Dogs are naturally curious creatures — and sometimes that curiosity gets them into trouble. From foods that can harm them, like chocolate, to everyday objects that can cause digestive issues, every owner should know how to react when their dog eats something they shouldn’t. Understanding dog poisoning prevention is the first step in keeping your companion safe.
What If Your Dog Eats Chocolate?
Chocolate is one of the most common — and most dangerous — foods for dogs. It contains theobromine, a compound their bodies cannot break down. Even a small amount can cause diarrhea and vomiting, while larger amounts may lead to serious poisoning.
If this happens, owners can give activated charcoal as first aid — ideally by syringe directly into the dog’s mouth. Activated charcoal isn’t absorbed by the digestive system; it binds toxins and prevents them from spreading further through the body.
Recognizing the Signs of Poisoning
After your dog eats something suspicious, watch carefully for the following symptoms:
Frequent vomiting
Diarrhea
Weakness or drowsiness
Tremors or restlessness
If you notice any of these signs, contact your veterinarian immediately. Activated charcoal can help as an emergency measure, but a professional exam is essential for effective dog poisoning prevention and treatment.
Should You Induce Vomiting?
Many owners try to make their dogs vomit at home — but that can be dangerous. Never do this without your vet’s guidance, as it can worsen the situation depending on what was ingested (especially if the substance was corrosive or sharp). Each case must be handled according to professional assessment.
If your dog shows any signs of poisoning, seek immediate professional veterinary care.
Prevention Is the Best Cure
Keep all food and objects out of your dog’s reach. Teach clear commands like “leave it” or “drop it” to reduce the risk of swallowing harmful items.
And if an accident happens — stay calm, give activated charcoal, and seek veterinary help right away. Remember: the goal is not just to react, but to prevent. A moment of caution can save your dog’s life.
At Sasha Riess Wellness, we empower owners with the knowledge to act swiftly in emergencies. True dog poisoning prevention starts with a safe environment and a prepared mind. Discover more safety tips: Linktree Sasha Riess
If your dog has diarrhea, a natural remedy can often be both gentle and effective. Sasha Riess shares a trusted traditional recipe — carrot soup (purée) and rice with lean white meat — that helps dogs recover quickly and naturally.
When Your Dog Has Diarrhea — What Owners Should Know
As someone who has worked with dogs and their health for many years, I often receive worried messages: “What should I do if my dog has diarrhea?”
It’s a common issue — dogs have short digestive tracts and are very sensitive to dietary changes. But it’s important to understand that diarrhea in dogs doesn’t always require medication. In many cases, a natural approach is the best first aid.
A Traditional Recipe That Works
There’s one simple, time-tested home remedy I always recommend — carrot soup, or potage de carottes. This humble recipe doesn’t just stop diarrhea — it soothes the stomach, restores strength, and helps bring balance back to the digestive system.
Why Carrots Help
Carrots are rich in natural fibers, vitamins, and nutrients that calm and heal the stomach and intestines. That’s why this traditional recipe remains one of the most effective and gentle natural remedy for dog diarrhea options available today.
How to Prepare Carrot Soup for Dogs
Ingredients and Preparation
500 g (about 1 lb) of carrots
Water (just enough to cover the carrots in a pot)
Cut the carrots into larger pieces and boil them until soft. Then blend them with the water they were cooked in until you get a smooth, creamy soup.
Tip: Don’t open the lid too often during cooking — it helps preserve vitamins and minerals in the water, keeping the soup as nutritious and effective as possible.
Supportive Diet for Dogs with Diarrhea
In addition to carrot soup, a second daily meal can include cooked white rice mixed with boiled chicken or turkey breast, with just a pinch of salt. This combination is gentle on the stomach and intestines, helping the dog regain energy while calming digestive discomfort.
Carrot soup, or potage de carottes, is a gentle and effective traditional home remedy for diarrhea in dogs.
How Fast Does It Work?
From my experience, results can be seen within a couple of days. The stool becomes firmer, the dog’s energy returns, and overall mood improves. Owners are often surprised at how quickly this simple homemade recipe helps.
The Simplest Solutions Are Often the Best
Over the years, I’ve learned that traditional recipes hold timeless wisdom. Carrot soup is a perfect example — natural, inexpensive, safe, and effective. If your dog develops diarrhea, try this gentle method before turning to medication. Sometimes, the simplest remedies bring the greatest relief.
