CBD has gained momentum as a natural remedy for a variety of ailments, including anxiety, inflammation, pain, and seizures.
Photo by Dreamstime.
A few years ago, Coco broke his leg and spent three months in a cast. As a result of the injury, the now 9-year-old dark-chocolate-haired Boykin Spaniel walks with a limp, but it wasn’t until a year or so ago that he developed mobility issues. “We tried several things the veterinarian gave us to help lubricate joints, but nothing really made a big difference,” says Coco’s owner, McMinnville, Tennessee, resident Jane Flatt. At the recommendation of a friend, Flatt chose to try cannabidiol, commonlyknown as CBD.
Coco’s joints had become incredibly stiff. “It got to the point that he could not move his leg and walk with an easy gait,” Flatt says. “Trying to stand up and lie down, those things were difficult for him. We were afraid he was going to become almost immobile.”
After finding CBD at a local pharmacy, and speaking to the pharmacist about the various options, Flatt began giving Coco a couple of drops of CBD oil orally each evening. While there was some trial and error at first — adjusting the strength level after one oil made him sleep more than usual — there has been a “very visible change” in Coco. “It has made a big impact on his mobility,” says Flatt. “He still has issues with steps but is now able to move around fairly freely. He’s a much happier dog.”
Since Coco has been taking CBD oil and shown such improvement, he is no longer on prescription joint-health medication. While that medicine helped some, CBD oil offered the relief they were looking for, though Flatt says, “You have to find a balance and be mindful of weight and [dosages] in order for it to work properly.”
The Flatts take Coco to their longtime vet regularly. “He is an excellent veterinarian and has helped us through some really tough times with some of our other pets,” Flatt says, “but he did not recommend [CBD]. Now we’ve told him about it, and he says if that works, go right at it.”
A Veterinarian’s Take
With an increasing amount of anecdotal evidence, CBD (one of more than 100 cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant) has gained momentum as a natural remedy for a variety of ailments, including anxiety, inflammation, pain, and seizures, but there have been no formal studies conducted to confirm its effectiveness in animals, nor has it been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Under the 2018 Agricultural Improvement Act, CBD was legalized nationwide, categorized as an industrial hemp product — and restricted to containing .3 percent or less of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC, which creates a psychoactive “high”). But the lack of FDA trials and approval prevents veterinarians from recommending it as a treatment for specific health issues.
“The problem is that if you start getting into the realm of ‘we’re using this to treat this disease,’ then that gets into the domain of the FDA,” says a Memphis veterinarian, who because of the strict policies on recommending CBD to patients, chose to remain anonymous. “Any product that’s considered a medication would have to go through an FDA trial, so that’s where you have to be careful.”
This veterinarian recently attended VMX, a leading veterinary conference held in Orlando, Florida, where a number of lectures on the use of CBD were held. She learned that in some states, if a vet talked about CBD to clients, they were endangering their license. “It’s frustrating because people are using it for their animals, and they want to ask us for advice,” she says. “But essentially, we’re supposed to tell them we don’t know.”
In attending these CBD-specific lectures, her goal was to learn about reliable products, safe dosages, and possible side effects — to arm herself and staff with knowledge. She’s found that ElleVet, labeled as a joint chew infused with CBD, has conducted safety studies, looking at the bloodwork of animals on the supplement. Other brands she trusts are Procana and UltraCell.
Dog- or cat-specific CBD products, such as treats, chews, balms, and tinctures, are widely available online but can also be found at a variety of Memphis retailers, including Whatever, Wizards, Your CBD Store, and Modern Hemp. As for oils and tinctures, often there is no difference between human- and animal-labeled products aside from flavoring (peanut butter, chicken, or salmon for dogs and cats) and concentration. Some pet-specific products contain zero THC, rather than the typical .3 percent.
Most importantly, according to the vet, when choosing a CBD product for your pet, make sure it has “the right stuff in it. It’s not regulated,” she says, “so find out if [the brand] has third-party analysis to verify what’s in it. I’ve heard they’ve tested products that don’t even have any CBD, even though they claim to. Then they’ve tested products that have a way higher percentage of THC, so you could be getting those psychoactive effects with it.”
She has seen patients improve on CBD. “I have a client whose dog has seizures,” she says. “We were on the fence about whether we wanted to start medicine, and he said he wanted to try CBD oil. He thinks it has decreased the frequency and severity.”
She also has patients using it for arthritis, as well as old-dog dementia symptoms like anxious pacing, with some success. “I have a fair number of clients who prefer to use something that’s more homeopathic versus starting a medication,” she says. “Also, I’ll have clients coming in who say, ‘I started using CBD, and this is what we’re doing.’”
How It Works
According to the American Kennel Club article “CBD Oil for Dogs: What You Need to Know” (akc.org), CBD has been used in animals for its anti-inflammatory properties, cardiac benefits, anti-nausea effects, appetite stimulation, anti-anxiety impact, and possible anti-cancer benefits. And while there’s no scientific data on the side effects of CBD usage for dogs, there are potential, albeit minimal, side effects based on how CBD affects humans, including dry mouth, lowered blood pressure, and drowsiness.
