Show notes from the Podcast:
frank: 00:11 What's up y'all frank here? I'm actually not with Jackie this morning as I do this podcast, but instead my host, my special cohost is my dog, Sushi, Sushi is part and part Cocker Spaniel
frank: 00:29 and we are going to talk about essential oils and animals. Pretty excited that this topic has been brought up recently because there is a concern about the use of essential oils around our animals and we are here to let you know that we want to ensure that you have the information and instill some confidence in you that you can use your essential oils around your pets, but making sure that we keep some certain things in mind. We as you know or may not know, we have a farm as well in the western side of North Carolina where we raised chickens and turkeys and we have some cattle and some sheep. Goats and A. Yeah, that's about it. Oh, and then we have a couple of hogs as well and so we are wanting to use something natural and effective for our animals as well. We decided since we are using it on our human family, why not use an honor him animal family as well?
frank: 01:33 And so we've been using essential oils on the animals now for probably about, I'd say an excess of about five to six years and uh, and we have found out that it is a very useful and very effective way to naturally help our little four legged and even two footed friends as well. And so I'm extremely excited to let you know that as of 2018 doterra has taken upon themselves the opportunity to create a veterinary advisory panel, which is a board of five veterinarians who currently practiced using essential oils for around the country of nodes. One of the most popular ones that is on the panel is a Dr Janet Rourke, who is known as the eo vet even on facebook. So go ahead and check her out. She has been doing this now for quite some time and has a lot of really great knowledge, uh, in reference to essential oils and animals.
frank: 02:34 And so it's really nice to see that Doterra is taking a positive step toward ensuring that we are not only having safe and effective products for human beings, but also taking care of our little furry friends as well. And so let me give you a little bit of a story about what we do on our farm and then we'll talk about some essential oils and cats and essential oils and dogs and wrap things up with where can you go and get more. First and foremost though, I want to start with some disclaimers is that we want to make sure that we are using the essential oils in a very safe way with our animals when it comes to the use of essential oils because of their potency, because of their therapeutic benefit and the fact that they are volatile compounds. We want to make sure that we're using them safely around her animals.
frank: 03:21 So we never, you know, some of the things that we always advise people to do is never use a diffuser in a closed space with an animal. Allow the animal to have a way out, if you will. Uh, you know, you don't want to necessarily diffuse essential oils in the room in which the cat either eats or goes to the bathroom in and that's because we want to make sure that they have a way of being able to have an exit strategy, if you will, when it comes to cats. There's a little bit more of some additional concerns in terms of things that we want to watch out for, but overall, honestly, we just want to make sure that we are keeping these things in mind so we can make sure that we have their safety and mine as well. Just like human beings. We don't want to apply essential oils.
frank: 04:01 I'm mucous membranes. We want to avoid the eyes. You want to avoid the inside of the mouth, uh, you know, in, in large amount, we definitely don't want to put it inside of their nose. Uh, you know, things like that. So just make sure that you keep all of these sorts of things in mind. And so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start off with telling the story of like what we've been doing around here on the farm and letting, you know that we wanted to expand the umbrella outside of what people may have with dogs and cats inside of their home. And so we started off with what we wanted to do was have a hobby farm. So we start off with chickens and goats and we had a couple of rabbits in there eventually and we started getting very into, well, what can we do to ensure the health of our chickens?
frank: 04:47 And so that's when we came across some different essential oil ideas and we love every once in a while adding garlic into our water buckets. And so garlic has some natural benefit of being able to protect against environmental threat. And so from time to time I will add garlic to the water. But then I said I don't feel like we're doing everything that we possibly could. So we started looking into something like coop sprays, right? So like the chickens where they sleep at night, uh, we wanted to have some protection against would be possible predators as well as freshening up the smell of the coop. And so we started off with something simple like, you know, some of the really wonderful essential oil signals that we were using was like peppermint. Uh, we thought that peppermint was fantastic. We made sure that we diluted it down and we sorta just sprayed it in the four corners of the coop and we really appreciate it.
frank: 05:39 The smell that peppermint brought to the chicken coop. Additionally, we started looking at, well, what can we add to their water to help bolster the garlic that may already be in there and really just have sort of just a really great essential oil additive, uh, that will maintain their flock health. And we looked in a certain stuff like margarine. Margarine was a fantastic addition. We looked into a regular as well. And so we started putting margarine and Oregano instead of their oils, or excuse me instead of their water. And we just noticed that it was doing really great at being able to bolster their health in addition to, we were making sure they get plenty of fresh sunshine, plenty of fresh water, really good feed and allowing them to go pick around. And we ended up over the course of the past couple of years, we have people who still laudably talk about how fresh looking the eggs from our laying hens actually are.
