Aromatherapy for animals

At the end of June 2012, we adopted Kira, a 2-year old female black dog. She was extremely skinny (at the edge of death, for sure), nearly without hair, with dermatitis due to fleas, and terribly scared. She was picked up from the highway with 16 kg, she came to us weighing 25 kg, ate her way up to 32 kg and is still thin… She was indeed on the verge of dying from hunger! We gave her Bach flowers for her fears and she improved some. We gave her LifePak and her hair started growing and she got to be really pretty. But still afraid. Very afraid! With fear of everything: the wind, cars, people, noises, plastic bags… First we joked “This dog needs a psychologist.” Then it became a reality: this dog needs a psychologist. Who is a dog psychologist???

Our friend Jeannette Kok is aromatherapist for animals. She happened to come visit in February, to our apartment in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) and we started talking and mentioned this case to her. She offered to treat Kira.

In the first session, Kira stayed in a corner of the living room, smelling the essential oils briefly as Jeannette offered them to her, but a bit reluctantly. She indicated through her preferences that she had fears, traumas and also grief (our older dog Lucky was her good friend from June to November but died of age, and obviously she misses him). We saw a clear improvement, but she still had her ups and downs.

A week later we had the second session and Kira showed herself much more interested in participating, sniffing the oils and licking her lips. She relaxed, yawned… She even rearranged her posture in order to hold the small bottles between her paws. Then she followed Jeannette to the door! Wow. What an impressive change.
Aromatherapy interests me more and more. After seeing what essential oils can do to human physical health, and then all what they can do for animal emotional health, I’m getting all the more eager to learn these techniques.

If you want to know Jeannette and what she does, her web is: http://aromaticsforanimals.com/