My dog has been driving me bonkers lately with her fear of thunderstorms. She was never afraid of them until about a year ago and she’s gotten increasingly worse. She’s now afraid of the sound of rain on the roof. Her fear makes it impossible for me to work or sleep when it’s nasty outside because there’s 90# of golden retriever trying to be in my lap.
Anyway, someone recommended Rescue Remedy for her, and it happens that I have a bottle. Someone else had given it to me when they bought it for their hyper aussie and it didn’t work.
I dug it out today and gave her some but the storm we were anticipating never came through, so I don’t know if it did any good or not. She fell asleep slightly early but that’s because we were both up until 4 AM last night (storms).
Anyone have good results with this stuff? Ever try it for yourself? According to the bottle, it’s just flower extracts and there’s no side effects.
If this doesn’t work, I’m thinking about blowing some dough on a storm cape (seriously).
My wife chugs the stuff. I suspect any calming effect is purely from the placebo effect, or maybe from the alcohol in it. I doubt that the placebo effect works on dogs, but maybe you can find out.
Oh my, that’s hilarious that it’s on a pet site. I used to need it every so often as a kid, and it seemed to help; I certainly felt a lot calmer after taking some. It’s hard to tell whether or not it was a placebo effect, though. After all, it is a homeopathic medicine, and those are suspect by default. But it can’t hurt.
We got some “doggie downers” from the vet for thunderstorms, but they make Phyllis’s eyes go all glassy, and not in a good way. Kind of frightening. Fortunately we discovered that if we just put her in her crate (she’s crate trained), she calms right down.
**Bosstone **- it’s actually on tons of different sites. My mom sent me a link to it this morning from the GNC site. I just Googled “rescue remedy dog”…looks like it’s just as useful for dogs as it is for kids like you
**Scarlett **I was giving her Benadryl to knock her out but I’m not too happy about doing that too often (she gets it enough for allergies). But your post gave me an idea. She’s crate trained, I should go retrieve (pun!) her crate from my dad’s shed and see if that helps.
I don’t know about dogs, but I find that it works very well for me. For what it’s worth the first time I ever took it, I had no idea what it was until later, and it did work. It’s also possible that I just calmed down on my own and started the placebo effect that works for me now. It basically just mellows you out a bit, I don’t see how it would hurt to try it.
I’ve tried Rescue Remedy on a thunderphobic dog, and it didn’t work. I suspect any effect it may have would be due to the alcohol content, and you (or your dog, if it is a big one) would have to chug quite a bit in that case.
I do know a few people who swear by the storm cape, though, and there’s also Canine Lullabies if you want to give that a shot. There’s also a DAP diffuser, but that might not be strong enough for a thunderphobe.
Jesus, how much are you giving your dogs if the alcohol in RR is calming them down? The dosage, IIRC, is 4 drops. And it’s like 60 proof (30% alcohol), max. That’s about 2 *microliters *of alcohol.
To answer the OP, yes, I’ve successfully used Rescue Remedy and other flower essences on animals of all sorts, including dogs and humans of all ages.
And no, they’re not homeopathics, no matter what that site says. They share some common philosophical ideas, but they’re not prepared, prescribed or used like homeopathics. (They won’t be any more palatable to anti-alt med folks, but they’re not the same.)
That means the original tincture is diluted 50:1, then put into a tiny bottle where you take 4 drops at a time.
Regular herbal medicines don’t dilute the active ingredient, then have you take a tiny amount, the goal is to provide the user with enough of the herb to have an effect. In terms of providing a dosage of active ingredient, Rescue Remedy doesn’t pass the smell test with me.
I don’t know the numbers: a mother essence bottle is the direct infusion, then you take that and dilute it for the stock bottle (the bottle you buy off the shelf at Whole Foods), but I don’t remember what the ratio is. A dosage bottle is generally 4 drops from the stock bottle to an ounce of water/alcohol, and you take 4 drops of that as your dose, or you can take 4 drops directly from the stock bottle, but that’s more expensive, of course. (4 drops for Rescue Remedy. Most flower essences are 2 drops.)
So yes, it’s dilute stuff. But dilution alone does not a “homeopathic” make. The big difference between flower essence and homeopathics is that homeopathics are overwhelmingly chosen according to the Doctrine of Similars, which states that something that causes a symptom at a high dose will cure that same symptom at a minutely low dose. That’s not the case with flower essences. A tea of Rock Rose will not create symptoms of terror and anxiety, for example.
Flower essences are definitely what I would categorize as “energetic” or “emotional” medicine, and lots of people group them in with homeopathics because of the dilute nature of the beast, but I think that’s inaccurate. Certainly I know homeopaths who don’t know a thing about flower essences, and a flower essence practitioner should not be assumed to have any expertise with homeopathics.
When I think about homeopathic medicines, it’s generally to state that they are useless, mostly due to the extreme level of dilution. These essences are also very much diluted, so the anti-effectiveness arguments are similar, but they don’t follow traditional homeopathic doctrine.
Exactly. Just a terminology thing, really. Like it might rankle you if someone described a 1/4 patty of ground beef with a slice of American cheese on a Kaiser roll as a “cheesesteak” instead of a “cheeseburger”. Sure, both might clog your arteries, but they’re still two different things.
Bach’s Rescue Remedy is a homeopathic dilution, but that’s not how the 5 flower formula is supposed to work. Its formula was changed to a dilution about 2 years ago, I think.
I’d recommend FES 5 Flower Formula, which is not a homeopathic dilution. However flower essences are made from a few flowers floated on water, so I don’t know how “real” a medication they are. And they are also supposed to work by putting the essence on your hands and petting your animal, so the alcohol wouldn’t be much of a factor.
I’ve used it and I think it’s a placebo effect, but it works well enough for me to calm me down if I have a little anxiety, but not a lot of anxiety. I’ve never used it on a pet.
I’ve tried it on myself for test anxiety - it did nothing to help me relax. I did have a dog that was afraid of thunderstorms and the best thing for him was to put him in the basement when it stormed. He couldn’t hear the thunder down there, and after a few times he’d he’d down under the basement stairs all by himself at the first crack of thunder.
Really? Well, that explains that. I left alt med practice about 4 years ago. Since I make dosage bottles, I expect to need to buy another stock bottle when I’m about 60.
Yeah, I had her doing that for a while (going down into the basement) but now she is convinced she needs to be with me too. It’s not practical for me to be down there with her all the time.
I still haven’t had a chance to see Rescue Remedy “in action” with her…it hasn’t stormed since I found it. I did give her some but I don’t know what it did for her, if anything. She undoubtedly tired from the storm the night before.
I do need to get her crate out of storage, like Scarlett suggested. I might try that along with the RR. If it’s a placebo, maybe it’ll fake me into being more calm about her being nervous and we can get some rest.
If not that, then on to spending money on something like the cape, or that diffuser thing romansperson linked to. sigh
Give the crate a try. An important part is to NOT fuss over her. You’re not making her feel better when you do that, you’re making her worse. By making a fuss and comforting her, you’re telling her there’s something to worry about, so she gets more upset.
Put her crate in a nice, quiet spot, put her in the crate when she starts getting nervous, then walk away and leave her alone. I know it’s hard because she’s upset, but it’s what you’ve got to do.
