A Path With Paws

I have long wanted to experiment with making a hotspot ointment for dogs. Recently I found a tea I really liked that I modified from one of Jeremy Ross’s recipes, however a tea takes time to make and needed to be poured over the whole dog. In addition it is sometimes hard to get on hot spots that are on the underside of a dog like armpits.

This wonderful Christmas break gave me just the time I needed to make something up.

Starting with my tea recipe I mixed up 33g each of Oregon Grape, Da Huang (chinese rhubarb root) and Huang Qin (skullcap). These herbs help treat damp heat, inflammation and bacterial and yeast infections.

I put these herbs in a mason jar and added in half sunflower oil and half refined coconut oil. Yesterday I put the mason jar with the oil and herbs in it in a water bath and keep the temperature a little over 100 degrees for several hours.

Today I drained the herbs from the oil and added in grated beeswax to my mixture, put it all in a warmer water bath and waited for the beeswax to melt. When it did I experimented with cooling a little more of the mixture, ended up adding additional beeswax so it would be a little more solid and then placed the finished ointment in small mason jars to cool.

And the finished product – a nice soft and soothing ointment for hot spots and skin infection.

Many thanks to this the wonderful book The Herbal Medicine-Maker’s Handbook for the recipe on how to make an ointment. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to make their own herbal products.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 29th, 2013 at 10:27 am and is filed under general information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.