This time, on Episode #95, I share a Christmas story about my Neapolitan Mastiff, Shadrach. My hope is that you are encouraged to press on, to run the race set before you!
Read: Daniel 1-3 – the Bible yo!
Shadrach’s Memorial Page (https://www.aspenbloompetcare.com/blog/in-honor/in-memory-of-shadrach-the-neo-mastiff/)
Podcast episodes mentioned:
Shadrach the Neo Mastiff…Nuthin’ but the Dog in Him!
Mmmm Good!
Doggie Wonderland
Book mentioned:
Animals Taught Me That (http://www.animalstaughtmethat.net) by Dr. Kim Bloomer
WEBSITE: https://www.aspenbloompetcare.com (https://www.aspenbloompetcare.com/)
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/drkimbloomer
Subscribe to the DOGgone Truth (http://www.doggone-truth.com/) podcast on your favorite podcast app
you’re listening to episode 95 December 15th 2019 join me animal nature paath Dr Kim Bloomer host of the dog on Truth podcast where I don’t whitewash I just speak the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help me godone it’s natural it’s raw it’s the bone of five truth can you dig it if you really want to dig in then go to www.dg on truth . Club hello I’m Dr Kim I’m your host and this is going to be the last podcast I record for 2019 I’ll start back up in the second week in January so that we’ll have a couple of weeks a break for the holidays but I’m sure I will be sharing some of the past podcasts from Years Gone by that you can listen to if you get on a listening binge or go back and listen to the other 94 shows that are on this podcast at any rate this time I want to share with you a very Mastiff Christmas this is the reason this dog Shadrach is the primary reason that I got into natural Whole Health for animals and for people because I do have my degrees in both and it was interesting to me as that I was just in the middle of the night last night was awake and was thinking about this and I was going to do something different which that podcast will be recorded in the new year and it was just striking to me that we’re coming up on the very day that I got Shadrack 20 years ago it’s hard for me to even think about that 20 years ago on December 18th 1999 we got the dog now it happens to be that my brother’s birthday my really good friend Bree’s birthday and also it was my grandmother’s birthday so it’s a special day and yet 20 years ago what happened was really sad and I haven’t shared this whole story not on this podcast or my previous not even in my book animals taught me that the full story the full surrounding story to how Shadrach came to be and how he’s in our lives is in my book but I also recorded it as a podcast I will link it in another podcast that centers around Christmas called M good that people really loved last year and it is also with Shadrach as the main star in that one Shadrach is a neom and you wonder where did you get that name well a lot of people know there’s a band with that name but it comes out of the Book of Daniel the Prophet Daniel in the Old Testament of the Bible and originally their names were of course Daniel’s name was changed to belto shazzar then there was haniah mishel and Azariah hananiah the king of Babylon changed was they were taken into captivity the Jewish people were taken in all of Israel was taken into captivity by Babylon and they renamed those that they wanted to serve in the Royal courts trying to get them ready for their society so they changed their names to Babylonian names so hanah’s name became Shadrach and Mel’s name became meak now you know where I got those two dogs names from and azariah’s name became Abed Nigo so I used to call Shadrach hanash sometimes you know it’s funny I have nicknames for all my dogs so this this particular story really is impactful to me because he really was my Through the Fire Dog because they went through the fiery furnace came out with not even not only not smelling like smoke and perfectly alive with every hair on their head and clothing intact but not smelling like smoke they came through the fire and were saved out of that fiery furnace so shadrach’s name was originally Shadow when he came to me and I just I just thought what a boring name I’m sorry for those of you who have dogs named that it’s No Slam on that it’s just that I like to have a little different names of course I have one name King now but that was his name when he came to me at 13 months and I didn’t want to rename him and it’s perfect with him having the name of the king because I think of King Jesus so right at this time of year is just really really special time of year for those of us who believe in Jesus as our Messiah so I wanted to share this particular story because Shadrach really was the epitome me so many things to me and I don’t like I say share this so in depth in my book this particular one week time frame when we first got him I do share that I wasn’t real sure that I wanted him but what had happened prior to it and how he came into our lives I say in the book that there was a tragedy what had happened was right after Thanksgiving of that year my cousin who I was very close to grew up with and my husband and I hung out with her and her husband for a while you know just kind how you move in and out of hanging out with somebody and she was a mom at that time well she was Mom and married her son was 12 at the time and I think her daughter was I don’t know eight or eight or nine years old something like that and because of a situation