and communicating with dogs because we behave like monkeys, because we are
monkeys really, we're primates, and we, we have a very different kind of
physicality.
Um, you know, we hug each other, that's a primate, and dogs don't like
to be hugged, but humans want to hug their dogs, you know, and let's just
assume that dogs are going to feel like Monkeys do, and they're very, very
different, but it's not hard to learn.
How to, um, interpret and understand dogs body language and communication and, and
shift our human expression just a little bit to be something that makes more sense
to dogs and, and their kind of social structure and, and how they, they tick.
And I, we cover a lot of that in the whole energy body balance work too,
in terms of talking about how to be a good, plain, strong, benevolent
leader with your dogs and how to.
express healthy boundaries around personal space because that's something
that dogs do in between each other all the time, but humans um they don't,
and that can contribute to anxiety and then anxiety can contribute to the
actual body pain, soft tissue pain, so it's it's really important to Learn
how to understand your dogs better.
And I think that this work also does that.
Anke: I love that.
I love that.
It's because it's all connected.
It's not just, because you said it before, it's not just physical pain,
it's emotional pain, even energetic pain.
So it's all, it's all interconnected.
So it's not, you can't just kind of like, Oh yeah, no, just kind of poke on
that sore muscle and then you're good.
So I think that overall, um, Understanding and connection.
I just love that holistic approach.
That's why you're holistic, right?
Right?
Because, you know,
Dr. Ed: I think one of the things that, that has influenced a lot of what I do is
too, that when I was a kid, I had a lot of social challenge and difficulty because
I'm, I am definitely on the spectrum.
And I was not able to understand a lot of the whole social weirdness
that neurotypical people have.
And, um, I really
think that that, that I've always found it easier with animals to
understand and communicate with animals and work with animals than
I have been able to with people.
Which is a funny thing, really, but it's certainly contributed to me being able
to, to, to, to you know, hopefully educate other people how to do all this too.
Anke: Well, it's, it's really like building, building the bridge, right?
Because it's almost like you're sitting sort of in, in the
middle with your understanding.
You understand this side, you understand that side.
So you're like the translator between, between people and their dogs, right?
It's, yeah.
And then because there is that big gap, so it's really a needed,
needed space in between to, yeah.
Because you see it so often, you know, is there something, If you could say
one thing that people that so like most people do wrong or misinterpret
about, could you pinpoint one thing or is it, is it, is that not a thing?
If you say like one thing that people kind of misinterpret in their dogs or, or?
Dr. Ed: Look, I think, I think there's a few things.
One is that people just don't really understand or, or put
any effort into learning.
dog book, or animal speak I call it, in terms of what Animals are
expressing through their non verbal communication and animals are incredibly
skillful non verbal communicators.
When you think about humans, um, you know, we are, we are largely non verbal too,
but we think when we're totally verbal.
We forget about the non verbal thing, but people are getting a lot of unconscious
information through the non verbal thing.
But if you can.
Um,
just start thinking about what is your dog trying to say?
What are they trying to say to you in terms of their little changes
in expression and their body language and their posture and,
and all those kinds of things.
And there's some, if you, if you go looking for books on, um, body
language and, and that sort of thing with dogs, there's actually some
really, really good resources, but.
People, I think, misinterpret a number of things when it comes to dog communication,
which is probably one of the reasons why people get bitten more than they should.
But I think the biggest, I honestly think that silent pain
is probably the biggest blind spot of all that needs to be remedied.
And, um, I'm hoping that everyone listening will tell all their friends
about this because it's a huge problem.
And like I said, at least every second animal I get my hands on.
There's significant pain in the body that the humans are like, what?
Really?
Anke: Yeah, that's massive.
That's not just every, you know, once in a while, like it's literally,
you know, every second dog.
That's incredible.
Yeah.
Is there, is there, is that, like, what about younger dogs?
I have a young one and I have one that's getting older now.
So is there, is there like a, I mean, I would assume that's the thing.
That's my question.
My first assumption goes, Oh, it'll happen more with older dog.
Is that true?
Dr. Ed: It does happen more with dogs.
There is no doubt of that because soft tissue pain, urofacial pain builds up
incrementally in layers in the body with all the incidents and traumas
and wear and tear of life over time.
So there's no doubt that by the time you get to an animal that's
9, 10, 11, 12 years old, you can just about guarantee that they'll
have reasonable or significant levels of silent pain going on.
It's not so common in younger animals, but you can still get The odd younger animal
that can have really severe silent pain.
I had a 14 or 16 week old Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy come to see me, must be
a year or two ago now, and this puppy was showing worrying behavioral signs.
Um, Anxiety, Potential Aggression, and I've got to tell you it
was a monster at that age.
It was huge.
Um, when I met this puppy and got my hands on it, it had severe whole body
soft tissue pain, neck and back pain.
Now was that a birth injury or something else?
I don't know.
Did it get dropped on its head by one of the kids in the
family where the puppies were?
I don't know.
But the, and this dog too, when, when I, I was.
Being as gentle as I could, but it showed signs that it was going to bite me.
It didn't like that.
We did a series of treatments.
I think on the second treatment, this puppy decided that screaming
at the top of its voice might stop me touching its orbit.
So our ears were almost bleeding after 90 minutes of this dog screaming its
head off, and it had the loudest, most piercing scream I've ever heard.
But, you know, about, About 80 minutes in, it gave up screaming, thankfully,
because I wasn't going to be able to stop until it stopped screaming.
