Flea + Tick Essential Oils | Mini Episode

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.

Welcome to another short in the dogs, our individual world here. So today we're going to be talking about essential oils in flea and tick products.

But before I do that, I would.

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Okay, so we had a great question.

Come in on the podcast email which is@canine herbalist.com it says, hey Rita, I've been enjoying your podcast and thank you for sharing your knowledge. This is from Ray. And your podcast on essential oils was a whole new perspective on these oils for me. I am still amazed that I just went with the recommendations that had been supplied by the company selling their products. I am now rethinking how I've been using oils for myself, dogs and my home.

My question is, what about the flea.

And tick products that are on the market also recommended by do it yourselfers. Is it safe to use essential oils for this purpose? Is there any natural product that you would recommend to help with flea and ticks or is there a recipe that you can share? I've even been using cleaning products for one of the companies, thinking it was so much better than the whole household. I have a seizure dog. Should I just switch to a white distilled vinegar only to clean the floors? Thank you again, Ray. Mai, I'm going to break this question down. So first of all, the essential oils that are in the flea and tick products on the market right now. Okay, one thing that that you need to know is here in the United States, they need to adhere to what is called the 23B list from the EPA. And so you're going to see the same essential oils like in different quantities. And you know, some use all of them, some of use some of them. You're Going to see cedar wood, you're going to see peppermint, you're going to see wintergreen, which I will not use on my dogs. I would not use that unless it's in like such a small amount. Maybe like 0.5% or 0.2%. You're going to see a lot of like lemongrass, geranium. Clove is another one I do not use on dogs. Clove essential oil in my opinion. This is my opinion. If you don't like it, then you.

Don'T have to do it.

That's what I always say. You know, this is my truth. It's not the truth. You know, the truth is very subjective. But I don't use clove essential oil because it can be very harsh and I just don't use it. So I love clove hydrosol though, which is the water from the essential oil. I do love clove hydrosol and you can spray that on your dog. The 23B list is what's legal. And products that don't use that 23B list are well illegal according to the EPA. Even though there's lots of like neem oil, karanja oil, you know, things like that are illegal according to the epa, but they're totally non toxic and wonderful for fleas and ticks. That again is subjective to. But it is the law that that large companies are following because the EPA can actually just shut them down. So what do you do with the flea and tick remedies that are on the market that have essential oils? Well, you know, they are a good alternative to the very blood toxic chemicals that you're going to find in things like Bravecto and Simparica and things like that that can cause like major nerve damage and seizures. What I do is if I find a product I really love, I order those essential oils and I offer them to my dog through self selection and see which ones they'll tolerate and which ones they don't. If your dog seems uncomfortable or changes their behavior when you spray it on them, then I wouldn't do that. You can use like a handkerchief and spray it on the handkerchief and put it around their neck and then leave it outside and just kind of recharge it once a week. I think that rose geranium are good ones to try to see if your dog will tolerate it. Cedar for ticks, a good Cedarwood virginiana is a good one to see if your dog will tolerate it. There's lots of sprays out there that are so high in it that I can't even be in the same room and I don't think that that's really needed. Some things are gonna work on your dog, some things aren't. If you want to email me, I can give you a link to my free flea course which has a lot of flea information. And some of those tags do help with ticks as well. But again, to answer the essential oil question, you can try those oils individually by self selection with your dog to see if they're okay with those oils. One of the things that I have found that I like, if you have a fenced in yard, I love First Saturday lime. It's a lime product that you line your yard with at the edges of the yard and then you can use like something like Cedarside or Wondercide to spray the inside of the yard and keep the populations down. You can also right now order nematodes from like a nursery or Arbico Organics. I think it's arbico-organics.com so you can go there and get beneficial nematodes. Those are really good. And you can use those to help bring down the flea population in your yard. It's just, they're wonderful and you, you kind of spray them on with a sprayer, a yard sprayer. They're very non toxic. They don't eat a lot of other beneficial bugs. So I like to use those. I mean it really is a whole approach to things like that. And then someone asked me about the tic tacs and the flea tags, the like the ultrasonic ones. So they work for dogs, some dogs. And they work, they don't work for other dogs. I had them on my, on three of my dogs when I had like 10 dogs. They worked fantastic but they didn't work for the other one. So you just kind of have to try those out. And then there's other like little bioresonance tags. You can try those out too. There's some like amber necklaces. You want to be careful with that because amber is an amplifier when it works. It's good. And if your dog is acting normal with the amber collar on, no behavioral changes, then it should be okay. You want to try that. That helps with static in the fur and fleas antics. Can't really stay on. They fall off. That's my understanding of that one. And you also asked about cleaning products for the companies that you're using. I don't know what's in those products, but one of my favorite cleaning products is from farmdognaturals.com they have a product called Relief. There's a little lavender essential oil in there, but God, that stuff works good. It was formulated by yours truly and I remember when I formulated it, a Great Dane had peed on my unglazed tile and it was a disaster. I just sat in the middle of my bathroom and cried because nothing I used. I used Enzymatic cleaners, all this different cleaners, nothing I used worked. And so I just kept working and working to get to make something that used. This was like 20 over 20 years ago and I finally came up with a formula that worked and I was able to save my tile. It was this very expensive tile and I did like this mosaic in the middle and oh my God, a lot of drama. But one of the things about Relief is that you can use it all over your house. You can spray it on your dog when they stink and it doesn't cover up odors, it neutralizes odors and it also cleans surfaces. It's antibacterial, it's antimicrobial, and it's just, I use it for everything except for the bathroom. Other than that, it just, it works so well.

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Listening to this episode of Dogs Are.

Individuals Podcast and I'm gonna 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, a 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 anything. I'm a traditional herbalist providing herbal support education only. Regarding any products I may suggest. The statements made regarding these products have.

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