Hannah Zulueta The Fruity Kiss and the Full Glands
Two signs, one center: reading your dog’s digestion and anal glands through Chinese Medicine.
One of my teachers paid very close attention to bowel movements. He was talking about cancer at the time, which sounds dramatic until you hear what he said.
A bowel movement in the morning, he told us, is the equivalent of taking out the trash. Every day. If you don’t, you are basically polluted.
I never saw bowel movements the same way after that.
I have three dogs. The two girls are easy. I can count on one hand the number of times either of them has had digestive trouble, and most of those were early on when I was still feeding them things I no longer feed. Their digestion is consistent, their stool is formed, and they have never given me reason to worry.
The youngest is a different story. He was one of two runts in the litter. I was drawn to him in the way you are sometimes drawn to things before you understand why. His weak link, from the beginning, has been the center.
From a young age, for two years, his appetite was off. He eventually ate, but on some days it would take an hour. I pulled every piece of knowledge I had. I tried everything I knew. Then one morning, mid-step on a walk when spring was just starting, I got a download. I knew the formula.
One dose. Two years of inappetence, broken.
He is four now. And that experience rippled outward, the way things do when you solve something real. Weary dog parents started coming to me with dogs their vets declared healthy, dogs who simply would not eat. I learned to read the signs.
Signs matter. They are the same kind of thing you feel when the weather is about to change. The air temperature shifting at your feet on a walk. The taste of pollen. The scent of something moving in before you can name it.
Here is how one pattern starts. Not the only pattern. Not the only progression. But one I see often, and it begins the same way almost every time.
Your dog kisses you and something stops you. They almost smell like a puppy again. You pause because they are not a puppy, but something about the scent reminds you of one. Then you place it. Fruity. Like apples.
You go about your day thinking nothing more of it.
A day later, maybe a week later, you notice them licking their rear end. This is usually when people say no more kisses.
Most owners file these two things separately. An odd smell. Some licking. Unrelated, probably. Something to mention at the next vet visit.
In Chinese Medicine, the fruity kiss and the licking could not be more related.
They are two ends of one channel, reporting the same problem. One center is not doing its job.
Chinese Medicine is not one school of thought. There are lineages, teachers, orientations. The spleen school I trained in sees digestion as the center of everything. When the center is working, the body works. When the center falters, everything downstream begins to show it.
Two meridians form what we call the Yang Ming pair. The Stomach is the Foot Yang Ming meridian. The Large Intestine is the Hand Yang Ming meridian. They are paired not by accident but by function. They share a direction. They share a job. They move things through and out.
Stomach, Foot Yang Ming
When the Stomach is not clearing, a little food is left over and not fully transformed. It begins to rot and ferment. That internal heat on stagnant food is the odor that rises when your dog kisses you. Not dental. Not kidney. Fermentation. The Stomach is not emptying the way it should.
Large Intestine, Hand Yang Ming
At the other end, the Large Intestine is not clearing either. The anal glands sit at the terminal end of that channel. They fill because the body is holding what it should be releasing. The direction is not moving.
Two orifices. One pair of meridians. One center not doing its job.
Nature moves in specific directions. Waterfalls go down. Seedlings rise in spring. Tides go in and out on a rhythm that does not vary.
In the body, organs and meridians have correct directions too. The Stomach descends. What it receives moves downward through the system and eventually out. The Large Intestine continues that descent. What should move through moves through, and the body is clear.
When that direction is disrupted, the body signals it. Stool that is soft and inconsistent. Accumulation that builds and does not clear. Odors that travel upward instead of moving out. The anal glands filling on a schedule.
Expressing the glands is not wrong. It is like emptying a trash can without asking why it keeps overflowing.
The accumulation is addressed. The direction that caused it remains unchanged.
Digestive enzymes. Probiotics. Mucilage. Dietary changes. These things sometimes work. For some dogs they are exactly the right key for the right lock and the pattern resolves. If they do not work, it is not because you did something wrong. It is because they were not the right key for this particular lock.
The bowl is still where most owners can begin. Warming proteins that are easier for a compromised center to transform. Lightly cooked rather than raw. Less of what is cold, rich, or hard to digest. Consistency in meal timing and portion. These adjustments reduce the demand on a digestive system that is already working harder than it should.
For some dogs, that is enough. The direction restores. The glands stop filling on schedule. The smell from the mouth changes.
For others, the center has been compromised long enough that it needs more than a lighter load. It needs a TCM formula. The right combination of herbs that addresses the specific direction that is not moving, for this dog, in this pattern. Through Traditional Chinese Medicine we look at which direction is failing and determine which levers to pull. That differs from dog to dog. The fruity smell and the full glands are the same pattern in the dogs I see most often, but the formula that resolves it is not the same for every dog.
That is the work. Reading the signs. Finding the right key.
If you adjust the diet, the body will report back. It reports in three signals, and they arrive at different speeds.
These are not guarantees. They are what the body reports when the direction is restored.
Every morning I wake before my dogs. I do my own business first. Then I wake them, and we go directly out for a walk. Not into the backyard. Out, where I can observe them properly.
It is the least glamorous part of caring for my dogs and one of the most important things I do.
If the bowl is not enough and you want help reading your dog’s pattern, that is the work I do.
Book a nutrition consultI watch their bowel movements because that is how I know they are not polluted. That is how I know the direction is moving.
Hannah Zulueta obtained her Certificate in Canine Nutrition from CASI Institute. She is also studying for her Doctorate in Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Herbalism from the esteemed Pacific College of Health and Medicine. If you’re as keenly interested in health for yourself, visit her website for human health: Satori Acupuncture and Herbs.
She resides in San Diego with her three dogs, Maggie, Orbit, and Mr. Higgins.
She is available for one on one consultations. She develops evidence-based recipes that meet both NRC and AAFCO nutritional standards while integrating the therapeutic food principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine into her formulations.
Additionally, you can find her sharing free content on Instagram.
