Crafting the Perfect Herbal First Aid Kit for Your Dog | Shorts

Hi, this is Rita Hogan and welcome to the Dogs Are Individuals podcast. I'm a clinical canine herbalist and I've been practicing for over 20 years. This podcast is all about your dog through an herbal lens. So let's get to it and dive right in. Hi, everyone. Welcome back. Welcome back. Lovin doing the podcast. Loving the podcast. I hope you're loving it too. Got some great feedback on my what's lurking in your laundry episode. That was a fun one. I've got another one. Type of that kind, type of that kind of episode coming out on citric acid soon. Doing a little more research, but not looking good. Not looking good, but happy thoughts, Happy thoughts. We are having happy thoughts for this episode for sure. And we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about putting together a simple emergency medicine kind of kit for your dog. We had a request for it, just did kind of a seminar on it. I'm just going to go over a few things that you can use in your emergency medical kit that I have in mind. It's not a total kit, that would take a lot more than the time that we have here together, but some of my favorite remedies, a little bit about them and how to use them. Sounds fun, right? You never know when you're gonna have to jam. So before we get into this, I wanna thank my sponsor, Real Mushrooms. Realmushrooms.com I sell their products on my site. You can go to Real Mushrooms and purchase their products on their site. They're coming out with some really great things. Very excited about their Maitake mushroom. I know I mentioned that before, but I love Maitake and their mushroom powders are top notch and I just can't recommend them enough. Cycling mushrooms, I think is a very good thing to do for yourself and your dog. And you need to know, like about different mushrooms. You can check that out. I have a lovely podcast about mushrooms. You can hear all about different types of mushrooms. We'll have some upcoming mushroom shorts. Those are my little bite size, like 12 minute. Sometimes I go a little over, I try not to. But 12 minute or under bite size, morsels of herbal information. And we'll be doing some specific mushrooms. There's lots of mushrooms that people don't talk about in the commercial area that I do feel they should be talking about and we can utilize for our dogs. So I'm excited about that. But check them out. Real Mushrooms dot com. Okay. Oh, and remember, could not be doing the podcast without my lovely sponsors. So please do check them out. All Right. So putting together a little kit for your dog. You know, I think that this is a very good thing to do. And the thing that I want to say in just to be like in the beginning, the homeopathic or herbal remedies that you have in your pet emergency kit, make sure that an emergency is not the first time you're using those remedies on your dog. You want to see how they react to them. You want to see how, like, what's your maximum dosage of an herb for that remedy? What is your maximum dosage and how does your dog react to that herb? And remember, acute herbalism can be used with any dog's energetic if it's an acute situation. But you still want to see how does your dog react to that medicine. You don't want to find that out in an emergency situation. Before I go over everything, I usually do, you know, extra small, small, medium, large, extra large. For me, an extra small is like a little schwaba or a yorkie. A small is a pug. Medium is like a spaniel. Large is a golden retriever and. And extra large is like a Newfoundland. Extra large is like 86 to 100 pounds. Large is like 50 to 85, 90 pounds, medium is 26 to 50 small, 11 to 25, and extra small, 2 pounds to 10 pounds, give or take. Always be careful with dogs under 5 pounds. And if your dog's over 100 pounds, then you can just start from the top. So. So your dog may be 125 pounds. So that would be an extra large plus a small. And I did the large dog is like 50 to 85 pounds. I think I said 90, but like 50 to 85 pounds. And you do wanna be careful with those little tiny dogs. You wanna make sure they tend to metabolize things faster. But so you might have to give them more times per day, but less per dose. Okay, Just want to tell you about that. And I just recorded one of my shorts and it was on obsessive thinking about our dogs and our dog's health, basically. And I talked about flower essences. And the first remedy that I love for the medical kit, herbal medical kit is rescue remedy. And you can use rescue remedy with pharmaceuticals, you can use it with homeopathy, you can use with herbs. So you can use it as one layer. But rescue remedy has clematis, star, Bethlehem impatiens, rock rose and cherry plum from the Bach flower line or batch, however you want to say it. And it helps with panic and fright and anxiety and stress. And it Works on your dog's emotional center. Okay. And we love that. And you can use it multiple times. You know, you could do six to eight times per day if you needed it. And you could mix it with other things. And I definitely give it. When there is an acute situation, I immediately grab it, spray it in my dog's mouth or on their ears or on their head or on their paws because it's a really important thing to do to help them calm