Tag: dog

Are Fleas Tormenting your Pet? Learn how to get rid of fleas quickly without harming your companion animal. Photo: Dog scratching

How to Get Rid of Fleas Naturally on Dogs and Cats (No Chemicals Needed)

Sick of Fleas? Here’s What You Need to Know to Get Rid of Them Naturally!

Fleas can feel like one of the most frustrating seasonal challenges for pet parents. But if you’re committed to caring for your animals naturally — without chemical treatments, toxic sprays, or harsh shampoos — you might wonder what you can safely do when fleas show up.

In this post, I’ll walk you through a simple, natural, step-by-step approach to help your dogs and cats through flea challenges, even if you’re facing a full infestation.

Why Avoid Conventional Flea Treatments?

Most traditional flea treatments, whether topical medications, oral tablets, or chemical sprays, are loaded with neurotoxins. These can cause severe side effects, including seizures, tremors, and even cancer in both dogs and cats.

Most conventional flea treatments are pesticides, which are poisonous substances designed to kill small creatures.  Any substance that is a poison capable of killing a small creature quickly, also kills larger creatures, like our cats and dogs, and ourselves, just more slowly.

Spraying poisons around your house doesn’t just put your pets at risk — it puts you and your family at risk, too.

So, what’s the best way to handle fleas without bringing harmful products into my animals’ lives or environment?

Step 1: Improve the Diet

First, understand that a healthy body is naturally less attractive to parasites.

When dogs and cats eat a biologically inappropriate diet (like kibble or heavily processed commercial foods), their skin produces excess cellular waste, which makes them more appealing to fleas.

Switching to a natural, species-appropriate diet improves skin health, strengthens the immune system, and reduces the chances of flea infestations — though it won’t eliminate fleas entirely. Even wild animals get fleas! But a good diet makes your pet less of a target.

Get our Natural Dog Diet Quickstart Guide here:   https://www.therawkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Natural-Dog-Diet-Quick-Start-Guide.pdf

and our Natural Cat Diet Guide here:  https://www.therawkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Natural-Cat-Diet-Quick-Start-Guide-March-2023.pdf

Step 2: Use a Flea Comb

A bit tedious but truly the most effective tool in your flea fighting arsenal is the humble flea comb.   If you catch the problem early — maybe you spot a few fleas or notice your dog scratching occasionally — the simplest, safest tool is a flea comb.

Here’s how to use it:

  • Sit with your dog or cat and run the comb carefully through their fur.
  • Focus especially on areas where fleas like to hide: around the face and neck, under the armpits, along the back near the tail, and around the hips.
  • Have a dish of soapy water nearby, and after each pass, dip the comb into the soapy water to knock off and drown any fleas you catch.

If you stay consistent, combing once or twice daily for a week can often knock out a minor flea problem before it becomes an infestation.

Step 3: Bathing (Only When Necessary)

If your pet already has multiple fleas or is itching and scratching constantly, you’ll probably need to add a bath.

Important tips for flea baths:

  • Use a simple, non-toxic soap like plain coconut soap or Castile soap. Avoid shampoos with essential oils, fragrances, or harsh ingredients like sodium lauryl sulfate. Essential oils may seem harmless, but they are concentrated plant poisons that can cause severe symptoms in both cats and dogs.  
  • Apply the soap thickly, working up a heavy lather, and cover the entire body, especially the face, armpits, and base of the tail.
  • Leave the lather on for at least 5 minutes before rinsing.  Spend those 5 minutes giving your companion a nice relaxing massage and telling them how handsome or beautiful they look today!  Then rinse very thoroughly.  
  • Repeat the process: lather a second time, leave for 5 minutes, then rinse again.  It’s important to do the second round to get any fleas that might have been missed on the first pass.   Do a thorough job the first time to avoid having to do a second, third and fourth bath!   A few extra minutes in the tub will save you hours of work getting fleas out of your home.  

Be aware that too many baths can dry out your pet’s skin, making them even more uncomfortable. That’s why you want to be thorough when you bathe — it’s better to do one or two very effective baths than multiple weaker ones.

