So this last weekend I attended an online conference all about trauma and animals and it was absolutely fascinating. We watched presentations about how trauma affects the brain and how different the responses to this trauma can be through to different people's experiences with different traumatised dogs and on to the different ways of supporting them and rehabilitating them. This really interested me a lot as I've got a dog who is blind and suffers with what we think is post-traumatic stress disorder interestingly PTSD is difficult to diagnose in animals because a big factor in the diagnosis is all about how a patient is feeling and what they're experiencing and because dogs can't tell us it is really just a diagnosis made on a best guess.
Interestingly I have two other dogs who are from the streets and suffered appalling injuries and were on the streets without any help for considerable periods of time, in the case of my two-legged dog Mazar for 2 years. Both Maz and Bambi are the most chilled happiest dogs ever, we live in the City of Manchester I will take them out into the city for lunch and they are just buzzing with the vibe of the city, there are no triggers nothing like that they are just loving the sounds, sights and smells.
It's really interesting to me and I asked about this when we had the panel discussion, and no one really knows why some dogs are more resilient than others and it's the same with people, why some people cope better with situations than others and what tips people over the edge. And we may never know so we just have to treat the dog or human (with my other hat on) in front of us and do the best we can.
At several points during the conference as I was hearing all the wonderful stories of how animals were helped I was thinking they could use essential oils so that got me thinking of my own experience bringing my blind dog Inka home and how I would do things differently with her now having the experience I do. I didn't have them then and not that I did things badly but I would just do it all differently.
Inka was found as a 2 week old puppy in a river in Romania and she went into foster with a lovely lady but due to her being so vulnerable she didn't get much socialization with dogs or other people. I fostered her when she was 5 months old and she came over on a lovely kitted out van and was looked after beautifully by the lady who was travelling with her, the onboard dog nanny! Inka was handed to me and I put her in the crate in my van, my other dogs were there as well as we'd gone out for a dog walk to Sherwood Forest as the pick up was from Nottingham. When I got home she didn't want to come out of the crate which was fine I left her in there and just took my other dogs inside, going back out to the crate to try to entice her out with food but she wasn't interested, this isn't unusual for a dog that's scared, sometimes they won't respond to food and they won't respond to toys either (essential oils would have been ideal here). Anyway, I kept trying to offer different foods and finally cooked up some venison and she would take a couple of bites but still not come out of the crate, each return to the van the food was eaten meaning she had ventured out the crate as I kept moving the food back. I should point out that from where she was crated to the back door is like a short corridor very safe for her with her lack of sight to navigate. After many returns to the van to see how she was doing she finally sat at the backdoor waiting for me.
What I would do differently now is I would offer her essential oils to smell and see what she self-selected, self selection is a very powerful way of helping to find out what your dog needs, watch my
Essential Oils Made Easy For Pets class to learn more, once self-selected I would have put one of my diffusers on in the van with a few drops of what she selected.
Essential oils work in a number of different ways and work at a cellular level many are also capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier and promote the release of neurotransmitters such as dopamine and serotonin, release endorphins and also release oxytocin as well. So very very beneficial for supporting the emotional health of our dogs in a way that can reach them when other means are proving challenging.
What I would then do as well with the oil that she'd selected is put in a diffuser in the house so that when she finally came in to meet her new siblings there would be a familiar scent to her. This would also have been good for my other dogs because they couldn't understand why she was bumping into them and they were displaying all the beautiful calming signals to say to her that they were not a threat. But of course she couldn’t see and my dogs didn't really understand because they didn't realise that she's blind and there were no problems but essential oils would have eased things. I still wonder how much they really appreciate that she can't see she still sits on them or bumps into them, they are kind of used to her now so just go along with it.
Obviously going forward into doing different things I'd be using the oils and continue to use self selection to see how her needs changed over the early days. Inka could have had oils applied topically when we went out of the house or went in another vehicle, she took to the van very easily and to travelling very easily and in many ways is very resilient. She doesn't have any fear of water, she loves splashing around in rivers and the sea she's been swimming as well. She is fearful when it comes to traffic and also sometimes people but I use a load of essential oils in our everyday life I also use them to help countercondition/ desensitize her to different situations and different objects. For example the metal gates where I live she doesn't like going near them she doesn't like any metal gates so I will have an essential oil that she particularly likes, her favourite is rose. Which can often help her move forward towards the gate and I've even put oil on the gate and she's actually gone up and down the gate just sniffing it. Dogs have a wonderful olfactory system so much greater than ours and you know we can really use scent in order to help them therapeutically. Essential oils can really make a massive difference in how your dog adjusts and can help to lower the emotions and empty that emotions bucket in order that they can decompress there's lots of oils that can help with stress and help with an adrenal reset and release all those happy neurotransmitters I spoke about earlier.
Some of my favourite oils to use in situations like this are Balance blend which provides great physical and emotional support. Some dogs like lavender but for some it can be a bit overwhelming, citrus oils are usually quite popular and promote the release of dopamine and serotonin particularly oils like wild orange and some of the blends that we do have citrus such as Elevation and Citrus Bliss. Then there is also the calming and soothing and grounding oils so Cedarwood, Forgive and Peace are favourites in my household as well and then you've got fabulous oils as well like Cardamon, which is very good for frustration and Melissa and Bergamot for releasing anxiety.
This is something I'm absolutely fascinated by and how we can help more dogs be supported in this way so hopefully that's given you a few ideas but do get in touch with any questions or why not come to one of my online classes to learn more or a consultation for your pet where we can explore this in more detail.
Why not watch my video where I talk more about this