How to Treat A Canine Wound with Essential Oils

This pretty girl is Sara; our sweet and sassy, silly but sensitive, Super-Sara!

She was the last-born of this fabulous foursome; this motley crew are litter mates.  In June they'll be seven years old (!), but to us they will always be affectionately referred to as The Puppies. They even respond in unison to commands addressing "Puppies."  It's pretty cute.

She recently got a booboo, though, and one of those siblings is the culprit.

Most of the time, they play well, share food from the same bowl (each has their own, but they prefer to have more than one nose in each bowl and move on to the next one together), and sleep snuggled up to one-another.

Occasionally, though, they have spats.  Nothing too serious... by the time I walked into the room, hearing their ruckus and hollering to "knock it off!" they were already over it.  But since they use teeth to display their frustration, instead of pokes and pinches like the human-sibling variety, they end up with nips and scratches.

This was actually 2 days after it happened.  When she got the initial bite, there was no swelling and it scabbed really quickly.  But then the other morning, we woke up to her looking like this.  I suspect it may have scabbed too quickly, actually, and didn't bleed enough to flush whatever bacteria may have been on her sibling's tooth, and it got infected.  The swelling made the scab open and bleed.  With her eye swelled half shut, we called her Rocky all day.

Still, though, we hated seeing our Sara-girl looking so pitiful.  So, here's what I did...

I cleaned her up with plain warm water and applied a homemade antibiotic ointment (recipe below).  A couple hours later, I applied a warm compress to draw out the yuckiness and reduce the swelling, then reapplied the ointment.  And so it went for the rest of the day.  There were two or three rounds of warm compresses followed by the ointment.

The following day she looked much, much better (not like this - this is still the Rocky phase), and after 48 hours had passed, she looked like she never had a tussle at all.  There's just a tiny scab on her head and absolutely no swelling.

And she and her siblings continue to share much love and affection...

Here's the recipe for the antibacterial ointment using an essential oil blend and coconut oil:

You can get the essential oils here; and the coconut oil here.

Ingredients
80 drops clove bud oil
70 drops lemon oil
40 drops cinnamon oil
30 drops eucalyptus oil
20 drops rosemary oil

This is your antibacterial essential oil blend (a/k/a Thieves®).


Have you ever heard the lore about Thieves Oil?

"The recipe for this blend is believed to have originated from thieves during the 15th century. According to popular theory, the concoction was created by a group of four thieves® and grave robbers to protect themselves from contracting the plague while robbing the bodies of the gravely ill and deceased. When apprehended, the thieves admitted to using the formula and disclosed the recipe in order to receive a less severe punishment for their crimes.
Whether or not this story is true, the essential oils in this blend are antiseptic, antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-infectious. They will stimulate the immune system, circulation and respiratory system, and help protect against the flu, colds, bronchitis, pneumonia, sore throats, cuts, and more. Modern testing has shown the effectiveness of this blend and studies have found it to have a high kill rate against airborne bacteria."
~ Mountain Rose Herbs

Add the drops to a dark glass container. I use an amber bottle with an eyedropper.  Shake before each use.

For Sara's booboo, I melted a tablespoon of coconut oil and, after it had cooled a bit so as not to compromise the oils with heat, I added about 6 or 8 drops of the antibacterial blend, stirred, and let it solidify.  Voila, antibacterial ointment.  Skip the Neosporin®... this stuff is awesome!

Incidentally, this blend is fantastic for us, too - it doesn't just benefit the pets.  There have been some bugs going around the office, so I'm fending them off by diffusing the oil blend in our home and rubbing it onto our skin (often on the soles of our feet or our chests where we can also breathe it in).  I also use a drop in filtered water to swish like a mouthwash, add it to my vinegar and water cleaning bottle for the household chores, add a drop to my oil-cleansing solution for my face... there's so much you can do with it.