Step 4: Daily Combing After Bathing

Once you’ve bathed your pet, continue with daily flea combing for at least a week.

Even just a few minutes a day helps catch any stragglers before they can lay eggs and restart the cycle.

Step 5: Carefully Use Natural Flea Collars (If Needed)

If you have multiple pets or a severe infestation, you can consider using essential oil–based flea collars — with caution.

While essential oils can be toxic to pets (especially cats) if applied directly or diffused into the air, collars with small, controlled amounts embedded in the material can help repel fleas short-term.

Safety tips:

  • Use essential oil flea collars only during active infestations, not year-round.
  • Monitor your pet for any signs of sensitivity, such as drooling, scratching, skin irritation, or behavior changes like agitation.  If your pet starts to develop any symptoms immediately remove the collar and give them fresh air and a bath if needed to remove the essential oils from their fur. 
  • Never use essential oil sprays, drops, or diffusers around pets, as they can cause serious health problems.

Step 6: Treat the Environment

This is the step most people skip — and why their flea problem keeps coming back.

Fleas lay tiny eggs everywhere your pet walks, especially in carpets, rugs, beds, and furniture. These eggs can hatch weeks later, creating a whole new wave of fleas, even if you’ve already cleared them off your pet.

Best tool: Steam.

  • Use a carpet steamer or small cleaning steamer to treat dog beds, couches, carpets, curtains, and baseboards.
  • Steam penetrates fabrics and kills flea eggs far more effectively than vacuuming alone.

While daily vacuuming can help, it’s often not enough — even vacuuming multiple times a day may miss eggs hidden deep in fabrics. Steam, on the other hand, breaks the flea life cycle and prevents reinfestation.

Recommended Products

Here is what I use for my rescues!

Coconut soap  ->   https://amzn.to/4dANAsT or Castile soap → https://amzn.to/3SfOmlg

High-quality flea comb → https://amzn.to/4jmPFdl


Essential oil–based flea collar (use cautiously) →

For Cats -> https://amzn.to/4k2ZDBA

For Small Dogs ->   https://amzn.to/4dvP5sp

For Large Dogs -> https://amzn.to/43d7I0F

Flea traps – https://amzn.to/46Pymg8

Carpet steamer (for large jobs)  -> https://amzn.to/4jfARNl

or fabric steamer (for small jobs) → https://amzn.to/46PYTKd

While I prefer not to use essential oils because of their risks, there are some times when the flea infestation is strong enough to require essential oils to get the situation under control in the short term. Always use with caution. Never use on a sick pet. Never give essential oils internally. Never use a diffuser with essential oils around your pets. Always check all essential oils for safety before using, as many are highly toxic to cats and dogs. Cats are more sensitive than dogs. Never place undiluted essential oils on your pet’s skin. Only use essential oils sprays that specifically are labeled for use with cats and dogs, but remember, just because it says it is safe on the bottle, does not mean it is healthy, it just means the product is unlikely to cause major, catastrophic symptoms in most cats or dogs!

The following items should only be used for the shortest period possible to get a difficult flea situation under control:

  • Flea Shampoo with essential oils – https://amzn.to/3YgoVRn
  •  Essential oil-based flea spray – https://amzn.to/3SPsspy
  • Very strong flea spray – use only in extreme cases, take all pets out of the home, spray house thoroughly to kill fleas, then open windows and air out several hours before returning with your pets. – Vet’s Best Flea and Tick Home Spray – https://amzn.to/44UULtK
  • Diatomaceous earth – https://amzn.to/3YfUlr8
    • It’s best not to apply either of these directly on your cat or dog unless you’re dealing with a severe infestation that hasn’t responded to bathing. Instead, use them on dog beds, blankets, and carpets where fleas gather. Essential oils are plant toxins — their ability to kill small insects like fleas shows they are toxic — so use them sparingly and only as a last resort. Diatomaceous earth can irritate the lungs and eyes, so apply it carefully. Let the dust settle before allowing pets back into the room, and wear a mask and eye protection when using it.