At Sasha Riess Wellness, we believe in the power of nature to restore balance. When you choose a natural remedy for dog diarrhea, you are supporting your dog’s innate ability to heal. Explore more tips: Linktree Sasha Riess
Allergies in dogs aren’t just physical reactions to food or environmental triggers — they’re often messages from the body and soul. Through a dog’s symptoms, we can see how much the owner’s stress, emotions, and energy shape the dog’s health. Understanding the roots of a canine allergy requires us to look beyond the surface.
The Quiet Message of Canine Allergy
There is no quieter cry for help than an allergy. No noise. No screaming. No attack. Just itch. Just redness. Just a body trying to expel what it can no longer tolerate. And in this case, the body isn’t ours — it’s the dog’s.
Symptoms That Speak Louder Than Words
For years people have called me about allergies. The dog scratches, chews his paws, loses hair, breaks out in rashes. They hunt for the culprit in food, grass, detergents, or kibble. And the question is always the same: “What is he allergic to?”
More and more often, I take a breath and say: “To you.”
Not literally. Not as an accusation. But as an invitation to awareness. A dog can’t choose his own life. He lives ours. He eats what we give him, breathes the air of our home, walks at our pace, sleeps when we sleep. A dog is the truest mirror of the life we lead. And if he’s suffocating, itching, protesting, and falling apart — that’s not a sign to change the brand of food. It’s a sign to look at what, exactly, we’re feeding.
Allergy as an Inner Conflict
By its nature, allergy is conflict — rejection. Physiologically, it’s an overreaction of the immune system to something that should be harmless but has become unrecognizable. The body refuses to accept it and tries to expel it. Systemically, it means a boundary has been crossed — the organism can no longer tolerate a lie.
The Dog as a Mirror of the Owner’s Life
Now imagine a dog who becomes allergic to chicken, beef, pollen — to things tied to life, strength, fertility, movement, the presence of nature. On the level of the body, his system is shouting: “This isn’t my life. This isn’t for me. I can’t digest it.”
Then we look at the owner and see a forgotten person. Forgotten by himself. Forgotten in a marriage that has traded tenderness for mere correctness. Forgotten in a job that’s no longer a choice but a climate-controlled cell with monthly paychecks. Forgotten in a body that no longer feels hunger but runs on habit. Forgotten in a sexuality that’s no longer lived.
Civilization and Suppression
This isn’t about blame. It’s civilization. We were taught to be polite, useful, productive — not to disturb the order. Not to want too much, ask too much, feel too much. When we suppress our hunger for life, for the body, for touch, for feeling and sexuality, the body that no longer knows how to say “I want” begins to say “I mustn’t.”
And the dog — who feels everything, resonates with our nervous system, absorbs our chemistry, our unfinished thoughts, our unspoken grief — begins to react. He can’t digest what we give him because we’re not giving from love but from guilt. He can’t tolerate the life we offer because we ourselves can no longer tolerate our own.
So the dog isn’t allergic to food. He’s allergic to us. Or, more precisely, to the life we, as his humans, have forgotten how to live.
Physiology: What’s Actually Happening
That’s hard to admit.
Physiologically, a canine allergy is an overreaction to a harmless substance. A confused, depleted immune system sees threat where there is none. Instead of protecting, it starts attacking — everything. The only question is: what will be the trigger.
Stress, the Microbiome, and the Invisible Link
In dogs with chronic symptoms we often see the same story: cortisol — the stress hormone — stays elevated. It signals danger. The system switches to survival mode. Blood leaves the stomach for the muscles. Digestion halts. Blood sugar spikes. Gut pH turns acidic. The microbiome — that separate organ of trillions of bacteria — begins to collapse. Without it, food isn’t digested. Everything becomes toxic. The dog eats but doesn’t utilize. He’s fed yet starving. He receives but cannot assimilate. His body becomes a battlefield. Not because the food is “wrong,” but because everything in him has been put on alert without a break.
Behind every allergy might lie an unspoken emotion – a dog often feels what the owner suppresses.
Where It Starts: When a Dog No Longer Knows Where He Belongs
It begins quietly — the moment a dog no longer knows to whom he belongs, which species he belongs to, what his role is. He only knows he must stay near us. Because he loves us. And because we are falling apart.
The Dog as a Substitute
It starts when the dog becomes a stand-in. When he enters during a time of pain — a gift to a child after a divorce, a comfort after a parent’s death, a “new chance” when everything else has failed. While we believe the dog loves us unconditionally, each day he gets more lost in a role that was never his.