themselves. And another thing is another. Another remedy that I can use with the Rescue Remedy or the five Rescue Remedy can also be called five Flower Essence, depending on what, who you're getting it from. Rescue Remedy is a trademarked kind of name from Bach Flowers. And then you can look for five, five flowers. Like I make my own. I also sell Rescue Remedy, but another product that I keep on hand and I definitely formulated this product. I don't sell it anymore. I sol company Farm Dog Naturals. And the new owner of Farm Dog has kept it exactly the same, and it is Relax External Calming Serum can be used with the, with the Rescue Remedy. And this has. This is an essential oil blend that you put on the inner tips of the ears and on the neck. And it's organic pedigree marjoram, Ylang Ylang Rosatar Roman and blue chamomile lavender essential oil. And it's in a base of avocado oil. And you just use a little. A couple of drops and you put it on the neck. Not the chin, the neck and then the ears. Usually I do the ears first and then whatever left on my fingers I rub on the neck. And it really helps dogs calm down. And I have never seen a paradoxical effect with the Relax Serum. I formulated that in 2007 for a trainer in, I believe, North Carolina. And I don't know where that trainer is at this time, but definitely have sold a ton of this Relax to dog owners and have gotten such great feedback over the years. And it's wonderful for thunderstorms, vet visits and fireworks. It works so good for fireworks. In fact, the owner of one of my sponsors, Green Juju Kelly, uses it every year on her dogs for fireworks and absolutely loves it. I usually get an email from her every year going, oh, my God, thank you, thank you, thank you. So that is sold by farmdognaturals.com and Farm Dog. I sell Farm Dog in my store and you can get it on their website. I think they also sell on Amazon. So the next remedy that you can give along with these two remedies, if There is a lot going on and that is Adored Beast Go to the go to Remedy I've spoken about before, one of our sponsors. But even if, you know, they're, you know, they might not be my sponsor forever. My sponsors come and go. People have, you know, they want to sponsor other things and do things and then they come back and, you know, we're all big happy family in this niche. But Adored Beast has a product called Goto and it's a mixture of Arnica and aconite. And wow, it is so awesome because it helps with trauma and fear and panic and swelling and pain, shock, nausea, seizures. I definitely give it during a seizure. It calms and it's great for emergencies. You can mix it with relax, you can mix it with Rescue Remedy. You can give a spray of rescue Remedy, give a little relax externally and then give the go to internally to calm and get your dog out of panic and shock. And that's what we really want to do in the beginning when we're dealing with something serious. Okay. We want to get that. So that's going to be your first go tos if you can, to get your dog to calm down. Okay? So another thing that I love in my kit and that is Beninite clay. I, I have a high hydrated pot, little like jam jar of small, tiny sample jam jar of hydrated bentonite clay that I keep hydrated, well, hydrated Ben and I kind of. Well, yeah, just ignore me. But I keep it there throughout the summer. I have one in my car. I try to remind myself to put it in all my cars. I have a couple, like two and, or, you know, on, in the Vespa, wherever I have my dogs or myself. Because if you get bit, if you get bit by a snake, if you get bit by a bee, if your dog gets bit by a snake or a bee, if you can find the hole, the bite, you slather bentonite clay on it and it will suck the venom out so quickly and you do, you, you put it on, let it dry, put it on again, let it dry, put it on again, let it dry. And sometimes I'll put tincture in like calendula tincture in the bentonite clay and slap it on a bite. It's just invaluable for stings. I have used Beninite when I get stung by ground bees and it's like literally within hours. It's like I've never been bit and I don't do well with bee stings. I do not do well with them. Love, love, love. Benonite clay. Always keep some on you as far as herbs are concerned. Well, I spoke of calendula. Calendula officinalis is wonderful as a tincture. You need a tincture, an alcoholic tincture because of the resinous nature of calendula. Or you can do a hot infusion and, and an infusion. For calendula, you would use 2 tablespoons of dried herb to 12 ounces of almost boiling water and you'd cover it for about 30 to 40 minutes. But I use a tincture in emergency situations. It's gonna help the lymphatic start flowing. It's gonna help with warming the core so that cold doesn't set in. It's gonna help with shock. A calendula is warming. It helps assimilate nutrients, it helps protect the liver. It's an antifungal, it's an antibiotic, it helps. It's a bacteriostatic. It's just absolutely wonderful. You can use calendula like a salve of calendula. Farm dog has a salve called salvation. And it's wonderful for scrapes, cuts, burns, anything that's not infected because calendula will seal over a infection on the skin. So you just want to make sure there's no pus when you use calendula. Another herb that I like to have