Final Thoughts

While fleas are a natural part of life — and even the healthiest pets will encounter them — they don’t have to take over your home or make your pets miserable.

By combining the natural diet your companion is designed to thrive on with simple mechanical tools like combs, careful use of natural products, and targeted home cleaning, you can keep fleas under control without resorting to toxic chemicals.

If you found this helpful, be sure to check out my other posts and videos on natural pet care, and let me know in the comments if you have any favorite flea-fighting tips!

Lauren WhitemanLeave a comment

Euthanasia

Question:

Can you please educate me on why euthanizing your pet is more cruel than allowing them to die naturally? I spent hours today watching videos on YouTube trying to see the unpopular viewpoint but all videos I watched had the same narrative, that euthanizing your pet when they are suffering is the kind choice.

Answer:

Certainly. This is a sensitive topic that no one really wants to think about too deeply. It is especially difficult if you have made this choice in the past as I did. It’s far easier to just go on believing in the narrative than to look at it objectively. We all want easy fixes and life to be free from pain.

Really this entire concept stems from the utter failure of medicine to return health to their customers. If you can’t help them get better then just teach them that to die at their hands is a blessing. So the first issue that arises from euthanasia is that many times these vets are euthanizing an animal that is fully capable of healing. Therefore they are playing God and taking away a life prematurely. Because these vets only see animals that follow their treatment plans and are fed disease-causing foods their perspective is skewed. In their eyes nothing is fixable, all of the body’s healing processes are bad, wrong, and dangerous and must be stopped with poisons. None of the animals that they treat ever get better, so it is in their minds better to kill the animal than to drag on the treatments which always end up with the animal getting sicker and sicker.

However, we know better. We know that when a vet says that Cancer is terminal, this is not true. We have seen dogs that were given 2 weeks to live, go on for years, heal all of their conditions, return to the bountiful energy of puppies, and pass peacefully of old age many years later. Had we followed the vet’s recommendation to “put them out of their misery” we would have lost many years of companionship. Happy for example, lived another 3 years after being told that we should immediately euthanize her. She healed from Cancer, Vestibular disease, cataracts, and hearing loss. She went from being obese and falling over unable to walk to racing up mountains with me every day. Had I fallen for the logic of the vet I would have lost out on hundreds of amazing memories.

Most vets these days cannot even recognize the signs of an animal preparing to pass naturally, and they believe nothing is curable, so how, if they are so wrong in both of these areas can we trust them when they tell us that our animal is suffering and dying?

This alone is enough to pause and wait. What if what you think is your cat or dog dying is really just their body detoxing and healing? A vet cannot tell you the difference between an animal healing and an animal dying and is more likely to tell you that your animal is on the brink of death and sell you a poison when your animal is cleaning and healing their body.

Then we have the Euthanasia drug itself. This is a poison. A poison that is so strong that it takes their life away in just a few minutes of circulating through the blood. If you ingest poison or have it injected into you, you always feel it. Think about how the baby screams and is inconsolable after the injection of a vaccine. They feel the injury of this very small amount of poison acutely. If you drink coffee, a comparatively mild poison, you feel anxiety and become hyper. Your body registers the discomfort even if you have not taken a lethal dose of a toxic substance. If you drink alcohol you become sick. We always feel when we are being poisoned and so do our animals. They feel the discomfort of their cells being injured by the poison.

The euthanasia drug is a two-part drug, one part is a paralytic agent which paralyzes the muscles so the body cannot seize when the second poison is administered. So rather than the narrative of an animal drifting off to sleep peacefully what we really have is an animal being paralyzed followed by the poison going through their system. Imagine how terrified you would feel if you suddenly had no control over your body and could not move. This alone is a very distressing situation, a far cry from the advertisement.

