8 Ways To Detox Your Dog Naturally

Throughout life dogs and humans alike experience an overload of toxic burden. We come in contact with toxins through the environment, pharmaceuticals, our food, water, air,  body care products like shampoos and soaps. They're abundant in this day and age. Unfortunately, even if you are vigilant about eating clean and only using clean products for your dogs, there's still a likelihood that you'll be exposed.

Instead of diving into fear, you can take control of the situation and prepare your dogs to protect their systems.

If you know how the body works, you know that the body is equipped with an efficient detoxification system. This system includes the liver, kidneys, bowls, urinary tract as well as the skin and lungs.

Simply put:

The liver is the bodies filter and processes toxins into waste.

The bowel removes the solid, fat soluble waste that is created while the kidneys remove water soluble waste.

If these systems are backed up, the body will use the skin to push waste through. This is usually seen as as skin disorders like a rash, cysts, eczema, etc.

The lungs can accumulate mucus which in turn can trap pollutants in the air. Controlled coughing can help expel these pollutants that are considered toxic to our bodies.

Whether your dog has recently been exposed to something known to be toxic to their bodies like vaccines, antibiotics, pharmaceutical medication, anesthesia or you want to provide their bodies a quarterly break and detox throughout their life, the delivery systems will be similar.

Let's look at some options of detoxifying herbs:

• Milk Thistle
• Dandelion Root
• Yellowdock
• Artichoke
• Red Clover
• Turmeric

Let's get into some ideas of ways to administer detoxifying herbs!

1. Grind up chosen herbs and mix in with your dogs food.
2. Make appropriate tea from chosen herbs and mix in with your dogs food. Making an infusion or decoction from these herbs will help bring out their medicinal properties for easier absorption into your dogs body. You can feed strained herbs from decoction into food as well.
3. Place detoxing roots and seeds into a bone broth mixture and heat up as you would any bone broth. This will do the same thing as making a tea but will add extra benefits to the liquid and will make it a very appetizing addition to your dogs meals! Check out this blog post for instructions on how to make dog safe broth HERE
4. Use the infused bone broth and freeze it into ice cube trays or silicone molds. You can pop these out and feed with your dogs meal or as a nice treat to help cool them down while detoxifying their body. A great recipe for this is HERE. You could add this mixture with other fruits or herbs (check out another blog HERE for more options)
5. Use the same bone broth and make high quality jello. I have a simple recipe HERE. This will give added benefits of digestive health, joint health and skin & coat health.
6. Make healthy dog treats using dried detoxification herbs.
7. Make your own or buy an herbal extract. An extract uses alcohol or glycerin to pull the medicinal qualities out of the plant matter and concentrates it in the medium of alcohol or glycerin. This liquid is concentrated and only a few drops to a dropper full are used as a dose.
8. Encapsulating the dried herb is another option that can be easy or harder to administer depending on your dog. Some dogs will unknowingly eat it up if you place a capsule in their food bowl but others will eat around it or spit it out. There are pill treats out now too that a capsule can be placed inside and hopefully eaten successfully.

Detoxification is a two party system and a combination of antioxidants, B-vitamins and certain amino acids are important to also give so their bodies can properly work through the detoxification process. These can be easily be given with some home made meals.

Berries are high in antioxidants. Try feeding blueberries, strawberries or leafy greens to supply antioxidants. Hard leafy greens like kale, chard and spinach are best cooked a little since their cell walls are harder and should be broken down some.

Leafy greens, broccoli, meat and seeds are high in B-vitamins. Again, leafy greens and broccoli is best when lightly cooked for easiest absorption.

Meat contains all amino acids. Feed raw if you can but if you dog doesn't like that, cook slightly.

You could use supplements for the B-vitamins or specific amino acids. There could be some situations where that would be of benefit. If detoxing from hard chemicals like cancer treatment, I personally would add supplements to my dogs diet as well as the food listed above. Other than that, these foods should cover this part of the detoxification process.

As you can see, there are multiple ways to help your dog detox. Some are more fun than others but the most important thing is that they happily take the herbs when they need them. Try out what works for you and your dog. You don't want it to be traumatizing. The best method of transportation of herbs is whatever they will take easily!

As a recap:

When you combine a diet containing antioxidants, B-Vitamins and amino acids plus detoxifying herbs, your dogs body will have what it needs to do its natural process of detoxification. All bodies are made to find their way back to homeostasis. When the toxic burden is more that normal, it might just need a helping hand. This is where you come in!

Life happens, sometime our dogs have to take certain substances we wish they didn't. Sometimes they have to live in a place where the water isn't ideal. Sometimes they get into something they shouldn't have. Whatever the case may be; being prepared and having the knowledge and resources to help them them through tough times is what matters. Knowledge is power!