a tincture of or a glycerin in this because this one has so much water in it, is cleavers. So you can use a tincture or a glycerate and it gets the lymphatics going. We want to get the lymphatics going as soon as possible. It clears heat, it clears toxins, it helps eliminate toxins out of the kidney, spleen and liver and definitely moves the lymphatics. And remember, the lymphatics are your fat soluble toxin delivery system and elimination system. And it gets rid of pathogens, but it deals with the fats in the body. Okay. And we want the lymphatics moving for emergency issues. We're going to do one drop per five pounds. And the same for calendula cleavers. You can use a glycerin, three drops per five pounds. And that is a general recommendation. Like I said, you want to see how your dog does with that type of dosage on a day they're not having an emergency. Okay. The next remedy is slippery elm in our kit. Make sure you buy from ethical sources of sourcing. I will be starting to carry dried herbs towards the end of the year. This year I'M working on my sourcing right now and I. So I grow a lot of my own herbs, but I don't do slippery elm. And I'm looking for different trees in the area that I can do, like fallen branches. But for in the meantime, I would definitely look@mountainroseherbs.com they ethically source their herbs you want to use. You want to make a gel of slippery elm. And slippery elm is neutral to cooling. It's less cooling than marshmallow root. You can use marshmallow root this way as well. It just won't be as thick. But you can use a half a tablespoon to every 1/2 cup of cold water. Simmer. Oh, no. Half a teaspoon. I'm sorry, half a teaspoon to one half cup cold water. And you simmer that for two to three minutes and let it get thick. And you can keep adding if you want it thicker. And use a tablespoon for every 25 pounds of weight and use that as needed. Especially great when dogs get into something, when they eat something they're not supposed to and you want to get it out the other side, it's slippery, so it will help it slip out the body. Okay, Slippery elm. My next one is chamomile. And you want to use the Matricaria rakutia. That is German chamomile. And it's slightly cooling. It definitely enhances digestion. It helps modulate the nervous system. It is an antispasmodic. So it's great when your dog is having gastritis. It clears heat and again supports the nervous system and modulates it. It helps dog's nervous system give them what they need. And it's definitely going to help them switch out of fight or flight. So we love chamomile. I like to use a tincture of chamomile. You can also use a glycerate of chamomile or a infusion of chamomile. And then we have skull cap. Skull cap, Scolateria latiflora. Not Scolateria baclodensis. So skullcap. This is the American skullcap. It helps balance the nervous system. It helps with rabies damage and miasm. And that can be an acute situation given if your dog has a bad reaction to the rabies vaccine. I would give it before and after along with some milk thistle. It helps with fear and hypersensitivity. You can use it with rescue remedy. You can use it with relax. You can use it with the go to. You can use it to help your Dog calm down and it helps regulate the stress response, which what we need. And also it helps with gastrointestinal sensitivity, which can cause your dog to be very nervous. So the dosage for skull cap, I like to give it before eating. I like to give it twice daily. But if it's an acute situation, you can give it throughout the day. Put it in a little bit of water so it doesn't taste that bad. Like I taste it yourself and see how it tastes. And you can put it in water, 1 to 2 drops for an extra small dog. Small dog, 3 to 6 drops. Medium, 7 to 10 large, 11 to 15 and extra large, 16 to 20 drops. Remember, that is acute only. Dosaging. Okay, acute only. Our next herb is a friend of mine. Grows all over our property and down the road. We live at end of a dead end road. And I love it is yarrow white yarrow, Achilleum eufolium. It is. You don't use it for cats, but this is a dog show. But every now and then I do mention kitties. I love kitties. I'm in love with my two cats, Carl and Oscar. So I'm, you know, branching out into cats a little bit here and there. You might see me on a cat show or hanging out with the two crazy cat ladies. Jane, Aiden, Adrian, love them. But yarrow tincture and powder stops bleeding. It heals cuts and wounds. You can put tincture in a wound, but I'd rather do the powder. It would be less stingy. The cool thing about yarrow is that you can pour the powder in a wound, a deep wound, and it will heal it from the inside out and it will stop the bleeding and it is so effective for that. I just absolutely love that. I learned about pouring it in a wound from my mentor, Matt Wood, and I've definitely tried that out. I've had the opportunity to try it out. It works wonderful. Yarrow is an antiseptic, it's an astringent and it stops bleeding. So it's a hemostatic and it's wonderful for acute use. I always keep it in my kit. Yarrow tincture or the yarrow powder? I will be selling both. I sell yarrow tincture, but I'll be selling the powder towards the end of the year. And I think I'm going to put some kits together for people later on