Many years ago I believed the Vet when they made Brutus sick and could not help him get well again. We spent nearly $20,000 on specialists and then when he was struggling to breathe they convinced me that his life would be made better by “putting him to sleep” at age 5. A euphemism that distracts us from the reality of the situation. Rather than it being a peaceful process where he just drifted off to sleep, they held him down on a cold steel table and he looked at me in pure terror as the paralyzing agent made it so he could not move his body. His eyes though did not lie. Then the poison was administered and you could see the pain in his eyes. I thought I was doing the best for him, putting him out of his misery. Today I know that all I needed was someone to tell me to get him off the kibble and the junk supplements that we were feeding him. It was nearly 20 years ago but still, to this day I can see the look of suffering in his eyes as they administered the lethal dose. It still makes me cry to this day.

You will hear from so many others who have had the same experience, and seen the same look of terror in their eyes. The vets always sell us on how terrible and scary natural death is and how wonderful putting them to sleep on a cold steel table in the scariest place they ever go is, but I have had many dogs pass on since then the natural way and none has come close to the trauma I went through with euthanasia. When a dog or cat passes naturally there is peace in their eyes. Sometimes they have some symptoms that make us feel uncomfortable, sometimes they have accidents or maybe a seizure, sometimes they cry out – but not out of pain, it is more like they are saying goodbye – but it’s always very manageable. I have never had an experience that wasn’t more positive than negative.

They have given us their whole lives unconditional love, the least we can do is let them pass in their home surrounded by loved ones and in peace, naturally, as intended.

Death is a peaceful process when it occurs naturally, but it is a violent process when it occurs unnaturally. I know this is hard for many people to hear but it’s something that needs to be spoken honestly about.

Lauren WhitemanLeave a comment
Why is my dog shivering?

Why Is My Dog Shivering?

Shivering, tremors, or shaking in dogs can occur throughout the healing process. Learn why and when we should be concerned.

There are a few common reasons why dogs tend to shiver:

  1. They are excited or nervous or have excess energy to burn off
  2. They are in pain. Typically there will be other signs of pain to go along with this.
  3. They are cold.

Dogs Shiver from excitement

Shivering from excitement or an excess of energy is the most common reason that dogs will shiver, especially among toy breeds and smaller dogs. Shivering can become a trained behavior with toy breeds and smaller dogs. For example, they might get excited about food and then start shivering whenever they think they will get fed. Or they might shiver around one person in the family due to excitement or nervousness but not shiver around others. If your dog is shivering frequently, it is most likely a learned behavior; some training can help correct this. If you have recently changed your dog’s diet to the natural canine diet it is very common for them to have a lot more energy and not know how to burn off this excess energy, so shivering becomes a way that they burn off the excess energy. Giving your dog a longer walk or more play sessions can correct this excess energy issue.

Dogs can shiver when they are in pain

Dogs can also shiver if they feel discomfort. So if we see our dog shivering and it’s not obviously due to excitement then we should check them over. Check their teeth, paw pads, and ensure they don’t have a thorn in the foot or a bramble, etc. Check their mouth for injury if you can do so safely. Check their walk to make sure they are not limping and check their tummy to see if they have gas or bloating.

Shivering could also be due to stomach upset if they are not digesting food well. If they have gas and are shivering then it’s very likely that their meals are too large or you are combining too many ingredients leading to fermentation and gas. If you think this is the case you should decrease the portions or simplify the meals. Sometimes as their digestion heals we need to start them off with smaller meals and slowly increase the meals over time. If you have noticed any gas, bloating, lip licking, scooting, or loose stool then adjust their meals to smaller portions which will improve digestion and avoid any gas or fermentation from undigested foods.

Dogs can shiver when cold

If the weather has turned colder, or you have the air conditioning on in your house your dog might simply be cold. Try putting on a sweater, giving them a blanket or a heated bed or dog safe heated pad to lay on.

If your dog has recently lost some weight this can cause them to shiver as the loss of body fat means a loss of insulation. It can take a little time for the body to adjust and the thyroid to maintain temperature more effectively, so sometimes when dogs lose weight they can shiver until their body adjusts to their new weight and is able to better manage their temperature.