frank: 06:36 So we said, what else can we do with the additional livestock that we currently have because we felt like we had the poultry well covered, but now what can we do for livestock? So that's when Jackie and I started looking into, well, what is something that ails our animals a lot, especially during the summer. And the very first thing that should come to mind is flies. And so, so what did we say? Like, well, what do we do about these flies? Well, we started concocting some different things and we've come up with some fly sprays. You can check those out, uh, either on our blog, which is www.thepaleomama.com. And we also have a really great oily sister who has the prairie homesteads, so check out the prairie homestead.com as well. Her name is Jill winger. Matter of fact, if you're a horse owner, she has a lot of really great information about essential oils and horses as well.
frank: 07:28 So we wanted to say like, well what can we do when we had a dairy cow at the time? And so we said, well, in addition to this fly spray, we also wanted to do something that was going to be safe and effective for their others. And so we started looking at different types of topical savage's that we can create. And so we started using different essential oils on the topical stabs and notice that it looked like the other stayed nice and healthy. It was dry and the skin was not getting, you know, some abrasions on it and stuff like that because we wanted to keep the animals together. So if mom had a baby, we wanted to keep the baby with the animal as well so she can or he could have the benefit of the milk as well. And then we could just have our milk that we needed and so we looked into sams as well for others and it has just been fantastic.
frank: 08:15 We use the same sap on our goats and so overall our essential oils have been very useful for digestive as well as respiratory and even some topical applications of these essential oils. And we have noticed that our animals stay very healthy and don't seem to have a lot of the comparative problems that other homesteaders who may not be utilizing essential oils on their animals actually do. And so with that being said, let's go ahead and kind of segue now into some different topics. We're going to talk about something that's going to be hopefully a lot more applicable to the folks that are listening to this podcast is that we want to talk about essential oil use with cats and dogs. So how many of you out there actually are a pet owner and of which, how many of you want to ensure that you could do something to be able to take care of your four legged friends as well.
frank: 09:06 We want to always make sure that we have a diet healthy and Omega threes for cats as well, so we want to be looking at Omega threes and probiotics because gut health is super important to our four legged friends health, just like it's important to our health as well, so foundationally we want to make sure that we have, of course the right type of nutrition for the animal. We want to make sure that the bedding or whatever they're going to the bathroom in as always staying nice and clean, especially with cats. And then we also want to just look at overall strategies to improve the health of our animals and so that's why probiotics and Omega threes are really fantastic for animals, but we're also looking into this understanding of essential oils and how can we use those to help improve or matter of fact, how can we actually just maintain this really good overall health?
frank: 09:55 Well, I'm going to talk about something that is a big controversial right now and I bet you those maintain its controversy. For a long time there was this cat who unfortunately, you know, it was a viral video about the use of essential oils. The cat's name was Ernie and the cat became very sick and of course what we wanted to do was we wanted to take a look at that and say, well then what are we needing to do to better understand the use of essential oils in these animals? Well, they are a unique species and you know, with certain types of essential oils, the cats have a increased metabolic way of being nibbled to get that essential oil out of the system. And so we want to make sure that we keep in contact. We want to keep an particularly to the forefront of our mind is that, you know, when we use essential oils with cats, we want to make sure that we are very resilient and the amount that we are using.
frank: 10:52 And so usually like a one to three percent dilution, which is usually like three to five drops inside of a 10 milliliter. A carrier oil such as fractionated coconut oil is a really good way of making sure that we're staying lower in our delusion levels, uh, in order to be able to be effective for our, for our cats, you know, because we want to treat cats like we would small children. And so, you know, what makes them unique is also what makes them so unbelievably lovable. And so the very first thing you should be asking yourself are, am I using oils that are even safe and pure on my animal? Because a lot of these other oils that are out there in the market today may not be the same standard of certified pure therapeutic grade essential oils that doterra currently is. So next we want to look at what oils should we consider for diffusion only and there is a pretty decent list of oils that we don't necessarily recommend to use on our cats.
frank: 11:49 And we only want to use these if we want to consider for diffusion only. And some of these oils are. This is the list of oils, is that we have basil, Berge, Cinnamon Club. You can lift as fennel, Melaleuca or Oregano, peppermint time, wintergreen and citrus oils and so you want to make sure that you are only, we only recommend diffusing the oils around it and being able to allow the cat to exit the room if they don't care to be around it. Maybe leave like, you know, a exit strategy door open, something like that to allow them to be able to go away. Well because of the fact that we might have cats that liked to jump up on, you know, all of our furniture, especially countertops. We want to avoid using a citrus oil probably in a cleaning solution because we wouldn't necessarily care for that cat to inadvertently lookup those, you know, essential oils through the use of our cleaning solution.
frank: 12:44 So just make sure that you stay well diluted. Keep in mind how your cat's behavior is and I believe that you actually should be completely good to go. Some of the essential oils that are considered safe to use on a cat with the solution of course is cedar wood, Frankincense, Geranium, helichrysum, and even lavender. And so, you know, even rosemary or marjoram is actually really good, but make sure that you're always using dilution with cats and that you're only using it in a very specified way in terms of just applying it to the cat in order to be able to make sure that the cat stays well on top of it all. Make sure that you include your veterinarian in these decisions, uh, because you know, we want to make sure that the cat doesn't have some sort of weird underlying disease that we may not necessarily be aware of when we are actually considering using these essential oils on cats.
