What is a Safe Dose of CBD for My Dog or Cat?

Dogs and cats can suffer anxiety, sadness, joint and arthritis pain, digestion problems, cancer, and inflammation. Like humans, our dog or cat can appreciate the health benefits of CBD Oil. 

The ageing process, accidents, illness, or just a desire to maintain your pet’s general health are all perfect reasons for considering using CBD oils as a supplement in their diet, or to use balms on areas of allergy irritation, healing wounds, or split paws. Many pet owners just use CBD oil occasionally to reduce stress on bonfire night or before a long car journey for example. It maybe helpful to get your pet used to CBD oil before using it for the first time to reduce stress for the pet.  As always, we always ask you to please  check with your vet before giving your pet CBD oil to your pet if you have any concerns about their health or they have any undiagnosed conditions.

When starting with any routine of CBD oil, it is important to build up the dosage slowly, the last thing anyone wants to happen is to overdo the CBD at the beginning and have a big clean-up operation which increases everyone’s stress levels!

The amount tolerated by your well-loved pet will depend on their age, health, activity level, weight, and severity of symptoms.

A general guide for administering CBD to cats and dogs is to use 0.4 mg of CBD oil for each kg of body weight. This may sound complicated and so we have provided the following example to help work out the safe amount to start your pet on.

Weight of pet in kg,  then multiply by 0.4 (the amount of CBD per kg of body weight)  = mg per day

For a 10 kg dog it would look like this… 10 x 0.4 = 4mg per day

Or a 5 kg cat would be 5 x 0.4 = 2mg per day

A 15 ½ kg dog would be 15.5 x 0.4 = 6.2mg per day

CBD oil for pets is best given on an empty stomach to help absorption. The easiest way is to mix the oil in with a little of their normal food in between their main meals. It is suitable to mix with a little of their normal kibble, wet, or raw/BARF diet, or maybe dropped onto a cube of cheese or ham for a daily treat.

As some dose levels are small and it is difficult to split a drop of oil, small amounts are fine to give once a day, however, if it is possible split the daily allowance between 2 doses throughout the day to help maintain a consistent CBD level your pets system.

There is some evidence to suggest that cats have fewer cannabinoid receptors than dogs so may benefit from a slightly increased amount of CBD, up to around 0.8 mg per kilo of body weight. We recommend starting on the lowest dose possible and slowly building it up.

We hope this guide gives you all the answers you need to start using CBD oils, for your cat or dog with confidence. If you have any questions please do contact us.