the end of the year, early next year. I can't believe I'm even saying early next year, but it's true. Time is just going by. So. Yarrow, yarrow, yarrow internally, you can use it for bloody diarrhea. Remember bloody diarrhea. Hardly ever needs antibiotics. Always exhaust your other options before you give antibiotics. For red blood, bright red blood, it's the black blood that you need to go to the vet immediately. Cause you might, your dog might have an upper GI bleed and we want to get that taken care of right away. So, you know. But bright red blood is hardly ever a problem with dogs. It's usually just inflammation in the large intestine. And we want to make sure that we have things in our kit that can help with that. So, I mean, if you have gargantuan amounts of blood, bring your dog to the vet, please, please. But one drop per five pounds for acute use. Okay, one drop for five pounds for acute use. Yarrow, cleavers and calendula are kind of in the same non toxic mix. Then we have ginger, you can use dried ginger, you can make a infusion of that, half a tablespoon of dried ginger to cover it with boiling water, like I don't know, maybe two cups of boiling water. Cover it for about 20 to 30 minutes. One teaspoon for every 10 pounds of body weight. You can use it in a tincture, but you're only going to use like a diluted drop for an extra small dog. One drop diluted in water for a small dog. I would probably use the same for a medium dog. One to two drops. The most you're ever gonna use is three to four drops of a ginger tincture. But it does give you access to it right away. But always, always, always put it in water before you syringe it in your dog's mouth. It can be very warming. But ginger helps with nausea, it helps with vomiting, it helps with digestive problems, it helps with bloating, it helps gas inflammation, bloody diarrhea, it warms the core, it's antispasmodic. And you can use it for any energetic, but only for acute uses. You can use it for chronic use for dogs that are cool, but it is a hot herb. Then we have nettles. Nettles brings down the histamine response. If we have a bad histamine response when your dog's been bit by a bee or something that's messing with their histamine levels, or if your dog is just having a horrible time itching, you can try nettles. But acutely for bee stings, I use Homeopathic APIs 30C or 200C or Homeopathic Belladonna 30C or 200C. I dose that every 15 minutes until the sting is gone. And of course I'm going to use bentonite clay with nettles. You can follow that up and help with the histamine response. You can mix nettles with maritime pine bark. You can do the liquids or the extracts or you can do the powders. They're a great anti histamine that you can give every day. It can be a little drying, so just keep an eye out for that. And then you might have to add some marshmallow root or something or deglycerize licorice to add moisture to that mixture if your dogs get too dry on it. But it's an excellent, excellent lymphatic and antihistamine, so we can always use that. Emergency medicine I think is really important. Now there's one thing that I have in my kit and it's kind of like not in the kit, kind of outside the kit, and that is nettle seed. And that is a latch stitch effort for kidney failure. I've seen it work. It works well. I learned that from my mentor, Matt Wood. He's just like, he pops out these little, little pieces of gold every now and then. When I used to go to his seminar, I did a six month seminar of his in person and it was just mind blowing. And yeah, that was one of his little, little pieces of gold. Is the nettle seed tincture for kidney failure. And if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. It worked for my mom. My mother was in kidney failure. She is not in kidney failure anymore. It helps with protein dumping and this is definitely can be an acute situation or a chronic situation, but it's definitely a hail Mary. And I love nettle seed. One half drop per five pounds. And how you do a half drop is you put a drop in about a half an ounce of liquid, 30 milliliters or 15 milliliters, which is a half roughly. And you give a dropper of that water. Once that drop is mixed in with the water, that's a half, half a drop for these little dogs. And then up to one, one drop they could tolerate. And then small dogs two drops, medium dogs three, large dogs four and extra large dogs five. And I would do that three times a day. Okay, so that is the basic herbal kit. There's a couple honorable mentions here that I like. For diarrhea I like to mix yarrow with BlackBerry leaf tincture. You can also mix a little calendula in there and maybe a drop of walnut tincture and use that Together BlackBerry leaf tea or BlackBerry leaf tincture. Wonderful for diarrhea. For pain, I like to mix. I give this formula out a lot. I like to mix a CBD oil, milligram appropriate. So if you're doing an extra, extra small dog or a small dog, you could do like the 300 milligram or the 600 milligram and up to the 1200 milligram. And I mix 50% CBD oil, full spectrum, organic, plain, nothing else in it. Like no essential oils or added terpenes or anything. Plain, full spectrum CBD oil. I carry some on my site. I carry the 3, 6 and the 12. I also carry the heel by CBD Dog Health. Those are