that happened in her home and she was out going to she got her car stuck on this dark Road in the mountains and then cell service wasn’t as great back 20 years ago and somebody Came Upon her whom she thought was going to help her but instead he took her life and to this day we don’t know who he is the FBI never found him so it is really sad and tragic time and so my whole family came from primarily out of California and around New Mexico but in very PL various places came from all over to come be together to say goodbye to her at at her funeral and during that process we were getting together and groups of us I had a cousin staying with us during that time and we were going out we went out to the place place where she was found and it’s a popular site even though it was dark winter night very cold cold if you were out in it without protection chances are you would pass from hypothermia so we went out there and we went out to eat together and in our course of conversation my aunt who happens to also be the same age as me because my Grandma had her last child at the same age her two oldest daughters were having their first children so it was interesting that we were all born within a four-month period of me being first in August and then my cousin was in December but my aunt was in November so they were right around the holidays too and she mentioned my aunt mentioned that because I had been 11 months since I had had fridge fridge had died my golden retriever had died in January 18th of that year so interesting that we got Shadrach 11 months to the day after fridge died and it was a weekend and my husband and I drove to another city that’s a neighboring City maybe 45 minutes away to to look at Shadrach and see if we wanted him although I had gone out shopping and bought all the stuff that you need for a dog didn’t have a lot of the stuff and have anything set up for puppies or anything and I wasn’t one to buy a lot of toys and do all that with dogs it just wasn’t how I grew up and I guess it just wasn’t something I thought of and it wasn’t what a lot of people did even then at least I didn’t fridge was the one who kind of cracked the door open for me into Natural Health I started reading on that for Animals I’d already done it for humans but for animals but shadra came and boy he thundered into my life he was great big and Larger than Life and personality although when we first met him he was pretty shut down emotionally because of all the stuff he had gone through and like I say you can listen to that podcast and hear that story about him but he was about 4 and a half months old we never did know his exact birth dat so we celebrated it in August because when we got him we we were told he was about 4 and a half months old so it was just really interesting to me that he came on that particular day that we went it was my brother’s birthday but we all celebrated together the following day because I have a nephew whose birthday was that day and he was little still and celebrate both his and my brother’s birthday on that day well we got out there and I just thought wow he is kind of cool looking my husband immediately says yes you know it’s based on his demeanor and looks and I was like I don’t know and the first thing I noticed was how stinky he was so I was going to remedy that as best I could and I did all the things wrong in the beginning just like I’ve done with Ezra and you would think after all these years of being a dog owner and teaching this stuff that I would do things more right but I’m a stubborn kind of gal and as you’ll learn from the next podcast I do I explain some of that there I’m really stubborn and hard to learn and I every time I have a new one it’s just so hard for me to adapt because I’m still looking for the situation the circumstances I had before but the thing is and something my my husband’s Aunt always said to him cuz she was the one who raised him you will never find your future in your past your past you’ve got to let go and I know scripture even States in Romans 8:38-39 that as Paul was saying I’m convinced that neither present nor future he was saying all these things that would not separate us from from the love of God in Christ Jesus not principalities not Powers not life or death none of those things but he he doesn’t mention the past because when you come to faith in Christ your past is just obliterated by him just because you’re made a brand new creation so a lot of us get stuck cuz we’re holding on to that and I’ve been one of those anyway so shadra came in it was right during the holidays and I felt like he was our Christmas gift but oh my goodness you know we did so much wrong that we wanted to feed him too much instead of small meals and thankfully my friend who was a vettech also kind of shook me up and got got my head on Square cuz sometimes when you’re too close to the situation you can do those things wanting to fix it and I’m one of those people that want to fix everything yesterday not tomorrow not next week it’s got to be done like yesterday perfect right that’s totally unrealistic so here’s this Christmas season and he hollered the first night like crazy so did as so did Ezra by the way completely different kind of hollerin but Shadrach was so mournful and a howl that was so deep and sad and it scared us whereas Ezra yodel it was was kind of like a song and I just was like what were we thinking why did we get this dog he’s