Pets can benefit from CBD if its owners and caretakers take the right approach

Pets must live a happier and healthy life so that pet owners can enjoy their brief association with the beloved animals more closely. Pet care begins by ensuring that the animals like cats and dogs enjoy a pain-free life as it keeps aging because with age arthritis and joint problems surface in pets too.  Persisting or chronic pain can affect the movements and mobility of pets and if allowed to continue can even lead to more serious debilitating conditions.  Watching pets suffer from age-related ailments as they struggle to lead a normal life is very painful for pet owners too. Providing relief from such conditions seemed quite unlikely even some years ago because traditional vet care and medications have no answer to the problem.

This led to pet lovers and vets experimenting with alternative therapies and medicines that resulted in discovering the beneficial effects of CBD or cannabidiol in dogs and cats. CBD treats like Honest Paws Oil makes pets feel healthier and happy as they can continue with their normal activities by overcoming the pain and movement related difficulties of aging. Pets look healthy and live a life free from anxiety and pain thereby spending more happy times with pet owners. In addition to providing relief to aging pets and helping in pain management, CBD treats, oils and soft chews are useful for treating conditions like epilepsy and seizures, skin care, allergies and improving the mental health of pets by eradicating anxiety that causes depression.  

The popularity of CBD for pets is growing

CBD for pets is fast gaining popularity as more and more pet owners are using it in various forms (oils, treats, and chews) to keep their pets hale and hearty by defying the aging process. If you want proof about its popularity, search for the term ‘CBD and pets' on Google, and you will be surprised to see that the results contain three times more links to pet-friendly products than educational information related to it. It clearly shows that search engines that can discover the intent behind searches are more than sure that most searchers are inclined to buy the products rather than just gathering information about it. Just as CBD is good for humans, it is good for pets too.

Private experimentation but no research

That CBD products are good for pets is fact backed by experimentation only and no research. No scientific data can prove beyond doubt that CBD does a lot of good for cats and dogs, but indeed there are plenty of real-life results available about the goodness of CBD in pets that experimenting pet owners share with others. That has helped to spread the good word and drawn more pet owners towards cannabis.  As a result, more experimentation is happening now that has further generated more trust and faith in the healing powers of CBD for providing an effective solution to pet problems by generating a sense of well-being among pets.

The mystery continues

While much time is spent in researching if Cannabis is good for humans, there is no research at all happening to determine its applicability for animals especially pets like cats and dogs. This has led to treating cannabis as a mystery compound more so because of the legal prohibitions that it has to face. While many states have legalized cannabis, it still faces federal sanctions that consider its illegal.  In the absence of research, cannabis remains taboo for practicing vets in the US as the AVMA (American Veterinary Medical Association) does not even dare to recommend cannabis for medication as it could result in losing their license. However, this does not mean that they are not taking any interest in cannabis in relation to pets. Instead, they have taken a more circuitous approach to discussing the issue.

No ill effects on health

Vets can now advise about treatment for marijuana exposure in pets that gives ample scope to bring new facts to the table about the mystery compound that has a track record of being beneficial for pets. However, vets do not forget to remind pet lovers that it is illegal to use CBD for pets despite numerous case studies to support the claims about the compound doing a lot of good for animal health, both physical and mental. Except for pointing to the legality, vets are still not able to denounce the good effect of CBD on pet health because till now no evidence establishes any toxic effect from CBD extract. Like any other things, too much of CBD can be bad which points to the necessity of administering the proper dosage to ensure good health without any side effects.

Safety is in dosage

Some veterinarians are ready to verify the claims about cannabis being good for animal health by considering its proper dosage. In the absence of appropriate medical guidelines, vets take a ‘what can be bad’ approach and to play safe, recommend using the smallest dosage of CBD products for pets. After all, CBD is not poison, and there is no harm to try out its efficacy in animals by starting with a dose of 1 ml/ mg per day. However, to be sure that nothing goes wrong with the experiment some vets recommend even smaller dosage like 0.05 ml/mg per day for CBD products. For THC products, the dosage is still smaller 0.1 to 0.25 mg/ day should be the starting dose that can increase depending on how the pet tolerates the compound.

Increasing CBD intake

Side effects like disorientation, excessive sleepiness, vomiting, excitement, etc. are reported when using CBD in pets. But if the smallest dose is well tolerated without any of these signs, it is possible to keep increasing the dose in increments every 5 days to achieve the right response that shows definite signs of health improvement.

The scene is changing fast as more and more states are legalizing cannabis that opens the gates for research that should help to use cannabis for pets more confidently.