Aromatherapy for Your Pooch

Yes, you can actually use Aromatherapy on your pets! With a few precautions of course, Aromatherapy can be a viable way to help your pet holistically and preventatively. Just like humans, animals are effected by scents and can benefit from the healing properties of botanicals and prove that essential oils effectiveness isn't due to supposed psychological factors. Aromatherapy plays more of a roll than Aromacology on animals because they don't have pre-existing psychological attachments to certain scents like humans many times do. So in effect, when you use Aromatherapy on your pets, you are not only helping them but also engaging in a science project at the same time.

Although you can use essential oils on a number of household pets, we will be homing on "Man's (and women's... in my case anyway) Best Friend". Dogs are one of the most popular pets to have and can be found in many households. One attribute that puts dogs at the top of the list for successful treatment with Aromatherapy is the fact they have superb smelling capabilities. Scienctist believe they have 20 times the Olfactory receptors we do, making them highly sensitive to scents around them. Being that this is the case, you want to not use as much essential oil on pets as you would for humans. They may become sensitized faster and distracted by the pungent odor of some essential oils. Of course size must be taken into consideration. If it's a very large dog, more essential oil may be needed, especially when trying to treat for fleas and the like.

To help repel fleas and ticks along with giving the dogs coat a wonderful sheen, you can apply a few drops of essential oil to the dogs brush or to a clean towel and rub the dog with it. Essential oils which are good to use include cederwood (Cedrus atlantica) and pine (Pinus palustris). These oils can also be mixed in the bath water for a more diluted effect. Make sure you rinse your dog thoroughly after the application of essential oils in bath form and try not to get it into the animals eyes. This also works extremely well for small cuts and scrapes your dog may have gotten playing outside. In that case lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) oil would be used, not only to disinfect but also help draw out the toxins in the warn water and prevent reinfection. Applying the essential oil directly to the wound may make it scab too quickly and lead to further infection down the road. The bath method is best and also serves to keep the animal calm.