Considering your dog’s emotional and behavioral health is a key component of his overall well being.  Like humans, pets experience stress. Prolonged stress impairs pet’s ability to fight off illnesses & infections. In addition, behavior problems in dogs are often related to underlying emotional factors. A shelter dog entering a new home or a pet experiencing the loss of a loved one may feel sadness and withdraw. Multiple pets in the same household can lead to jealousy and selfish behavior, fighting over attention or prime lounging spots.

Holistic products, like Botanical Animal® Flower Essences from Arenus, can calm pets and reduce emotional stress. The specialized infusions of various blossoms work synergistically to help address the common situations that affect all our animals at one time or another throughout their lives: Trauma, stress, abandonment, loss of a loved one, aggression, insecurity and others. The 14 different blends are issue-specific, to address the various emotional conditions that are keeping your dog from enjoying more happy moments with you.

When I was contacted by Arenus to review one of the Botanical Animal Flower Essences I was more than willingly to give it a try. Being able to give a dog a herbal product rather than give them a prescription medication to possibly help reduce anxiety issues is a good thing.

I was given the option to choose which Botanical Animal Flower Essence I thought would fit for one of the dogs. Since I was contacted right around 4th of July, when Sherman was having some issues with loud noises from the fireworks, I thought the Mellow out would be perfect to try on him.

Mellow Out® helps to calm the nervous or jittery animals that may be moody, irritable or on edge all the time. For overly anxious and anticipatory animals that tend to lose control easily. It is great to use prior to competition, thunderstorms, or firework displays.

The fireworks were over by the time I received the product which wasn’t an issue because I figured I could use it for thunderstorms instead. However, we are in the midst of a drought. Go figure.

I started to panic because I had no incidents in which to try the product out.

Low and behold Leroy came through for me.

Leroy has issues, we all know that, however recently he has been having overly anxious issues. He goes through these issues occasionally but over the last few weeks they have been kicked into over drive. When he has these overly anxious bouts he is in everyone’s space. He gets into licking modes where he is licking me, Plunger or Sherman and he just won’t stop. He jumps.  He will also follow his target of choice everywhere, breathing heavy, almost like he is stalking you. Then he will just lay there and stare at you, breathing heavy.

It’s quite annoying to say the least. So during his last bout I decided to give him a few drops of the Mellow Out. For Leroy’s size I was to give him 6-10 drops either on his tongue, on a treat, or in his drinking water. I chose to put the drops directly on his tongue instead of on his food because he is a picky eater.

I didn’t notice a difference right away but within about 1/2 hour I did notice that he settled down. I tried it the next day and it had the same affect on him. It seemed to take the edge off.

I liked this product and I would use it again. I even tasted a small drop to see what it tasted like and it didn’t taste like anything but it did have a slight vinegar smell. Vinegar is among one of  the ingredients in the product and if you would like to view the rest of the ingredients you can go here. 

Cons: The only cons I have about this product is with the dropper.

I would prefer to use an oral syringe.

It’s hard to measure out 10 drops on a dog’s tongue. It’s hard to get 10 drops on a dog’s tongue when he is overly anxious and not cooperating.  Being able to dose this in an oral syringe using ml’s seems like a better idea to me, and a lot easier to squirt into a large dog’s mouth, but maybe that’s the vet tech coming out in me. I also didn’t like the idea of the dropper being made out of glass. Glass in Leroy’s mouth could end badly and while the chances of this happening are slim to none, remember we are dealing with the same dog who eats rocks.

So besides the glass dropper, I give this product 2 paws up.

**Disclaimer- I received (1) 1 fl oz bottle of Mellow Out for my honest review of this product. All opinions expressed here are mine and mine only. 

Do you have a dog that you think would benefit from Mellow Out? Stay tuned for a chance to win your very own bottle later this week!