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Written by Paul
Dr Paul Manktelow is a vet who’s worked for almost 20 years on the front line in some of the UK’s busiest veterinary hospitals. As Chief Vet in the Charity Sector, he leads a team of vets and nurses that treat thousands of pets every year. Paul also appears regularly in the media as a TV and radio presenter, writer, public speaker and podcast producer.
CBD products for pets have moved rapidly from the fringes of alternative therapy into the mainstream. Search online and you will find oils, chews and supplements promoted for everything from arthritis and chronic pain to anxiety, epilepsy and age-related decline. For pet guardians looking for new ways to support an animal with a long-term condition, it is easy to understand the appeal.
The difficulty is that the enthusiasm surrounding CBD has developed much faster than the veterinary evidence. That does not mean CBD should simply be dismissed, but it does mean we need to separate what looks genuinely promising from what remains largely unproven.
Where the Evidence Looks Most Promising
Perhaps surprisingly, one of the more encouraging areas of research is osteoarthritis and chronic pain in dogs. Several studies have reported improvements in measures such as mobility, activity and owner-assessed comfort in dogs receiving CBD.
For anyone living with an older dog affected by arthritis, even relatively modest improvements in mobility can make a meaningful difference to quality of life. However, there are important limitations. Many studies have involved relatively small numbers of dogs, treatment periods have often been short, and researchers have used different products, formulations and doses.
The results are therefore interesting, but the evidence is not yet comparable with the depth of research supporting many established veterinary medicines.
Epilepsy represents another emerging area of interest. Early research suggests CBD may help reduce seizure frequency in some dogs when used alongside conventional anti-epileptic treatment. Again, however, responses are variable and the evidence remains too limited to consider CBD a replacement for established epilepsy medication.
What About Anxiety?
This is where the gap between marketing and evidence becomes particularly interesting. Anxiety, firework fears, travel stress and separation-related problems are some of the most visible reasons CBD products are promoted to pet guardians, yet the scientific evidence in this area is considerably less convincing.
There have been encouraging findings, but overall the research remains limited and inconsistent. This does not prove that CBD cannot help an individual animal. It means we cannot assume that personal testimonials or persuasive marketing claims provide the same level of confidence as controlled clinical research.
The same caution applies even more strongly to CBG, or cannabigerol. Despite appearing increasingly frequently in cannabinoid products, there is currently very little published veterinary research demonstrating its effectiveness in dogs or cats.
Promising Does Not Mean Proven
I explored this gap between consumer enthusiasm and scientific evidence in more detail in a recent episode of The Consult Room, looking at where CBD research is genuinely encouraging and where the claims have moved considerably further than the science.
Listen to “CBD for Pets: Miracle Cure or Clever Marketing?” on Spotify.
The most sensible position at present probably sits somewhere between the extremes. CBD is not a miracle cure, but neither is it reasonable to dismiss an emerging area of research that shows genuine therapeutic potential.
Good veterinary medicine should be able to hold both ideas at once. We can remain curious about new treatments while demanding good evidence before making confident claims about what they can achieve. With CBD, particularly in areas such as chronic pain, there are good reasons to keep watching the science. For many of the claims currently surrounding these products, however, the evidence still has some catching up to do.
