Is vomiting a sign of stress in dogs? A Comprehensive Guide

4 Surprising Signs of Stress in Dogs

Common signs of stress in dogs include pacing, panting, vocalizing, and seeking out their owner’s attention, says Dr. Wailani Sung, a certified veterinary behaviorist for the San Francisco SPCA. However, dogs may also show stress in unusual, surprising, or unexpected ways. “The dogs are exhibiting displacement behavior,” Sung explains. “They are stressed and need an outlet for their nervous energy, and it may manifest in unusual activity or behavior.”

Here’s why it’s so important to be aware of signs that your dog is stressed, according to Beaver. If your dog’s symptoms go unnoticed or unmanaged, stress can lead to negative side effects and other health problems. “Stress has physical, medical, and behavioral consequences in animals just as in people,” Beaver says. “The immune system does not work as well when the animal is chronically stressed, and that stress can be expressed outwardly as a behavior change, such as the development of an obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

Here are some other potential signs of stress in dogs you should watch out for:

When a dog is stressed out, the body releases a cascade of activity through the sympathetic nervous system and the HPA (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal) axis—two key players in the stress response, Sung explains. Once the stress-response system is activated, the stomach may take too long to empty. This delay may cause a loss of appetite and other gastrointestinal symptoms in dogs. “If [food] sits in the stomach for too long, it may cause an upset stomach and the dog may respond by vomiting,” Sung says. If your dog is vomiting, it’s best to contact your veterinarian. Depending on the circumstances, your veterinarian may suggest letting the stomach rest for a few hours and then sticking to a bland diet. If your dog continues to vomit and won’t eat, or if your veterinarian feels there may be something more serious going on, you’ll need to schedule a visit to the clinic for an in-person exam.

According to Sung, stress can also accelerate the rate at which food moves through the intestines, which can lead to diarrhea in dogs. As with vomiting, feeding a bland diet may be helpful for dogs with mild cases of diarrhea, if your veterinarian recommends it. However, diarrhea can have many other causes, ranging from parasitic infections to food-borne illness, so stress may not necessarily be to blame.

Call your veterinarian if your dog’s diarrhea lasts for more than 24 hours or if you notice blood or mucus in your dog’s stool. “If the problem is extreme, or doesn’t stop within a day or so, it is important to get veterinary help in order to rule out potentially serious health conditions,” Beaver says.

Stress may cause some dogs to engage in compulsive behaviors, such as destructive chewing or ingesting non-food items (see Pica in Dogs). “Some dogs show stress by…chewing on whatever item is nearby and potentially ingesting inedible objects, such as rocks,” Sung says. Other dogs may exhibit excessive scratching or licking. “In some cases, they may lick a particular part of their body raw,” Sung adds. Dogs exhibiting repetitive behaviors may have underlying medical issues, so it’s important to schedule an appointment with your veterinarian to figure out what’s going on with your pet.

At certain times of the year and especially among certain breeds, coping with excess dog hair is simply one of the challenges of being a pet parent. But if you notice an unexpected shift or increase in how much your dog sheds, those flying furballs could be telling you that your dog is stressed.

What’s more, that symptom points to an exciting new area of study in the field of gut health in pets. According to Beaver, while veterinarians don’t completely understand how stress affects the balance of bacteria in a dog’s gut, they do know that chronic stress changes the bacteria types. “That can result in food not being digested as well or the intestines not being able to absorb important nutrients,” she says. Stress and nutritional deficiencies can also have negative effects on your dog’s skin and fur, such as excessive shedding.

In addition, stress can cause acute inflammation in the intestines, decreased cellular immunity, and increased intestinal permeability, Sung says. These conditions make the gut more susceptible to toxins produced by bacteria. “This could lead to increased risks of infection in the gut,” she says. “The immediate outcome may be diarrhea. The long-term outcome may be chronic intestinal discomfort or inflammation and possibly infections.”

What are the symptoms of separation anxiety?

To be absolutely sure that your dog’s vomiting and diarrhea are caused by separation anxiety, you need to consider whether or not they are displaying other signs of anxiety. Other signs include repetitive behaviors such as pacing, shaking, and drooling.

Separation anxiety can also cause destruction towards their own possessions and household items. Many dogs with separation anxiety also bark and whine excessively whenever their owners leave the house, go to the toilet indoors, or try to get out of the house. They may even hurt themselves through excessive scratching, biting, and licking.

How to react to separation anxiety symptoms

If your puppy is destructive when you leave the house, don’t react angrily. This could increase their anxiety and make their symptoms worse. It could even encourage their behavior because they are desperate for your attention, and don’t forget, it’s not their fault.

You should never punish a dog with separation anxiety. Instead, you should show them that this kind of behavior doesn’t get any attention, but when they do behave well, shower them with praise. To stop separation anxiety behaviors altogether, you will need to do some separation training.

Is vomiting a sign of stress in dogs?

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If your dogs are stressed out, at best, you’ll notice some behavioral clues that they’re feeling anxious and/or fearful, ranging from panting and excessive yawning, to its worst, acute diarrhea, vomiting, or even aggressive acts like lunging at other dogs or people. Because every dog is different, and every dog reacts differently to different kinds of stressors, it’s important to know your dog and what his “trigger-stressors” are, in order to help minimize or even prevent the stress from occurring. But the initial stress signals dogs give off are actually difficult for most people to recognize as indicators of anxiety.

Unfortunately, pet stressors lurk around every corner and what totally freaks out one dog doesn’t even cause another to raise an eyebrow. Pets can get stressed by things as small as unfamiliar noises and weather changes to larger stressors like absences, a disruption in routine, or a stranger in the home. Typically, though, these stresses can be soothed by a calm manner from you, a regular routine, and the assurance that all is well (or will be soon). But if not calmed, and if the stressor remains, or gets worse, the dog just gets more and more anxious, which can result in illness, sensitization to the stressor (meaning that the next time it’s encountered, it will take less of it or a lower threshold of it to cause upset), or fear-based aggression.

The following behaviors – exhibited through almost every visible body part, are obvious signs that your dog is feeling anxious. The more signals you observe occurring together, the more stressed your dog is. In addition, there is an escalating scale of behaviors that correspond to escalating anxiety/fear. We’ve grouped the most common stress responses by body part, and in escalating order of severity.