He begins to carry what cannot be carried. And his body shows it — through skin, through gut, through allergy.
Allergy as a Metaphor for the Life We Don’t Live
Allergy isn’t just a physical response. It’s a metaphor. A message. Resistance. A symptom that says: “I can’t digest this.” And most often it’s not about chicken. Food isn’t the problem — it’s the symbol. Food is life. When a dog becomes “allergic to food,” what he’s often trying to say is: “I’m allergic to the life I’m living.”
But whose life is that?
The Owner’s Life as the Key
It’s the owner’s life — woven with suppressed emotions, compromises, and polite smiles. A life without joy, touch, or presence. A life of waking next to someone you no longer love. Of going to a job you can’t stand. A life where “I’m fine” is just a façade.
A dog doesn’t understand that. He absorbs it. Tries to break it down, to “digest” it. When he cannot, the body reacts. Because love without order becomes poison.
Hypoallergenic Diets: Solution or Surrender?
Then comes the next phase: “But my dog has no more symptoms on a hypoallergenic diet.” Anti-allergy food — industrially broken down under extreme heat and pressure — is no longer food. It’s a semi-digested mash of amino acids, fractionated fats, and processed carbohydrates. There’s nothing left to digest. It doesn’t provoke — but it doesn’t nourish either. It carries no character, no information, no vitality. The body accepts it without resistance — because there’s nothing left to receive.
Hypoallergenic food is often just a temporary fix – the root of the problem lies deeper, in how the dog and owner live.
The Silence of Symptoms Isn’t Healing
Phenomenologically, the absence of symptoms is not the same as healing. It can be life giving up — and we call that progress. If a dog can function only on sterile, inert food, that isn’t health. That’s capitulation — like all our compromises. Food without taste. Relationships without touch. Days without meaning.
When a dog can again eat real, living food without reacting — then we know the body has renewed itself. Then life can enter again. And often, it means our own life has started moving again, too.
A Dog’s Loyalty — and His Quiet Tragedy
Dogs love blindly. That is their magnificent tragedy. In systemic work we know: what remains unresolved is passed on. In human–dog relationships, that transmission is direct — from soul to body. The dog becomes the bearer of a dynamic no one recognizes.
A canine allergy to chicken may be an allergy to the fact that we keep smiling when we don’t want to. A “pollen allergy” may be resistance to life blooming outside while the flowers of our sexuality wither within.
When Love Turns Toxic
When love is out of order, it becomes poison. And the dog carries it — silently. So when you ask me, “What should I feed a dog with allergies?” I no longer have a single recipe to give you. I’ve shared thousands. I can only ask: “What are you feeding your life?”
Returning to Life — Your Dog as Your Barometer
A dog eats what we serve — but digests what we radiate. If we live dead relationships, suppress feelings, feed illusions and polite smiles — if we’re surviving instead of living — a dog can’t understand it, but he feels it. And he reacts. Not as disease, but as message.
Dogs don’t lie. Their skin doesn’t lie. Their itch doesn’t lie. We do. If we stop lying, the dog can finally breathe. That is healing — not symptomatic, but deep, present, alive. That is love — not the commercial kind, but the real kind, the kind that sees and looks toward the future.
A Gentle Self-Check: What Is Your Dog Really Telling You?
Answer honestly — not as self-blame, but as an invitation to awareness:
Does your dog have chronic allergies, itching, rashes, or digestive issues?
Have you rotated through foods, shampoos, and supplements without a lasting solution?
When you look at your dog, do you see only symptoms — or also sadness, exhaustion, restlessness?
Are you living the life you truly want — or just functioning out of duty, habit, obligation?
Are you in relationships you’ve stayed in out of fear rather than love?
Do you sometimes feed your dog out of obligation instead of love and presence?
Have you felt “tired of everything” lately without knowing why?
Does your dog come to you when you’re upset — and do you push him away?
Did your dog’s symptoms worsen after a major family change (divorce, move, death, illness)?
If your dog could speak, would he say: “I can’t carry this for you anymore”?
Your Dog as Your Reflection
If you answered “yes” to more than a few of these, your dog may not need a brand-new food. He may be mirroring your life. And if you return to your own life, he may no longer have to run from his body.
At Integrative and Holistic Grooming Education, we look beyond the itch. We help you decode the language of the soul reflected in the skin. Real health begins with real truth. Explore our philosophy: Linktree Sasha Riess
When we banned chains, we thought we had done something great, something civilized and humane. We freed dogs from chains, but not from ourselves.
