If you haven’t figured it out already, the infamous Jupiter/Saturn/Pluto conjunction in Capricorn is painfully disgorging long standing difficulties that have been pushed down, denied, and/or ignored for way too long. Furthermore, whatever this “suppurating boil” (as I like to call it) has brought to the surface, will be testing one’s capacity way longer than expected, basically through the end of 2020.

The underlying Saturn/Pluto/Jupiter purgation of corruption as it infects national politics is becoming more and more blatant (e.g. the long festering, deeply disturbing child sex, child porn, child trafficking and ritual murder, child snuff films).

And hey, look at not just government, but other institutions! For example, Harvard, which plans to switch to online education this next academic year and still charge $50K tuition! Think anyone will attend Harvard? Plus, given ICE’s current decision to send any foreign student home who does not transfer to a still-residential college, I wonder what will left of. so-called “higher education” after this purgation is over.

Expect a prolonged, purgative, possibly destructive and/or reconfigurative process for any group, institution, nation, or person whose birthchart features the final third of any of the cardinal signs: Aries, Cancer, Libra, and Capricorn.

For me, with Jupiter in at 23° Cancer directly across from the reigning triple conjunction, I’m not surprised that my own patience, determination, and focus are all being tested mightily during this year. Remember: this conjunction among three  planets, two of them intensely difficult and karmic anyway, is then made bigger by Jupiter. What is required, always, is a massive restructuring of whatever structures — visible and invisible, in time and/or space — have been too long taken for granted: new goals, outlooks, habits, routines, are absolutely required in order to make positive use of this trying time.

So for me, it’s FLEAS ON SHADOW.  Sound trivial. Easily solved? Guess again.

Dog owners know that a nasty and expensive chemical product called Seresto is the only flea medicine that really works, supposedly for up to eight months. And yet, even the first time I put it on Shadow (after trying numerous other Big Pharma remedies) it worked maybe only five months. The next time three months. This flea season of 2020 (March through October) it doesn’t work at all.

Of course, I keep his hair cut short during flea season, but need to either have him groomed professionally much more than every three months or buy the kind of tools I need to work on his entire body, which is what I think I’ll do, since the alternative is becoming so expensive.

Housemate Dan even bought him a second Seresto collar yesterday, thinking maybe the one I put on a month ago was somehow defective, but I notice today that this collar doesn’t seem to be working either. Every time I use the flea comb on him, even once through from shoulders to butt, there are at least a dozen fleas.

The infestation on him, but not in the house, and not on other animals, is drastic, and growing. Every time he goes outside, they  flock to him like a magnet!

Two days ago, when I washed him (again, after one week), with flea shampoo that has soothing oatmeal in it, the fleas apparently didn’t even leave his body, because very few washed off, and I combed him hours later and again a dozen or so, with each pull of the comb! This happens four or five times a day.

This morning I washed him again, with the same flea shampoo. He’s still wet, haven’t pulled the comb through him again yet, but did notice again while washing, that only two or three washed out.

I’ve spent my entire life working to build my own immune system (see Ann’s Chai Tea elixir posts and video); and yet I’ve relied on vets for my animals. I don’t see doctors myself, and yet I both see vets and push all their vaccines into the animals. What am I doing? 

Okay. I’m going to start working with the long-festering-and-worsening problem from the inside out, rather than the outside in. I.e., how do I fortify Shadow’s immune system so that he’s not so attractive to fleas? Any suggestions? Does anyone else have this flea-magnet-unrelieved-by-Seresto problem with an animal that lives both inside and outside? This long standing and growing crisis is truly devastating to Shadow, whose scratching sometimes even opens up tiny sores near his butt.

The fleas used to confine themselves to his butt area, but now seem to be enjoying the skin of his entire body.

Preliminary internet findings: rosemary, probiotic or plain yogurt, fish oil, vitamin E, broccoli, brewer’s yeast.

Just gave him broccoli. He loved it! Next time I’ll put fish oil on it.

Preliminary decision: switch from kibble and a small amount of wet food daily (bought at Aldi, so cheap, but seems to be as good as any of the commercial ones) to homemade food. Start with raw hamburger (just pulled an organic pound out of the freezer), with cooked potatoes and broccoli, to which I will add tiny bits of at least some of the above ingredients. (He’s not good at taking pills.)

Podmate Gabby just told me that she discovered last night that there is a family of skunks living somewhere on the Green Acres Village property. Where is their nest? Gabby: “Are they bringing in all the fleas?” Good question. I see that internet says fleas love skunks too. Perhaps they are living under the very front porch where I sit four or five times each day to comb Shadow of fleas (and then drop them off the side, which is no doubt foolish, I realize now, as they must hop back on Shadow whenever he goes up and down).

We have sticky flea traps in each of the rooms he uses here, mostly to know just how much we need to vacuum, and the only one that catches a lot of fleas is the one near the front door, where Shadow walks in off the porch . . .

So there is no general flea infestation.

I do use diotomacious earth on his bed once in a while, but that dries out his skin, already suffering from both fleas and his scratching.

What else? Does anyone else have this problem? Have you found holistic solutions?