But how does it work? All mammals have an endocannabinoid system, located in the central and peripheral nervous systems, which works to maintain the balance of physical and chemical functions within our bodies. As with humans, your pet’s endocannabinoid system is made up of endocannabinoids, cannabinoid receptors, and enzymes that produce and break down endocannabinoids.
When an animal’s internal functions are off balance, the endocannabinoid system responds by releasing enzymes that synthesize endocannabinoids, which bind to cannabinoid receptors in the brain and throughout the body. Once activated, the receptors regulate the passage of proteins between cells, sending chemical messages between nerve cells to make necessary adjustments and begin or stop certain processes, for example to reduce inflammation or alleviate anxiety. Plant-derived cannabinoids like CBD absorb into the bloodstream and stimulate the endocannabinoid system and, when administered regularly, can increase the number of receptors in the body.
How It’s Made
A native Memphian, Kevin McAllister moved to Oregon in 2010 to work in the cannabis industry. Today, he operates Hemp and CBD Solutions LLC, a company that extracts cannabidiol from hemp plants, producing CBD isolate, the active ingredient used in CBD oils, treats, and other products.
McAllister explains that hemp used for CBD extraction and what we know as marijuana are both cannabis sativa plants, but for CBD use, the plant is “bred down.” Marijuana has increased levels of THC, which, again, provide the “high” the plant is known for, but via selective breeding, hemp used for CBD extraction simply contains more CBD and less THC.
For the extraction process, the plant’s flowers are given an ethanol wash. The ethanol is then evaporated off, and McAllister says, “You’re left with all the cannabinoids that are in the plant — THC, CBD, CBG, CBN, and others. What you end up with is called crude oil, sort of a black goop.” The crude oil is then run through a distillation process, similar to the distillation process used in making alcohol.
“Short-path or wiped-film distillation are the two methods we use to distill,” McAllister says. “You heat [the mixture] up, and it chases all [the cannabinoids you want] out and leaves you with a yellowish, more transparent product.” It’s run through this process a few times until it’s purified. They take this one step further and add pentane, a hydrocarbon, which causes the molecules to freeze and bind together, and once cleaned and “crashed,” leaves you with a white powder — CBD isolate, highly purified and crystallized cannabidiol. “That’s what [manufacturers] put in dog treats, gummy bears, topical salves, etc.,” says McAllister.
Plant-derived cannabinoids like CBD absorb into the bloodstream and stimulate the endocannabinoid system and, when administered regularly, can increase the number of receptors in the body.
As the vet with whom we spoke, McAllister also stresses the importance of finding a product that has gone through third-party analysis. For his business, this means testing conducted by an ORELAP (Oregon Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Program) certified lab. Testing is done primarily to determine THC levels, which by law are required to be .3 percent or lower, but it’s also crucial to ensure the product does not contain pesticides.
“The last thing you want to do is rub on a topical salve [or ingest a product] that’s high in pesticides because someone didn’t get an analysis report done,” says McAllister, explaining that if a pesticide-ridden product goes through the distillation process, even if there are “trace amounts of pesticides, those codistill with cannabinoids. If you start with 20 pounds of flower that has .3 ppm [parts per million] of glyphosate, every usable amount of that pesticide has been extracted out with your cannabinoids, so now you’re dealing with way higher numbers than what can kill an insect, something like 36 ppm instead of .3 ppm.”
McAllister’s company takes a more organic approach and does not use chemical pesticides, and he suggests choosing a CBD product that has undergone testing and approval by a certified lab in the state where it is made.
Hemp Helps
Back in Memphis, pet owners share more CBD success stories. Sarah Henley gives her 7-year-old mixed-breed Bonnie CBD oil to calm her nerves when storms roll in. Will Scheff’s cats, Le Meow (6 months old) and Herbal (3 years), have benefitted from CBD — Herbal for anxiety symptoms, such as hiding after a move and the introduction of Le Meow into the household (“new house, new cat stress,” Scheff says), and Le Meow for “taking the edge off of her rambunctious personality and getting her to take it easy” to heal after being spayed.
Robert Caen gives his 11-year-old Labrador Deuce CBD gel caps daily for joint stiffness associated with aging. “We’d take him on walks and he’d start getting lame or kind of limp in his front leg, and then we noticed more stiffness in his back legs,” Caen says. “He is on medication for seizures, phenobarbital, and we didn’t want to put any other [prescription medication] on top of that.”
A daily dose of CBD helps minimize 11-year-old Labrador retriever Deuce’s age-related joint stiffness.
Photograph by Robert Caen.
After a couple of weeks on CBD, “We’d take a three-mile walk, and he’s fine the next day, doesn’t limp, and we’ve kept him on it,” Caen says. He thinks it may have also helped with some of Deuce’s anxiety. “He’s crate trained, and he loves his crate, but after our first child was born, when we’d start our bedtime routine with the infant, he would whine until 10 o’clock at night in his crate. He sleeps now from 7 until we take him out for a walk, and he doesn’t whine.”
As for Coco, who lives on a farm in McMinnville on five acres of woodland, he and his owners are happy with hemp. “It’s good to know that there are things like this out there that can give them a good quality of life, even though they’re older,” says Flatt. “Coco’s a little bit of a tracker, and we have deer and that kind of thing here on the farm. He’ll take off every once in a while and track something, and it’s a real pleasure to see him do that again. He still has a limp and always will, but he’s able to enjoy life.”
