Pets & Aromatherapy
By: Sarah Ribner
PiperWai’s hero product, the first-ever cream deodorant to use activated charcoal, has a synergistic blend of 11 different essentials oils that give the deodorant its fresh spa-like scent and powerful odor neutralizing properties. As many of our customers know, our essential oil blend is so powerful at neutralizing underarm odor that you end up smelling like nothing at all. We also added the essential oil blend diluted less than 1% of the total formula so it’s safe for all age groups, nursing and or pregnant individuals. While pets can benefit from aromatherapy just like humans, we need to take extra care in understanding which essential oils and what quantity is safe for our furry friends.
We constantly receive questions from pet parents about essential oil safety. We do recommend keeping our products out of pets’ reach, but sometimes accidents happen whether it’s with PiperWai or other products containing any variety of essential oils.
Here’s a helpful guide to pet essential oil safety!
Dogs
Similar to humans, essential oils offer a massive range of benefits. For dogs, the uses range from enhancing energy, training, daily hygiene, stress management to treating skin conditions.
A dog’s sense of smell is about 10 times stronger than that of humans. It is recommended to apply essential oils with an oil dropper, rather than directly applying. The percentage used is based on size (i.e. smaller dogs should be no more than 2%, and larger dogs no more than 5% of total formula).
Always avoid using phototoxic oils prior to sun exposure (i.e. angelica root). Generally, dogs should avoid oils rich in camphor and ketones (i.e. spike lavender), or oils containing toxic components (i.e. wintergreen).
Cats
Cats, on the other hand, lack a special enzyme in their liver, which renders them unable to process essential oils. If ingested in large doses, essential oils can become poisonous to cats. Hydrosols (“flower waters” created by distilling fresh plant or flower leaves) can be a great alternative. If you still decide to use essential oils on cats, we strongly suggest that you use less than 1% of the entire formula.
Other Animals
Finally, this one goes for all pets! If you are diffusing essential oils, pets should not come in contact with the mist for longer than 5-10 minutes and always make sure the room is well ventilated.
