Honey is one of the more versatile foods you can store. You know it tastes good on toast and in your tea, but did you know honey also has healing properties? We recently got to experiment with honey as a topical antibiotic when our adventurous little dog, Huck, decided to go get his foot caught in a leg hold trap. And then stay there for 8 hours before we found him. In foot deep snow on December 25th.
It was not a good situation when we found him–the foot under the trap was hard and frozen. We brought him home and warmed it up and it swelled up about three times the size of his other foot. After three days of this swelling we decided he may have an infection so off to the vet we went. “Give him this antibiotic and an anti-inflamatory and we’ll see how it’s doing in a couple of weeks”.
Well the swelling went down and the skin on the top part of the foot under where the trap had cut off circulation started to fall off. This was really gross. There was still some skin and hair on the top of the foot at this point but we didn’t know what was going on, so on January 15th, feeling like spending even more money right after Christmas, we went back to the vet thinking Huck might lose his leg or something. This time the vet could see better what was going on. That patch of skin left on top of the foot was dead and would eventually fall off, but the bottom of the foot was alive and well. So to aid in healing and cleanliness, she recommended cutting the top patch of skin off and starting a honey bandage. A what? A honey bandage. Yes honey, like the stuff you have on your toast. Honey has antibacterial properties as well as enzymes that help the skin heal without leaving a lot of scarring, so it’s perfect for use as a wound dressing.
So that’s what we did. Here’s how the honey bandage works. You have an open wound–large surface area wounds are perfect. Cover the wound with raw honey. Processed honey has had a lot of the good honey enzymes killed when it went through the heating process, so raw honey is best. Then bandage over the honey–we used a non-stick pad held in place by a gauze wrap and then covered that with vet wrap and tape to add a little waterproofing and stability. This is a dog who was not going to quit running around just because some people thought he was wounded. He also had to wear the cone of shame because he really liked to tear the bandaging off. Poor dog. Here’s how it looked all wrapped up:
We changed the honey bandage every day for the first month. During the first three weeks he was also on an oral antibiotic. After four weeks we cut back changing the bandage to every 2 to 2 1/2 days.
It only took a week and a half for the uppermost parts of exposed bone to be covered with muscle again and nice pink skin to start growing back around the edges of the wound.
Here’s the progress. A few of the photos are a little graphic, especially in the beginning, so I made it so you have to click to see the pictures just in case some of my more sensitive readers don’t want to see the injury:
Day 1 After Surgery Lots of exposed skin, exposed bone to the left and bottom
Day 16 Regrowing skin already, plus all the bone to the left is covered
Day 31 Almost all bone covered
Day 46 Check out all the hair growing back at the edges!
Day 61 Almost all done. The last bit of bone is finally grown over.
Day 72 it was all healed over but I didn’t get a picture before he went outside, ran around and tore a spot of that nice new skin open. So back in the bandage he went for a couple of days.
There was obviously some nerve damage from the trap as he can no longer move that foot, and it is pretty ugly (I’m holding out hope for more hair to grow back), but it sure could have been worse. He still has a foot on the end of his leg and he’s still running around. Thanks, honey bandage.
Keep preparing! Angela
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Amazing. Make a note to update us on how he’s doing in 1 year.
That is very cool! I had some stitches out and the next day my wound opened up. You can’t re stitch it because of bacteria and all that good stuff so it had to heal on its own. The doc told me to use sugar and bacitracin on it He said the sugar caused the cell walls of the bacteria to rupture and prevented infection. They are using sugar and honey on major burns now also!
This is nothing short of miraculous. So glad your guy is doing better! <3
Raw honey can have Botulism spores in it. So on a human child 2 or younger, I’d be leery of using this technique in an emergency. On an animal though I’d give it a try. Probably also best to have some Silver Sol on hand to pour over the wound daily before reapplying fresh honey and a new bandage. I’m glad this worked for your dog.