plain. I pour out half of it into another amber bottle and relabel. And then I put in 50% CBD oil. I put in Willow Phytoembryonic Therapy, 25%. You can get that on my website, canineherbalist.com, willow Phytoembryonic therapy and Mountain Pine Phytoembryonic therapy, 25%. And I mix that all together. I give it a good shake, and then I give my dogs 1 to 3 drops for extra small dogs, 5 to 10 drops for small dogs, 10 to 20 drops for medium, 20 to 30 drops for large, and 30 to 40 drops for extra large dogs. Now that is an acute pain. Okay? That's where we're dealing a lot of pain. We got to get them to the vet. It's acute pain. And rub that on their gums. Now, if you're doing for chronic pain, we're going to do one drop of that for extra small dogs. One to two could do it. Two to three drops for small dogs. Probably given three times a day or two times a day, five drops for medium dogs, eight drops for large dogs, and 10, sometimes 15 drops for extra large dogs. Long term. And you'd have to, you know those types of dosages, you gotta work with them. You want the minimum dosage for maximum benefit. Okay, you want the minimum dosage. So, like, if a dog is getting 30 drops of something three times a day, which is a lot, and they have the same result on 10 drops three times a day, then you want to give the 10 drops, not the 30. Okay? So you want to work with your dog, you definitely want to work with them. And then another remedy that I like for breathing is New England aster. It is so quick at dilating the lungs that I just absolutely love it. It's a tincture. It's two drops for every five pounds. Love, love, love New England asteroid. I carry that on my site and you can find that other places too. Reishi Mushroom extract. I don't use this a lot for acute issues unless I'm using it in a formula, but it's great for kennel cough. You mix it with propolis and Oregon grape root. You can actually mix New England aster, Reishi propolis and Oregon grape. You do. Let's just do like a 30 milliliter. This is one of the protocols I've shared on a summit that I was recently on. 10 ML of New England Aster, 10 ML of reishi mushroom, 5 ML of propolis extract. Or you can use Manuka honey syrup and 5 milliliters of Oregon grape root or usnia tincture. You could use goldenseal as well. England aster 5, reishi mushroom 5, propolis or syrup 5, and Oregon grape root or usnia or goldenseal either one. Not all three. 5 milliliters and 2 drops for every 5 pounds. And you're going to give that three times per day until the kennel cough is gone. That's a very effective formula. So that's what I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed it. Now, that's not an exhaustive list. It's not an exhaustive list at all. It is just a list that you can start with. If you have specific questions about that, just write to me on the podcast, which is under canineherbalist.com, go to the podcast contact and fill that out and I will answer your questions here on the pod. I have a few questions to answer in the upcoming episodes. So for those of you waiting, I'm getting to it. But I will answer those questions. And thank you, thank you, thank you to my sponsor, Adored Beast Apothecary. We, you know, featured the Go to in the kit. It's just an invaluable remedy. I absolutely love that remedy. I don't think anyone should be without it. I've taken it myself. I've stopped seizures with it. It's just a wonderful remedy. Adore Beast makes some really great products for living a healthy, natural life with your dog. Because a healthy dog is a way of life. Thanks for listening to this episode of Dogs Are Individuals. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review in your podcast app. And don't forget, sharing is caring. So if you love Dogs Are Individuals podcast, share it with your friends and family who love dogs. This will help me so much. And remember, as a listener, I appreciate you much thanks to Resonant Media, my podcast production team. This podcast is produced by Drake Peterson and edited by Mike Fry. Any questions, email the show, go to k9herbalist.com Click podcast contact in the menu and then fill out that form and I'll answer any questions here online. Okay, so thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Dogs Are Individuals Podcast and I'm going to talk to you in our next episode. The content of this show is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not a substitute for veterinary care. This podcast doesn't constitute a provider patient relationship. As always, talk to your doctor, veterinarian or healthcare provider first before starting anything new. And that includes herbs. I'm not a doctor and I don't treat disease or prescribe herbs anything. I'm a traditional herbalist providing herbal support education only. Regarding any products I may suggest the statements made regarding these products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. The efficacy of these products has not been confirmed by FDA approved research. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. All information presented here on the podcast is not meant as a substitute or alternative to information from your vet. Please consult your veterinary professional about potential interactions or other possible complications before using any product.