never and because fridge was like the perfect he was a golden retriever after all I mean he was the perfect puppy he was the he was the best dog I mean he just he the only damage he did was in the yard which I’ve never had one not damage the yard they just do they’re puppies but never in the house Shadrach didn’t either in the house there’s just this day that he had pooped in the house and just so much going on with him and I can look back now and know he had some kidney damage and he had some other things going on because of his emaciation starvation his abuse but that we I remember when my friend shook me up that the very next day when I was so tired and I got a good night’s sleep the next night by the way cuz shadra slept in a separate room but we had all our doors open so he I mean it wasn’t like we couldn’t hear him and our house was small so we could get right there he was in a crate in his own room and it was just scary to him which I can only imagine poor little guy except for he wasn’t so little he was a big boy from the beginning he was as big as one of his friends who was an Australian Shepherd puppy he was already she was probably I don’t know eight months or so when we brought them together to be to play together at the park and he was only four and a half and he was already as big as her and well on the way to passing her in no time as he did all his dog friends at the park which by the way were all girls he was very much a lover of only girl dogs and uh unless they were tiny little dogs then he didn’t mind if they were male and then shazi my Carolina dog that passed in January of this year she only liked mail dogs she didn’t like boy girls at all of any size so it’s yeah anyway so Shadrach I remember that we decided to get him a toy it just felt like he needed something and he wasn’t messing with the tree we had the tree up presents under he didn’t get into anything I mean I could let him I could put him on a rolled I I would double up on this it was like a big comforter and he just laid on it while I was doing things he didn’t wander off he wanted to play in the yard an awful lot and so I let him we had a grassy backyard and tree so and it was but he just he was so had been from what I understand was locked in a bathroom a lot and so he just wanted to be out in the fresh air and playing and doing puppy things and yeah he was destroying the yard stuff too he just didn’t do anything in the people couldn’t believe it I mean he wasn’t just damaging the house quite unlike Ezra who would if we let him go so he was the first one I had really bought present for like that we didn’t even for fridge but for for Shadrach we went out and got him a toy and we were opening our presents and we got this one out for him and handed it to him if I could have recorded his face we weren’t videotaping and taking pictures of every second of our lives back then so I you know and the the recording stuff was really a lot harder back then it would have been precious to have seen the look in his face like he actually had something he knew he belonged he was our first one that we bought it was like having a kid for my husband and I and to give him this present and it was like it looked like it was it had like the kind of legs you would use to play tuggy with is some stuff that was a tiger but not a lot of stuffing just in the head and not in the whole body and stuff and he carried that around with him all the time till he wore it out and we got him a fet then we got him multiple other toys cuz he wouldn’t totally eviscerate them right away he did eventually but he never ate the stuffing he just would pull it out and then we’d get him another toy and eventually had just a bunch and he would always walking around with the toy in his mouth even in his old years when anybody would come over he would get a toy and have it in his mouth and be going he was very vocal their very vocal breed anyway neopolitan Mastiffs are I remember that Christmas being like wow a special name for a special dog who came in and changed my life he started teaching me about natural health then I just didn’t know it he started showing me he would run away from me when I went to put the toxic flea and take control on him like he tried to hide from me and eventually would just surrender I’d put it on him he’d go out and Ard en roll every time I only did it in season obviously it wasn’t I wasn’t giving him the oral stuff as I started to get into Natural Health and supplements there were things he was showing me this isn’t carnivore specific I am a carnivore he started to teach me all those things even what they needed to eat and I looked into it and researched before we got him I started researching the breed and was already had that planted in my head about so many people raw feeding them I didn’t think about that when we got him I got I thought I got him this best you know kibble and and he started to show me when he started having various health issues in particular allergies and that’s when I paid attention I thought this dog has been through so much but when he had that horrible situation at the emergency vet clinic where he had been you know he had aspirated vomit into his lungs because he had had an allergic reaction to the medication we had him on because the veterinarian couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him with his skin and turns out he was allergic to the new paint in our house that