frank: 13:33 So be very cognizant of all of these things. Make really good informed decisions and make sure that you pay attention to the health of your cat and avoid all of the other obnoxious, you know, chemical and toxic laden products that are out there. Because personally I would love to use essential oils because I know that they're going to be safe and natural rather than, you know, some of these other, off the counter types of products that we would use for either cleaning or taking care of. Our clubs, like, you know, it was their fabric softener or some sort of like really more dangerous chemicals that we might be unaware of that are inside of our cats living environment. Let's go ahead and transition now to dogs. And so dogs of course are really such a wonderful animal to have inside of our home. And personally with me, Sushi is actually one of my most loved animals because she is my support animal and I always looked at her for when I'm feeling those anxious feelings or when I'm feeling like I just need a pick me up.
frank: 14:37 I love the fact that so she can read me and she's right there by my side. Uh, so I want everyone to know that we have used essential oils on our dogs for a very long time and we want to make sure that we talk about, you want to always use an essential oil that is safe and therapeutic. And so once again, we love doterra essential oils that is the only type of essential oils that we are going to use on our animal. And so dogs have a little bit of a different metabolism than cats and so we want to make sure that we still stick with common sense when it comes to using the essential oils as well on dogs. A aromatic is very good if we're going to go topical, we want to make sure that we dilute those oils. And so what I love about the topical application in particular with dogs is that the underside of the belly and the pause and even rubbing along the spine is really wonderful ways of being able to apply essential oils topically.
frank: 15:41 Some folks even do something like water misting, you know, terrorism is a fantastic blend that doterra makes and it is really great to take the terrorism. I like to additionally diluted just a little bit more or put it in a water misting type of bottle. Shake that up and apply that to the spine of the animal or responding to the dog in order to be able to cover against fleas and ticks. And so you can also consider internal use. Like matter of fact, one of this is good for large animals. This is just sort of like a little segue is that actually one of the veterinarian doctors had a video that they had sent in about using CopaIba, a on their horse, and so they applied one or two drop inside of their hand, allowed the horse smell it, the horse actually lifted a little bit and then put about five to six drops along the the horse's spine and actually massage that oil and aroma touch is also fantastic for a topical use only and horses, but anyway, let me get back to essential oils and dogs.
frank: 16:45 While the central wasn't dogs that Dr Roark speaks of our Frankincense, lavender helichrysum, them digest zen blend, the on guard blend, the balanced blend, Roman chamomile, lemon and aroma touch. So those are sort of the top 10 oils that you can utilize for your dogs inside of your home. We utilize these as well. We love because Sushi is coming up on nine years old. We know that we want to keep her gi system running optimally, so every so often we will take some of the digests and touch. We apply it to our hand and then we love to rub it onto her belly from all over, from you know about where ribs would be, if you will, all the way down through where we know that her a small and large intestines are and it's just been great. I mean our animals love essential oils and and so I'm excited that more attention is going to be given to the veterinary use of essential oils because we want you guys to safely, effectively and confidently use these essential oils with any member of your family, even if they are four legged as well.
frank: 17:53 I know that that was a pretty quick down and dirty blitz of essential oils with the use of livestock and then cats and dogs and so if you need more information, please by all means, check out Jackie's website, www.thepaleomama.com and make sure that you search for essential oils on dogs, essential oils on cats. There is a lot of really great posts that we put over there in the past years in order to be able to allow you to make the decisions that you need to go out there and use doterra oils, safe and effective life. I wanted to take the opportunity to tell you that we are so excited to be bringing you this podcast. We are just head over heels at the fact that you're listening to her right now and we really want to make sure that you guys understand that there is a powerful network of folks behind you who want to make sure that you are utilizing this really wonderful gifts of the earth.
frank: 18:51 And so I say that because you know as a combat veteran of the US army, we have a sister channel that I have launched. It's called unconventional wellness radio and I would love for you to go check that out. We're on itunes, Google play, stitcher, and we're working on finalizing things for spotify so you can listen to this podcast over there, but please go check it out because we're going to talk more in depth about the things that I personally have used that I want all of you to be very versed in, which is, you know, nutrition and how to get better sleep and how to get that functional movement that we need because the choices that we make in our lifestyle are crucially important to how our overall health cares. And so I urge you and I asked you to join us over on unconventional radio, which is our sister podcast that you could find on any other ways that you want to listen to this podcast because your health is important and we absolutely care about it. So with that being said, we look forward to seeing you on our next podcast. This is essential oil healthcare radio and we are so excited that you are here and we will talk to you again very, very soon.
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