Sophisticated slavery in the name of love
We passed laws, declared victory over cruelty, and celebrated ourselves as protectors of life. But the truth is far deeper and much darker. Because while we were breaking iron, we forgot that chains are not made only of metal.
Today, dogs are no longer tied to trees. They are tied to us. To our fears, insecurities, ambitions, emptiness, and projections. Their new collars are not made of steel, but of energy. Silent and invisible, yet incomparably stronger. And while in the name of love and freedom we removed visible chains, in the name of those same words we created new ones, subtle, unbreakable, and far more cruel.
Today we no longer use chains. We design them. We make them from fine leather, order handmade buckles, decorate them with crystals, gold plating, initials, and logos. We call them leashes, as if a new word has the power to erase the old truth. We sell them in luxury boxes, photograph them on marble floors, advertise them as status symbols and proof of a special bond between human and dog.
And while we praise how far we have progressed in our relationship with animals, no one dares to say what is obvious. This is not freedom. This is sophisticated slavery. A new level of hypocrisy in which humans have surpassed themselves. Never before have we managed to turn restraints into fashion accessories and call that act love.
The Energetic Chain: When a Dog Becomes Our Emotional Prosthesis
We call them “our dogs.” We tie them to beds, couches, terraces, yards, to every moment of our sadness, boredom, and insecurity. They are no longer guardians, hunters, or companions. They have become emotional buffers, carriers of our inner emptiness.
Every time we are afraid, they feel it. Every time we argue, they carry it. Every time we want love we cannot give ourselves, we take it from them.
And so, while they smile in our photographs and wear scarves at Christmas, dogs die more slowly than ever before. Because their collapse is not physical. It is energetic. A collapse of connection with their true place in the order of life. In the natural order of the world, the dog is a bridge between humans and wilderness. He stands between instinct and consciousness, between darkness and light, between life that fights and life that loves. But we have turned that bridge into a wall. Instead of respecting it, we possess it. Instead of listening, we use it.
When the Dog Becomes a Mirror: Invisible Chains of Human Imbalance
In the order of harmony, every being has its place. When someone leaves their place, the system reacts, distorts, seeks balance. The dog has always been a guardian of balance between humans and nature. Today, as we are cut off from the earth, dogs become our sensors, transmitters of our imbalance.
The modern dog is no longer free even within his own nature. He is not allowed to bark because it bothers neighbors. He is not allowed to run because he gets dirty. He is not allowed to sniff because it is “unhygienic.” His drive to hunt, to move freely, to touch water and mud, everything that makes him a dog, we label as a “behavioral problem.”
We have created dogs that are obedient, sterilized, trained, emotionally saturated, yet spiritually dead and physically zombie-like. This is the price of our comfort. And while we believe we have freed them, they have become prisoners of our “humane” concepts. The chain of normality is the strongest of all. Because there is no scream, no audible pain, no blood. Only silent sadness in the eyes of a dog who knows he has lost the right to be what he is.
„He has everything, except himself.“ Our homes have become camps of love.
Invisible Chains of Love Without Boundaries
Every love without boundaries becomes violence. We do not see it because we believe we love. But love without awareness of place, without respect for distance, without honoring another nature, is not love but obsession.
A dog does not ask to be loved like a child, but to be respected as a being. When a dog lies next to us, he does not ask to become human. He asks to remind us that we are animals too. That we breathe, feel, and move through the field of life just like he does. But we rejected that lesson, and now dogs look at us with the same gaze wolves once did, a gaze of understanding and sorrow.
Our homes have become camps of love. Everything looks gentle, clean, and orderly, yet in that sterility something is dying. Every dog who has lost contact with his body, with the earth, with a sense of meaning, becomes a victim of our system of “care.” We call this a humane society, but that society does not know true freedom. Because true freedom is not the absence of a chain, but the presence of awareness. And we have not become aware of our place in relationship with dogs. We have only changed the material.
The Camp of Kindness: Are Our Homes Prisons for Dogs
In the order of harmony, the dog has a deep purpose. He does not exist to serve, but to testify to how far we have strayed from ourselves. When a dog loses peace, it is a sign that we have lost touch with the source. When a dog becomes ill, it is a message that the system between human and nature is broken.
