Where to start?
CBD has a broad range of uses to help care for pets and animals. We cover how to determine how much CBD is used to help with pain, anxiety and/or inflammation in different situations with horses and dogs. This will hopefully help you pick a product that is best suited for your situation.
Animal Weight and Milligrams of CBD
Determining how much CBD your animal needs is better determined by including your animals weight in the calculation. After consulting the dosage chart you can have a better idea of what range you will need for your animal. Dosing is much different when considering a 10 pound Chihuahua or a 70 pound Labrador. Horses tend to have a smaller percent difference in weight but not always.
When considering how much CBD, most often you will be trying to determine how many milligrams (mg) is needed for your animal and it’s condition. Then you will need to determine which product(s) will get you to your desired amount.
Dosage
The best practice is to start with a low dose regardless of the severity of the condition to make sure the animal receives the supplement well. Some breeds can be more or less sensitive to CBD so starting at a low dose can also be more cost effective. Based off of your results, you can then determine if your situation needs more CBD and have a reasonable idea of a range that you can work with.
A low dose is a great place to start, and often times it’s enough CBD to help in many situations like ailments due to age, sensitivity to touch, bad behavior and other symptoms. Sometimes more CBD is beneficial for ailments severe enough to affect the gait of the animal or for high stress situations like fireworks or competition in arenas.
Examples
Example 1 – Golden Retriever with mild hip pain and high anxiety near fireworks. Weight: 125#, Age: 10
Looking at the canine chart and adding the 75# and 50# weigh together to equal the pet weight, you can see a range of 28 to 113 milligrams of CBD. Start with the low dose near 30mg and observe for a couple days. Determine if the dog is getting pain and inflammation relief for the hip issue from a low dose. If needed, increase the dose until you see the desired effects. Often the dose will increase as the dog ages and pain is more acute. For pain, we suggest using CBD twice per day with food and 3 times per day if acute.
As for the anxiety issue, since we already know that the dog has HIGH anxiety near fireworks, you can adjust the dose for the 4th of July to the range of medium to high (57-113). In this case there would be no need to start at a low dose since the dog is already using CBD daily for hip pain. If this wasn’t the case then a low dose could be administered the day before the holiday to make sure the animal receives the CBD well. For anxiety with dogs, we suggest CBD 1 hour before the event that causes stress.
CBD will be active in the dog minutes after ingested with noticeable effects near 1 hour and lasting about 8 hours dependent on breed, age, metabolism, and sensitivity.
Choose which product works best to use in the range you will need for your pet. Suggested products for this example are the MEDIUM dog CBD Tincture @ 20mg CBD per pump or LARGE dog CBD Tincture @40mg per pump along with Bacon CBD Treats @5mg per treat. Another product worth mentioning is the Alpha Blend with Joint Support.
Example 2 – Quarter Horse used for barrel racing, aches and pains only after racing and HIGH anxiety when competing but not at home. Weight: 1200#, Age 16
After consulting the Horse Dosage Chart the CBD range is from 132mg to 540mg. From looking at the situations that affect the horse, we can determine that CBD is only needed for some situations and not as a daily. Other similar situations and ailments can benefit from CBD i.e. Kissing spine which could substitute in this example for situational CBD. Daily CBD is a great option for overall health and well being for any age of horse but especially for older horses with inflammation issues, inflammation due to competition and anxiety.
Start with a low dose near 130+ mg of CBD prior to a workout and/or anxiety and check that the animal receives it well. At this low of a dose, you may see some minor help with pain and minor help with anxiety. A low dose for horses should have a noticeable effect but is often below what is needed for moderate to HIGH anxiety and moderate to HIGH pain/inflammation.
CBD will be active in the horse minutes after ingestion, but plateauing at 2-7 hours and tapering until 10-11 hours dependent on breed, age, metabolism, and sensitivity.
For example purposes, if I was driving to a 3 day barrel race I would dose in the low to medium range (130mg – 260mg) for helping reduce minor inflammation and anxiety pre-competition. If it included a moderate anxiety trailer ride to the race then I would dose at 260mg CBD. If we raced the same day since we already know that the horse has HIGH anxiety, I would dose another 260mg of CBD 2 hours before we enter the arena to keep my horse between the medium and high dose. The rest of the weekend, I would just use CBD 2 hours before we go into the arena in the 260-540mg range and supplement specific body inflammation with topical products.
Just from observation, feedback, and help from our sponsors, most 1200 pound horses need between 200mg – 300mg of CBD for moderate anxiety and approaching 600mg CBD for HIGH anxiety.
Last, determine which products fit best in the dosage range that your horse will need. Products to consider would would be Regular, Extra, or Pro Tincture for Horses, and CBD and Apple Cookies. Re-Leaf liniment is another alternative for topical aches and pains as well as our Healing Salve. Our Power Blend and Pro Blend with Joint Support are other great products for competitive and aging horses.