Okay, I am NOT going to outright recommend this to you, but I am going to tell you what I did when my little dog got mites. Bear with me...
First of all, he has terrible allergies that make his hair fall out every summer and he looks like a drowned rat, poor thing. Adding insult to injury, he began to itch constantly though I soothed his skin with oatmeal and cornmeal baths and salves. I finally figured out that he'd gotten mites from running around in the grass and I had to get rid of them before he went insane with scratching. It was my understanding from my research that some kind of pesticide would ultimately need to be used to kill the mites, but I couldn't deal with the synthetic chemical recommendations of evrything I saw. Soap didn't do the job because mites burrow into the skin. It had to be something stronger.
What to do? Orange Oil? No, it would hurt like the dickens on his already erupted skin. Pyrethrum? No, while low in toxicity I wasn't willing to use it on my 5 lbs. sickly dog. So I turned to Bioganic. I've been a fan of this product for many years, from way before it became popular. Eugenol is one of its main ingredients, and while this clove and/or cinnamon oil extract has been known to cause problems in high doses I knew from experience using it in our home that the dog had no problem being around it. So I diluted a concentrate and treated him. It took approximately 10 days of daily light treatments, spraying on a mist and rubbing it into every inch of his body, but he improved immediately was finally cured and stopped scratching. Halleleujah!
Cautions: It burns (like Icy-Hot or Absorbine) when first put on the skin, the higher the concentrate, the stronger the burn...but not to the point of pain or distraction. It also doesn't actually burn the skin or leave a rash, etc. The burn feeling dies down in around 10-15 minutes or so and the skin may get pink but never red or raw.
I know this worked for him and I also know it worked for me. He shared his nasty little critters with me, since he sits on my lap nearly every second I'm not standing. Needless to say, it increased my empathy greatly and motivated me to find a solution, once I'd identified the problem. For down in his ears, I took a cotton swab and soaked it in the Bioganic diluted solution, then rubbed it around in the ear, but not deep down inside and not dripping - just enough to wet the surface. The fumes evidently took care of the remaining pests because he is no longer plagued.
After this treatment he began to eat well again, stopped licking everything all the time (ick!)
which made him smell OH-so-BAD and started growing his hair back. Followup with topical tea tree oil speeded the healing and has helped him get rid of the slight case of thrush he'd developed from the whole ordeal. I'm sure the dusting of corn starch helped too.
So there's my story and I'm stickin' to it. If it helps you, I'm glad. It's information I thought I should share because it was inexpensive, successful and non-toxic. I hope it helps someone else.
Oh yeah, and the allergies? I think I finally figured it out...it's partly from heat and partly from his penchant for munching on the CAT food. Aarrgh! He's back on good meat based foods and doing well. No, Muenster didn't work, I'm sad to say.
Take care, and I hope Claude is better soon!
Kathe