Shivering can also result from eating cold food. If you are currently feeding their fruit or meat meals out of the fridge you might try warming them on the counter or in a zip top bag submersed in warm water. Feeding right from the fridge can be another cause of shivering.

Shivering as a result of detox

When the body is healing, sometimes our animals will go through periods of discomfort, just like when we humans experience a cold or a flu detox healing event. Just like a cold or flu puts our body in a state of discomfort while it cleans and heals our body, when our dogs and cats are healing they can go through periods of mild to moderate discomfort. When this happens they may sometimes shiver. This type of shivering is usually accompanied by some level of fatigue as well as other detox symptoms like itchy skin, mucus, coughing, sneezing, or lack of or limited appetite, or picky eating. If you notice growing fatigue then this would be a good time to fast so the body can focus all of its energy on the healing processes.

Have more questions? Want to get answers about your dog or cat’s specific health issues or concerns? I offer consultations, learn more about them here: https://www.therawkey.com/consultations/

Lauren WhitemanLeave a comment
Fruit is Essential to the Wild Canid and all Domesticated Dogs

Evidence that Canids eat Fruit in the wild

One of the biggest mistakes made in feeding dogs is the idea that dogs are exclusively meat eaters and do not require fruits in their diet. This mistake of overfeeding proteins to our companions has led to epidemics of chronic disease. Yet the most popular raw feeding models, PMR and BARF miss the mark on this essential part of the natural diet for dogs. Even when presented in raw feeding groups to substitute fruit meals for some of the meat meals to lessen the burden on the body, it is nearly always rejected. Luckily we have tons of evidence from nature to guide us to the natural eating habits of canids and we see their love of fruits is clearly evidenced. Below is a collection of various studies and amateur and professional wildlife videos showing clear evidence that our dogs are meant to eat fruit and thrive. Adding to this evidence I have personally seen all of my rescues with chronic and terminal disease conditions heal rapidly once put on a fruit-heavy raw natural diet. If you want to learn more about the natural dog and cat diets get our free feeding guide here: https://www.therawkey.com/the-animals-key/

The Voyaguer Wolf Project has been studying the diet of wolves and has found many examples of the wolves feeding heavily on fruits!

Read the full study “Berry Important? Wolf Provisions Pups with Berries in Northern Minnesota – https://www.therawkey.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Berry-consumption-of-Wolves-Voyaguer-Wolf-Project.pdf

Studies of the natural diet of coyotes show a heavy reliance on plant foods even in areas of low productivity.

Videos of Wolves, Coyotes and Dogs enjoying fruits

Voyageurs Wolf Project Wolves eating blueberries
Coyote climbs a tree to eat apples
Coyote eating apples from a pile on the ground
Coyotes eating bananas
Coyote eating apples that have fallen from a tree
Coyote enjoying apples in a yard
Cooper the Coyote eating apples
Wolf mom and pup eating blueberries
Captive wolves enjoying a pumpkin

Wolf enjoying a watermelon
Coyote Eating Bananas
Coyote eating plums
Coyote eating apples from a yard.
Wolves eating berries
Wolf eating watermelon

Wolf eating a pineapple
Dogs living on a fruitarian orchard enjoying their fill of fresh fruits
Coyote eating bananas left in the woods. – Banana footage starts around 2:30
Coyote eating cauliflower left in the woods.
Coyotes eating Persimmons
Coyote eating wild persimmons
Note from the video: This is a short time lapse video I shot of at least two coyotes eating persimmons (sharon fruit) from our garden. Pretty amazing for a carnivore. They are also fond of our avocados. They are feeding from about 11pm to 7am the next morning so they obviously like them! At one stage one climbs up into the tree.
Coyote eating persimmons

Photos of Wolves, Coyotes and Dogs Enjoying Fruits

I hope you have found this collection insightful. Please check back regularly as we are constantly expanding this page with new videos, studies and photos! If you have any photos, videos or other insights you would like to share, send me an email I would love to add them to our page for the benefit of all!

Lauren Whiteman4 Comments