Your dogs’ anxiety can turn any situation into no fun for anyone, them, or you. Beyond that, anxiety can lead to chronic health issues. So it is important to support your dog’s emotional well-being. Here are 4 calming herbs that we use in our #20 Keep Cool to support dogs with stress.

1. Catnip For Your Dog.

Catnip is useful for calming the nerves and helping with anemia. Other useful benefits besides its calming effects, is it contains antibiotic properties and acts as a mild tonic for colds, flu, and fevers. It can also help stimulate your pet’s appetite. There are many benefits catnip offers. To name a few, it introduces sweating without increasing body heat. Acts as a sedative for pain. Helps ease restlessness, convulsions, and insomnia.

2. Chamomile: Natural Anti Anxiety for Dogs.

One of the best-known herbs around is chamomile. This herb is a natural anti-anxiety for dogs. Its sedative qualities is extremely helpful for nervousness. This herb can be used to calm nerves and reduce stress.

It is also common to use to aid in digestion and relieve indigestion. This works because the herb relaxes the smooth muscle lining of the digestive tract. Furthermore, chamomile contains a natural hormone similar to thyroxine that helps strengthen the hair and skin. Finally, chamomile helps cleanse the liver and has anti-inflammatory properties.

3. Herb Hops: Natural Sedative for a Dog?

Hops is best known for it’s sedative action. It’s also used for their antibiotic properties as well. They have a relaxing effect on the liver and a laxative effect on the bowels. The seventeenth-century herbalist Nicholas Culpeper suggested using hops to open obstructions of the liver, cleanse the blood, loosen the belly, cleanse the veins, and promote urine.

4. Valerian: Help Calms a Nervous Dog.

Valerian is a strong nervine herb that produces a calming effect to aid individuals suffering from insomnia, anxiety, muscle spasms, and nervous tension. The Greeks used Valerian as a decongestant. They also used it for digestion, nausea, and urinary tract disorders. The Native Americans also used it for healing wounds. Valerian is beneficial for the heart, lungs, liver, stomach, nerves, and brain.

Looking at each of the calming herbs that help support your dog, you can see multiple benefits. Not only in support your dog’s anxiety, but in other areas of their health as well. So know that when you are supporting your dog’s emotional well-being you’re also supporting so much more with #20 Keep Cool.

Photo: Jeannie Biggers, GotDog? Agility