Teach Soap

I have been working on a "dog butter" - something to put on a dog's nose to help with dry skin.

Now, I make a whipped shea butter, which is shea butter, jojoba, dry flow, fragrance, and preservative. One of my friends who got the body butter for Christmas has a French bulldog, and she thought that the body butter, without the fragrance, would be a wonderful dog butter. I think I'd trade out the jojoba for kuikui nut oil, but otherwise it would be unchanged, minus the fragrance.

But should I use the preservative? I can see both sides of yes/no.

* Since whatever dog uses this would undoubtedly lick its nose, if there is preservative, it would ingest the
preservative. But it's used at such a low level (one-half to one percent), would that really matter?

* If I don't use a preservative, and water or other contaminant does get introduced, the dog would
ingest that, that could be a problem as well. It's possible that it could make the dog sick.

So, I feel like I'm choosing (or trying to choose) between two evils. Or maybe I'm just overthinking the whole thing!

(No, I don't lay awake at night thinking this stuff up. I do it quite well during daylight hours! )

Thanks for the input.

Anita

I would ask your vet. This isn't something that I would use on my dog as it wouldn't stay on his nose long enough to help. It would get licked right off. If the dog ingests enough, he/she could get the runs or get sick.

_________________
Irena
Closed minds are like faulty parachutes; they refuse to open.

The answer I got from my vet was a definitive "I dunno".

I decided to go with the preservative. For a two-ounce batch, the amount of preservative at .5% is less than half a gram. By the time I've whipped the living daylights out of it, it's expanded enough that there's very little in each container.

So we'll see how that goes.

Thanks.

Anita