BOZEMAN - All the dogs around Nancy Tanner were on edge.
They had suffered what she termed major trauma either at the hands of people or another dog. As a result, the dogs were not able to relax. They had lost their ability to trust and to function outside their homes.
"They had met evil," Tanner said.
The dog owners had brought their pets to Tanner, owner of the Bozeman dog-training center Paws & People. She was leading a class - Relaxing Your Reactive Rover - that teaches owners the skills necessary to handle their tense dogs.
It was a tricky class, Tanner said. They began trying new things, adding calming sounds and calming objects.
And then Tanner introduced calming scents to the class.
She started with aromatherapy products made for humans. People started relaxing and the dogs relaxed some along with their owners. But the scent was too strong for the dogs.
"They would hit their nose a little bit or touch the ground or back away from it," Tanner said.
She turned to her family garden, where her family has been making their own salves, lip balms, tinctures and essential oils for about eight years. Tanner started mixing lavender blends, backing off emulsifiers and preservatives used to amplify scent for human noses.
With distilled water and plant-based essential oils extracted from lavender plants in her garden, she was able to come up with an aromatherapy scent for dogs and brought it back to the class.
"And what we noticed is dogs started coming in and laying on their mats and taking a deep breath and relaxing their eyes," Tanner said.
That was about 3 1/2 years ago. People from that class started asking for bottles of scents to take home and gift to friends. More and more people kept asking for bottles until Tanner was buying bottles by the 200 and had two part-time employees for the business, called the Scent Project.
Today she's on the brink of shifting one of those part-time employees to a full-time position because her pet aromatherapy business has boomed. Tanner took her business to pet industry conventions in San Diego and Los Angeles earlier this year, began advertising in national pet magazines in February and started an online store.
"It was amazing," Tanner said. "It kind of hit us broadside, but you can't complain about too much business. You just have to drink a lot of coffee and suck it up."
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Spraying the scent on a dog by itself won't relax the pet. It becomes effective when the scent is paired with a positive experience, creating a conditioned emotional response, Tanner said. Think about some favorite smells and what feelings or thoughts are evoked by it, she said.
Once the dog associates a certain smell with something that relaxes it or something the dog enjoys, the scent can be used to calm the pup while traveling or when its owner leaves the house.
She's heard of people spraying it on leashes, collars, mats and inside pant legs, to calm the dog while walking.
"For people, (aromatherapy) has been well known for quite some time, and I think mainstream and widely accepted," Tanner said. "In the pet industry, it's just starting to bud."
Alternatives to conventional medicine for pets have become increasingly popular in the past few decades, said Dana Scott, a breeder and editor-in-chief of Dogs Naturally magazine.
She feels that people have grown "a little disillusioned" with conventional medicine, noting that the magazine's most popular topics are vaccine-related news and nutrition.
Aromatherapy presents an alternative to behavioral drugs like Prozac, which Scott says can harm dogs' kidneys and liver. And it's cheaper, she said.
Scott uses essential oils with her pets, particularly in tick-infested areas.
Acceptance of holistic medicines and solutions to various pet issues may seem far-fetched to non-pet owners, but people's attitudes toward pets have changed in the last couple of decades, said Mychelle Blake, executive director of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers. Some folks can go too far and think of their pets as people in fur coats, she said, but overall, people taking their pets more seriously is good.
And it has caused the pet industry to grow each of the past 15 or so years, according to the trade group American Pet Products Association.
There are even pet chiropractors, massage therapists, physical therapists, oncologists and cardiologists, said Blake, who's based in Las Vegas.
"Last night I spent a lot of money I don't want to talk about for a cardiologist because one of my pets has cancer in her heart," Blake said Wednesday in a phone interview.
Bozeman is a far cry from Las Vegas, but sales of the Scent Project's room mists are pretty steady in town, said Libby Burr, owner of Bridger Feeds.
She began stocking bottles of scents in August and couldn't keep them on the shelves the first two weeks, selling all the store had.
That's pretty good for a new natural product, Burr said. She currently stocks 21 all-natural brands. All-natural products are considered Bridger Feeds' forte, she said, noting that 70 percent of her business is from companion animal products.
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Selling Tanner's Scent Project scents was a no-brainer for her.
"My personal favorite is, I believe, I constantly, constantly use the Calm (scent) in my house with my kids and my dogs," Burr said.
Tanner is hoping to turn the Scent Project into more people's favorite aromatherapy product, as she launches a logo and brand around the end of the year. It was developed with the Montana State University entrepreneurship program, which brought in folks from the art and engineering departments as well as graphic design students to revamp the business, Tanner said.
Going forward, she's working to expand the number of folks selling the Scent Project's room misters. There are currently 13 dealers across the country and Canada, including eight in Montana, according to Scent Project's website. She particularly hopes to work with animal shelters and veterinary offices.
Mixing business with Tanner's family gardening and essential oils work is a "perfect blend" of the two passions of her personal and professional life, she said. And it has helped her dog training business fall more in line with her overall goal of improving the well being of dogs and their owners.
"It's led my business into a really nice place," Tanner said. "It all goes together."
