- Wintertime can really take its toll on your dog's feet.
The frozen ground, the ice,
sort of even the de-icing methods that people are using
can really affect affect the pads of your dog's feet.
In this video today, I'm gonna show you
the best all-natural way to protect your dog's feet
in the cold winter climate.
(gentle acoustic guitar strumming and puppy barking)
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Now, let's jump right in to this.
'Cause I'm really excited to share this with you guys.
And like I said, it is super simple.
So I went to a nature food store or organic food store
and I grabbed these four ingredients. And they are
beeswax,
sunflower oil,
some coconut oil,
and some shea butter.
Now, they're pretty easy to get.
And I encourage you to go to your local organic food grocer
and pick them up there.
But I'm also gonna post a link, the affiliate links
in the description below so that if you don't have
the opportunity to get out to a store,
or you don't really feel like traveling out
to gather all these things, they'll be available to you.
So check out the description below.
Now, another thing that I'm gonna suggest is
an electronic scale.
If you're feeding raw, you probably have one of these
for measuring out the amount of
your dog's food for each meal.
But it's gonna make things a little bit easier.
And I'm gonna be talking in imperial measurement
and metric measurement a little bit.
And it's a little easier if we're dealing
straight with weight, but you don't need one.
It's not necessary for this recipe.
First thing's first, I'm gonna measure my sunflower oil.
Now, if you're doing like a spoon measurement,
it's 4 tablespoons of sunflower oil
that's needed for this.
Now, if you're using an electric scale, it's--
a tablespoon is about 15 grams.
So it's gonna be 60 grams of sunflower oil
that we need.
So I'll just add that to my scale.
Remember it's 4 tablespoons so it should be...
It's so easy to do the liquid measurements on the scale.
It's so much harder when I get to the beeswax.
You'll see in a minute.
Now next up is 4 tablespoons our coconut oil.
Now I'm actually going to use a tablespoon
to measure it before tablespoons.
So hopefully it'll be pretty accurate.
It's an interesting texture.
If you're not familiar with coconut oil,
it's actually pretty hard when it's cold,
or at least not heated.
We're gonna add those 4 tablespoons.
And we're gonna get 60 grams in there.
Now the great part of coconut oil
is one of the things that we can eat along.
It smells amazing when you're preparing things with it.
And it's edible. I mean, most of our dog food is edible
but generally, I wouldn't eat it.
Coconut oil I will. It's really good.
Our next ingredient is she butter.
We're only gonna have 2 tablespoons of the shea butter
in our paw protector.
I really like using these all-natural ingredients.
We know that the dogs are likely, at some point,
going to lick their paws.
And I wanna know that everything I put on my dogs
whether it's shampoo, or, you know, in this case,
it's a paw protector.
But I wanna know that it's safe for dogs
and these are all great examples of things that are.
Now last, but certainly not least, is our beeswax.
Now, we're going to be using 8 teaspoons of beeswax.
And for you guys who are using a scale at home,
a teaspoon is about 5 grams.
So we're gonna need 40 grams of beeswax.
And we're gonna add that.
It actually flakes off really nicely.
It does make a little bit longer of a process
to get the beeswax into your mixture.
However, if you use a sharp knife
and just sort of flake it off a little bit at a time,
you can get through the process pretty quickly.
The great part is beeswax smells amazing.
Makes the entire kitchen smell amazing.
So, that's sort of the benefit of having
to work through the 8 teaspoons of beeswax.
Does anybody ever told you to mind your beeswax?
This is what I imagine they're talking about.
Now we're gonna put all those ingredients into a pot.
And that pot is gonna go on the stove at a low temperature.
We're gonna be stirring it pretty frequently
and once, all of the ingredients have mixed together
really well, we're gonna put it off the stove.
And I'll show you what we'll do next.
Now, our paw balm is pretty well-mixed at this point.
So, I wanna take it off of the stove.
But before it cools--
we're gonna let it cool at room temperature,
but before it does that, I wanna put it into
some sort of something, some vessel that
I can easily use it with the dogs.
Now, a lot of people will actually take this
and then put it into almost like a lip balm containers.
And then dispense it from there,
and put it on their dog's paws.
(bell counter rings)
But a hack that I like is get some sort of container
that's a little bit wider than your dog's paws.
I'm gonna put the mix, the paw balm into this
and then, when our dogs require it,
I can literally take their little paws,
dab it in the paw balm and then massage it in.
That way, I get lots on there.
I actually enjoy making this stuff
so I don't mind making it.
You're gonna use a little bit more if you do it this way.
So maybe for those of you who don't have
the time to spend on this kind of thing,
maybe using the lip balm container is
a good solution for you.
But for me, I wanna make sure
I thoroughly cover the dog's paws.
So that their paws stay intact
and don't get cracked very often.
So I am ever so carefully going to pour this
into this little container.
Now, I mentioned before if you--
I think I got this from a dollar store,
or something like that,
but I can also provide a link in the description.
If you wanna do your entire paw balm purchase
through Amazon or something like that,
I can post an affiliate link there.
We're gonna let this hang out on the counter
until it gets hard
and then I can show you guys how to put it on.
(electronic music beats)
Now, a couple hours have passed,
and our paw balm has become a lot harder.
It's still a little bit oily,
but it's great because the oiliness will help me
massage it into his feet.
Now, one thing I want you to keep in mind,
this isn't a protective barrier.
If it's extremely cold or the surface is really jagged
or extremely salty, you still gonna want to
have a barrier for your dog's feet.
This is essentially going to get their feet from
drying up and cracking.
And this could be a real issue especially
some of these sports dogs.
This will allow them to run around and play outside--
Hi Buddy! --run around and play outside
prevent their feet from drying up and cracking.
And you can see, Rad's pretty playful
so whether it's summertime or wintertime,
he's always ready to play.
But I'm gonna show you really quickly
why I choose the wider container.
You can see how wide that is.
And I'll get a little bit closer to the cam.
Here buddy.
So with this wider container, I can actually take
one of Rad's feet, and just press it
right into the balm. I can rub it. That's a good boy.
I can sort of rub it on into his feet,
and it stays in this little vessel which is great.
And then I'll essentially just massage it
into the pads of his feet.
You know I really want this stuff to penetrate
and I want it to moisten his feet as best we can.
Now, one thing I want you to keep in mind
is another great way to keep your dog's feet
from getting cold and any damage to their feet,
is after they come in, after you've been outside
in the wintertime, check in between their toes
for like little ice balls, or salt.
Another thing you can do is trim the hair
in between their toes so that there's nothing
for the salt and the ice to get caught up on.
That's another really good way to sorta make sure that
your dog isn't having any uncomfortable sand
after they go out for play in the winter or
go out for a walk in the wintertime.
I hope this natural paw balm tip helps you
make the most of the wintertime with your dog.
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make sure you hit that subscribe button.
We publish videos every Monday, Wednesday and Friday
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you wanna watch next.
On that note, I'm Ken. This is Rad.
Happy training!