Ok, it's always better to focus on the positive-
I would never again feed my dog barley. To explain why, here is an excerpt from The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood. To "set up the clip" let me say, that Buttons had been recovering rapidly from a severe stroke in her 18th year.
Excitedly I called her office. Forty minutes later, I hung up from our conversation with a heart full of hope and a list of suggestions. Number one on that list was for me to send a sample of Buttons’ fur to a lab for hair analysis. This was something I was familiar with, as a few years before, I had sent samples of both my hair and Buttons’ fur to a lab in Texas, which did analysis on people and dogs. Basically, a hair analysis will give you an idea of the mineral levels and their ratios in the body -- kind of like how geologists determine natural history by studying layers of rock. Back then, Buttons’ had come out normal in everything while my analysis had indicated extreme magnesium deficiency, a common symptom of CFS and adrenal exhaustion.
In our small apartment, Buttons was never too far from the television or the refrigerator, both of which I knew to have large electromagnetic fields. Ten years before I had gotten rid of the worst culprit, a microwave oven, and I was happy for any protection the halter may have offered her from the other appliances. Again, it was at worst something that I knew couldn’t hurt.
Two years before I had taken a natural-care pet consultant’s advice to replace brown rice with barley in Buttons’ food. When she heard that, Dr. Dodd jumped on it, explaining that in the past she’d sent several types of grain to the lab and all the barley had tested the same: containing high, perhaps toxic levels of aluminum. Although Dr. Dodd had some personal opinions as to why that was so, all I cared about was finding the source of aluminum and removing it from Buttons’ world. So I took Dr. Dodd’s suggestion and sent a sample of the organic sprouting barley I’d been special ordering from the health food store to the lab for testing. Sure enough, it came back showing an extremely high aluminum content. Immediately after receiving the results, I threw out the ten pounds of barley I had in the pantry along with the all-natural, dry dog food with barley listed in the ingredients that I kept for travel and emergencies. 
Ladies and Gentlemen, I am honored to introduce POCKET, the dog who has single-pawedly come up with an efficacious solution for the U.S. budget crisis. In her own words, here is the plan:
While The Healing Art of Pet Parenthood, reads easy like a novel, there is a bigger purpose behind the book.
Recently, I had the extreme pleasure of being interviewed by animal communicator, Maureen Harmonay and am delighted to be able to share our hour together here with you. Her questions were deep, insightful and probing. I hope my answers did them justice.
"Seven rescued dogs. Mostly elderly and most with health problems. You want to take them on the trip of a doggie lifetime, but where do you go and what do you do?In "Seven Days with Seven Dogs", filmmaker and animal psychic Billie Dean and her filmmaker husband Andrew Einspruch bundle their seven rescued dogs from the Ballyoncree Animal Sanctuary and hit the road on a journey of discovery.
Filmed in some of Australia's most beautiful places, and shot by AFI Award winning cinematograhper Anthony Jennings, the documentary follows Suki, Louie, Tala, Twylah, Cedar, Willow and Raffi as they do everything from stay in five-star resort accommodation to taking a horse-drawn gypsy caravan ride.
A short of "Seven Days with Seven Dogs" has already screened at a number of film festivals and on the ABC’s Stateline (ACT). It’s heart warming and fun, and indeed, is getting quite a following.
The full dog-umentary is now available. It's an hour of uplifting entertainment about seven rescued dogs as they journey through some of Australia’s most picturesque country and having the healing holiday of a doggie lifetime."