The dog does not carry our mistakes as punishment, but out of loyalty. He will carry our imbalances until we admit that they are ours. And when we do, when we bow to his pain as a mirror of our own unconsciousness, that invisible chain breaks.
False Freedom, Real Suffering
In the desire to give them freedom, we stripped dogs of meaning. In the desire to protect them, we took away their task. In the desire to love them, we took away their dignity.
The law that banned chains is not wrong. It is incomplete. Laws do not change awareness, only behavior. And behavior without awareness becomes a new form of unfreedom. Real change is not when a dog is no longer tied, but when a human stops tying him into their own processes and problems. When we stop seeking confirmation of our value in his gaze. When we stop using his loyalty as medicine for our insecurity.
True freedom is not the absence of a chain, but the presence of awareness.
The Dog as a Prophet
Perhaps one day, if we are quiet enough, we will hear what the dog is trying to tell us. That we do not need to be pitied, but awakened. That the real chain is not between dog and tree, but between human and hypocrisy.
And perhaps then we will understand that the dog does not come into our life to be “ours,” but to teach us how to be part of the world he also belongs to. Not owners of life, but participants in it. Imagine a dog sitting in a yard without a fence. The wind carries the scent of earth, leaves rustle, and he simply breathes. In his eyes there is no fear, no dependency, no expectation. Only peace. That is the image of freedom.
Now imagine another dog, clean, groomed, loved, in an air-conditioned apartment, always in company, but never in silence. His body looks relaxed, but his soul and every muscle are tense. He looks through the window and does not understand where he went wrong.
We say, “He has everything.” But if he could speak, he would say, “I have everything, except myself.”
We freed dogs from chains, but not from ourselves. And as long as we refuse to see what we do not want to admit, that our dogs have become extensions of our inner prisons, freedom will remain only a word. Only when we stop binding them invisibly and finally return to them the place that belongs to them in the order of life will the dog once again be what he has always been: the guardian of the sacred bridge between us and nature. The same nature we admire from afar, while with every action we push it toward the abyss.
And only then might we realize that as long as we keep dogs imprisoned in our fears and illusions, we ourselves remain the greatest prisoners, walking tirelessly toward our own end, convinced we are civilized, while in truth we accelerate our own destruction.
At Integrative and Holistic Grooming Education, we believe that true connection requires the courage to let go of control. Respecting a dog’s nature is the ultimate expression of love. Explore our philosophy: Linktree Sasha Riess
Learn how to teach your puppy to use a pee pad — with tips on space management, routine, and proper guidance.
Many puppy owners face the same challenge: how to properly teach their dog to pee on a pad. It’s a process that requires patience, consistency, and an understanding of canine nature.
Why Doesn’t the Puppy Use the Pad?
Dogs instinctively avoid soiling the area where they sleep. If your puppy pees all over the house, the causes may vary:
Too much water intake – dogs that drink large amounts of water will naturally urinate more often.
Diet – dry kibble that’s constantly available increases thirst, while cooked or moist food reduces water intake and the frequency of urination.
Stress and adaptation – a puppy that has just arrived in a new home often pees or poops uncontrollably because it feels separation anxiety from its mother and littermates.
Step-by-Step: How to Teach a Puppy to Use the Pad
1. Limit the space
In the beginning, set up a small area for your puppy — one side for sleeping, the other for the pee pad. This helps the puppy learn to distinguish between rest and potty zones.
2. Gradually expand the area
Once the puppy starts using the pad regularly, slowly allow access to a larger part of the home — but always keep the pad clearly visible and easily accessible.
3. Watch your puppy’s habits
Puppies usually pee right after eating or drinking. During these moments, gently guide your puppy to the pad and encourage it to use it.
Rewarding is a key part of teaching a puppy to use a pee pad.
4. Reward and be patient
Every time your puppy pees on the pad, praise and reward it immediately. Consistency and positive reinforcement are key to faster learning. Avoid punishment — it only creates fear and delays progress.
Practical Tips
Keep the pad clean and in the same location.
Establish a feeding and walking routine to help your puppy develop predictable habits.
During the first few days, accidents are normal — stay calm and consistent.
Building Understanding Through Connection
Teaching a puppy where to pee is not just training — it’s communication. When you lead with patience and awareness, your puppy learns trust and balance, not just rules.
At Integrative and Holistic Grooming Education, we believe that every lesson is an opportunity to deepen the bond with your companion. True education is built on trust, not force. Explore our philosophy: Linktree Sasha Riess