Um, and we did a series of about four or five body work, whole energy body
balance sessions, resolved the pain, and that puppy went off to train
up as an assistance dog with their autistic daughter and is now out.
everywhere, going to shops and helping this girl navigate the world.
So we hadn't found that real chance of behavioral euthanasia for that puppy if
we hadn't discovered that hidden pain and resolved it through therapeutic touch.
And therapeutic touch is really the only way that you can resolve this
kind of soft tissue pain because When you give pain relief, well it might
make the animal feel better, but it's not getting to the root cause.
You've really got to get into the tissues and use touch and movement in an
intelligent and sensitive way to release that pain and tension out of the body.
And you often release a whole lot of anxiety and trauma out
of the body at the same time.
So you often don't just see physical changes, you often see really
beautiful, profound behavioral changes.
Anke: Wow, so it almost feels like, well, this should be a standard part
of what you're looking at when you have an anxious dog, when you have
a, you know, a stressed dog or with behaviour, even aggression issues.
Well, you know, that would definitely be one of the things to look at.
You know, maybe there's some pain underneath and there's probably,
in most cases, maybe it would be.
You think like, well, it should probably be the first thing you look at.
Dr. Ed: There's nearly always pain involved with, with dogs with anxiety.
Absolutely.
And Um.
There's some particular qualities of therapeutic touch in the whole energy
body balance method which cause a very strong body level relaxation response
and that really is the foundation of how I treat anxious animals and we have seen
some incredible, incredible results.
Behaviour modification through relaxing touch, because you use the
relaxing touch, a lot of these animals, their nervous system is over here in
overdrive, should be over here in the kind of green zone, healthy relaxation,
but a lot of anxious animals, their baseline is actually on the aroused
side of neutral, away from neutral.
Every time you use touch to bring the whole animal's being into relaxation,
you're actually training and teaching them how to do that regulation process.
And when they relax in the face of a trigger or something that they've
decided that's terrifying, even if it's just a sausage sizzling in
a pan, which I've had a number of dogs freak out about, then they're
starting to learn that, wow, I relaxed.
Maybe that thing's not so scary.
So over weeks and months, you can have a, a mental relearning things as well.
Anke: Actually, this, this whole, like this, this dog of mine, the one who
just passed in April, he was You know, he came, well, like super traumatized
and I, I lived in this area where it was, you know, like historic part of
town and, and I didn't see the thing is, I would imagine just like vets.
I've not met a vet whose intentions, I doubt it.
Like, you, I mean, it's always clear that they are to help the animals, right?
And.
And I was kind of that dog owner as well, you know, I did my best
and I wasn't there to, to make my life, my dog's life difficult.
But in hindsight, I realized that actually living where I was living in this historic
part of town with tiny little alleyways and, and, you know, and tourists and
groups and bicycles and cats and dogs.
And it was like, and like, when I looked at it, I saw some, there was
basically one sentence that changed.
You know, everything in a sense.
It's like,
my only job is to help my dog relax, and all of a sudden I looked at it,
threw the lens off, and I'm like, that dog has sensory overload 24 7.
You know, and he couldn't, and I remember then when I moved away out of town
into a quiet place, next thing I know this dog lays there, belly up, and I'm
like, I've never seen him like this.
And so it was in hindsight that I realized that this dog
had never been able to relax.
At all, you know, and it's like, Oh my God.
And I didn't even know.
And I think that's probably what's behind all of this.
Like, you don't even know, like now I'm kind of a lot more aware than I, like
now I'd see it, you know, but then I didn't know, you know, I just took in
a puppy that somebody else was about to kill off and so now I'm like, okay,
I've got another puppy, wasn't the plan.
So here I go, you know, and he just sort of lived where I was living until I
realized that he wasn't doing well there.
Dr. Ed: Yeah, that's a pretty common thing to see as well.
Um, dogs have got incredibly sensitive senses and, and if they
are not habituated and socialized well, then lots of environments
can be really challenging for them.
Anke: Yeah, but it's that, it's that learning process on both sides, you know,
that, that understanding each other.
And I think it's so beautiful to, to have that tool and that actually helps
with that process and really, teaches us.
So I just love it.
So we're gonna definitely want everybody to buy, to buy the book.
It's a great read.
I have it.
So, so definitely pop the link and where can, if somebody
goes, Oh my God, I'm hooked.
I really want to be the best person I can be for my, for my dogs.
Where can they go and find out more about So,
Dr. Ed: um, there'll be a few links.
You'll see a link where you can get a print version at Amazon.
You'll see another link where you can get a digital version.
And there's a couple of special little, um, Forces and things that you can add
on to just the digital version of the book that you won't find anywhere else
that are pretty cool on in that one.
You can go to thehealingvet.
com to learn more about my services and I am available for zoom consultations
worldwide as well if you want to do work one on one with an animal that
has got any kinds of challenges health behavior whatever or just wanting to
do the best possible holistic kind of life plan that you can and you
can go to wholeenergybodybalance.
com to check out the modality.
And we have home and practitioner trainings for web bodywork for pets,
which really focuses on the hands on side of things, and also for web
energy work for animals, which is more about intuitive development,
energy healing, that kind of thing.
Anke: Love it.
Well, thank you so much.
Highly recommended.
So I've got my hands into all of that.
Highly recommend it.
Thank you so much for coming and sharing about your work and the new book that
we want to get in everybody's hands.
So thank you for coming.
Dr. Ed: You're welcome.
It's an absolute pleasure to be on your show.
Thank you so much.
Anke: Thank you.
Thanks so much for listening.
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That's A N k E at Soul touched by dogs.com.