How to use Flower Essences on Your Pet

Flower Essences for Animals

A puppy cries at being left alone, but after drops from a brown glass bottle are rubbed into her gums, she relaxes and sleeps peacefully.  A cat who usually hisses and growls in the veterinarian’s waiting room is sprayed with a dilute solution before leaving the house, and so is his carrier.  This time, his trip to the vet is noticeably calmer.  A dog competing in an obedience trial senses her handler’s anxiety and is distracted by the sights, smells, and other dogs all around her.  But after drinking several drops mixed with water, she focuses her attention and wins a ribbon.

What are these animals taking?

Flower Essences are a rapidly growing segment of the natural health movement, and proponents credit their human use with everything from relief of migraines to stress reduction, courage, optimism and the end of chronic depression.  In animals, they treat conditions as varied as anxiety, skin and coat problems, eating disorders and misbehavior.

What no one can explain is how or why these preparations work exactly.  Like homeopathic medications, they are so greatly diluted that they contain little, if any, of the blossom on the label.  Yet credible health care professionals, psychologists, veterinarians, parents and pet owners swear they are effective.  Flower essences are part of vibrational medicine, the study of high-frequency subtle energies, which includes homeopathy, gemstones, crystals, aromatherapy, color work, hands-on healing and healing through thought or prayer.

In an interview in the summer 1995 Flower Essence Society Newsletter, physician Stephen Nezezon, who attended medical school after receiving undergraduate and graduate degrees in physics and astrophysics, was asked how something so subtle can have such powerful effects.  He replied, “I’m grateful for my original training in physics.  If modern physics were truly understood by the medical community, we would have a different scientific basis for evaluating healing.”  On the atomic level, tiny amounts of matter contain subtle but powerful forces, and this is how he regards flower essences.  “When I say they are subtle, it does not mean that they are weak,” he explained, for subtle forces working on the atomic level can have profound effects on living organisms.

This unique healing system was developed by an English physician, Edward Bach.  During the 1930s he discovered that many of the nonpoisonous wild plants, bushes and trees in the English countryside exerted genuine therapeutic effects on the emotions, which in turn promoted physical balance in the body.  He believed that by thus correcting emotional dysfunction, you could help heal physical dysfunction.

Bach identified and developed applications for thirty-eight individual English flower essences plus the well known five-flower combination called Rescue Remedy.  Since his time, many more flower essences have been added from around the world. 

Flower essences have been most widely used for humans, where stressful and negative emotional states are known to weaken the immune system and contribute to the disease process.  Veterinarians, too, have been using and prescribing these essences for many years and in increasing numbers find them highly beneficial to help heal the emotional and physical ills of dogs and cats.

Writing in Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine, Stephen Blake, DVM, points out that he has used flower essences effectively for more than ten years.  “Most pet owners and veterinarians would agree that behavioral problems are a major concern,” says Blake.  “They often accompany or precede physical disease as well.  The dramatic positive changes in the animals’ behavior demonstrates the effectiveness of the noninvasive way the remedies work…[to] alleviate the emotional stresses in veterinary patients.”

Experts say flower essences enhance the effectiveness of any form of medicine, conventional or alternative, without any interference.  They cannot be overused or misused, and if you administer the wrong remedy, it will simply not have any effect.  Essences are safe and nontoxic.

As for the results, in some cases they are dramatic.  The stories told about Rescue Remedy alone number in the hundreds of thousands.  Any flower essence or combination of essences can bring an immediate, dramatic change, though this reaction is unusual.  In some cases, the animal may not display any noticeable difference, even after weeks of daily doses.  The most typical pattern is to realize gradual effects over a period of time.  Flower essences are not cure-alls or panaceas.  Rather, they stimulate transformation in subtle ways and are most effective when used as part of a holistic program of health maintenance and improvement.

(This column is authored by Carol Koenigsknecht, Herbal Practitioner and owner of Terra Ken Herbals.  She is available for consultations, classes and lectures, and can be reached via her website at http://www.TerraKenHerbals.net or by phone, (706) 797-0091.  She also owns and operates Carol’s Critter Care, a pet-sitting service.)

DISCLAIMER: The information provided in this column is intended for educational purposes only.  It is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.  Please seek the advice of a QUALIFIED veterinarian or health care practitioner before using any herbs, supplements or other natural approaches to health discussed in this column.