I am a great believer in natural remedies, after all, it’s all that was available before the discovery of penicillin, pain killers and antibiotics etc. Tunde, currently living in Germany, has sent this interesting piece about the use of leech therapy. A lot of food for thought.
‘My galga Guzu has arthrosis. Willow bark helps her a lot but it is not enough. When the weather is bad (cool and wet) then she is in pain. I got some chemicals, painkiller to be exact, but I am not happy with this (I am afraid of side effects).
Several German sighthound forum members suggested I go to leech therapy with her.
Obviously in many cases the leeches help greatly when the dog (or the
person) has arthrosis. I know of some dogs that did not need ANY painkillers whatsoever after a leech therapy.
Leeches for badly healing wounds, too. For complicated cases. It could be VERY interesting for the Spanish galgo rescue organisations!
Look at this site
You can see here a really bad surgery wound before and after the leech therapy.
In Russia they use the leeches the whole time, whereas in Western and Middle Europe the leech therapy went out of fashion so to say.
But in Germany there is a great revival of the hirudotherapy – I think this is the correct term for the leech therapy. The Germans use this therapy for themselves and for their pets, too!I know of cases when the whole family goes to the healer, dogs and humans and do the therapy.
So I think it would be very useful for the Spanish rescues and vets about this great therapy form, if they don’t already know about it, as they always have galgos and podencos with really bad wounds that do not want to heal. Especially broken legs are a big problem.
The leech injects a cocktail of very beneficial substances into the wound when drinking blood. These have antiviral and antibacterial effect as well as they support the blood flow in the area they have bitten. Therefore the wound heals much better.
The leech is not a parasitic animal at all. I thought so but it is NOT the case.
Leeches have a longstanding szmbiotic connection to warm blooded animals. In India it was observed that cows with joint problems regularly go to bodies of water where leeches live and they let the leeches bite them. The cows take a leech cure so to say.
So it is a wonderful symbiosis.
I am convinced that leeches could greatly help the galgo and podenco rescues with their worst cases.
Here is the site of the leech farm where I am going to take a course in
August:
The site has a Spanish version!!
Here further fotos from the German web
As you can see, the leeches are not only a great help for the dogs but they are also great with horses! Especially on the leg, with laminitis!
I decided to disperse this information as I saw the newest case of Fundacion Benjamin Mehnert, a galgo with a badly broken leg.
How many galgos lose their legs, because the wound healing is not good enough to keep that leg. The leeches could help in such cases greatly, I am sure.
Here a citation from the following website
“In 2004, the Food and Drug Administration approved the commercial use of the leech for medicinal purposes.
The leech is becoming more and more popular in microsurgery for patients who must undergo limb reattachments or skin drafts. The leech is applied to a reattached digit or area of skin where it sucks out pooled blood and secretes the anticoagulant called hirudin and a vasodilator. The removal of pooled blood promotes fresh blood to enter the the delicate tissues. The blood thinner secreted by the leech allows the wound to bleed for up to 48 hours, which is beneficial for these delicate tissues as more oxygenated blood is able to enter them. These tissues are much more likely to survive and heal, ultimately saving limbs in many cases.”
That is exactly what many galgos need: their limbs saved.
(I know that after the leech has fallen down from the animal you must let the wound bleed. No pressure bandage allowed)
I found this French leech supplier accidentally
There is also a leech farm in the UK:
It might be highly relevant for the people who adopt greyhounds from the track.
Those dogs often have arthrosis and the woman who originally recommended the leeches to me used them for treating her two ex-racer greyhounds. Her dogs had some old injuries from the track and they developed an arthrosis where they had been injured. Anyway, after starting the hirudotherapy, the dogs did not need any pain medication anymore for the rest of their lives for their condition.
My mother has a sick cat, he had total ear canal surgery already TWICE on one side and nothing helps him, even antibiotics do not help hin anymore. His head always gets inflamed on that side (inside) and discharges pus after awhile. It is very painful for the poor animal.
Recently he got antibiotics for 3 weeks, and then after finishing the cure, further 2 weeks without antibiotics and the pus was already starting coming out of his head again. So normally this approx. 9 year old tom would be euthanized as the ear keeps being inflamed. (Actually there is no ear canal or normal hole anymore as everything was taken out exclusive the inner ear part).
So now the vet has done first a hirudotherapy session with two leeches of middle size. They drank for a very long time, over an hour resp. 1,5 hour the second leech. It is exceptionally long and I suppose it is because the cat is very sick. There will be a second session soon and then we’ll see!
The leeches are the last and only chance of this poor ex stray tom. As for the normal veterinary medicine, he is a hopeless case.
I participated on a seminar “Leech therapy for animals” in Biebertal recently. We treated there dogs and even a horse. It was very interesting.
The Germans are always interested in new ways of doing things, so the seminar was well visited. (Actually hirudotherapy is not really new… but it has been somehow forgotten so for the modern people it IS new…).
Wikipedia on leeches