I had painted with so we were a ble to remedy that with just a very natural and nice approach and not let him lean against the walls he leaned against everything when he went to the emergency clinic they gave him more antibiotics and also manhandled him he obviously was trying to bite them scared him so held him down put a catheter in his hind leg and it swelled up cuz they put the catheter the tape on too tight which angered both his regular vet and myself of course and that’s when I decided I’m going to go further with this one I’m going to look into a better approach for him at that time he was almost for and I said I have to do this and that’s why I’m podcasting for the last 15 years that’s why I became an animal nature path that’s why I had animal nature op at the online school with my colleague and friend Dr Jeanie Thomasson and a podcast we started the podcast first before we had the school and then repurposed some of that really intense content into that school which we closed last year Partnerships are difficult at times so anyway all of that because of him and for me me I look back and I think what better gift what what better gift of everything that he gave to me and taught me and was a joy the rest of his life it wasn’t perfect and he struggled with health issues his entire life because of his poor start and some of the choices I made that were conventional based on what I knew and I remind my friends when they get so upset and go oh my gosh I never knew that I had a friend recently who said she didn’t know that that rain can hurt their ears so that’s why dogs often don’t want to go out in the rain depends on you know there’s a lot of science out there about that and she got real upset with herself thinking I’ve pushed them and I said yeah but you didn’t know so if you didn’t know it’s not like the worst thing you know now so you can’t look back and and regret that you go forward and help others learn and yourself you will progress from there and I’m sure your dog still loves you so it’s it’s just that for me this dog was so impactful and what’s interesting if you I’ll link to his memorial page on my website the amount of love and outpouring that came to us as a result of this dog helping them all so many people learned about natural health for their dogs because of him I blogged well Shadrach blogged for me I typed for him but it was all on my blog in his his presentation and so so many people felt that they knew him even though they had never seen him in person so I just wanted to share that with you to say he was a very Masti Christmas that has changed my entire life and every dog that has come since have become major teacher dogs because I’m paying attention because of Shadrach fridge started me cuz I loved him but I was still stuck in all of my horrible selfishness I started to pay attention because of him but when Shadrach came I said there’s no way I’m not going to help others from what I’m learning from this because Shadrach deserved it and I know other people’s dogs do as well so my hope is that you will have a really very mly Merry Christmas and that you will start out the new year right I’m starting out with a B and into a class and journaling and also a fast hopefully there will be good coming from that that I can share with you guys and what I mean by that is share good that will help you in your own lives and in your own walk with your own in your own faith in that with your dogs so that they will have healthy and good lives and I pray that you are looking at them and learning from them and I’m going through a really difficult time with this newest one because he is the most challenging one I’ve had ever and if I were to quit what would I miss out on and would it be fair to him those are the two questions I have to ask myself almost daily I have not arrived and I’m continuing on this journey together with you so just remember when we’re surrendered to the Lord he will do things in our lives that will help others and as well as yourself and it’s to know him so that’s what I always say at the end I wish you all very happy holidays and merry Christmas and happy New Year and I’ll be back in the new year and just know that when you know the truth when you know him Jesus then the truth will make you free thank you for listening and be well yo beloved I pray that you may prosper in all things and be un Health just as your soul prospers 3 John 1:2 visit my website at Asin Bloom petcare.com to read the blog and the Articles to become part of my Essential Oils team and just to learn more the dog on Truth podcast is a production of Aspen bloom all right reserved and may not be resold or utilized in any way without Express written permission by Aspen Bloom and Dr Kim Bloomer the information I share represents what I an animal nature a path and an independent distributor of Young Living Essential Oils have chosen to do to take charge of my own personal health and that of my family and pets information learned here is for educational and informational purposes only is not meant to diagnose treat cure prevent any disease but rather to motivate you to make your own health care and dietary decisions and those of your pets based upon your own research and in partnership with your health care providers I encourage you to dig in and make your own informed decisions through your own personal responsibility research application and due diligence thank you [Music]