What You Can Do to Alleviate a Pet’s Stress
As a good pet parent, its up to you to find out whats causing your pets fear and anxiety – and then take steps to lessen it. Unchecked fears can lead to aggressive behavior, even biting.
The first step to take, if possible, is removing her from the situation thats causing the fearful response. With a trained dog, you may be able to distract her by issuing an obedience command such as sit, lie down or stay. Offering a treat can also work as a distraction to calm a fearful pet.
Some pet parents have been successful in quelling a pets fear by having it wear a Thundershirt, which feels like a reassuring hug to the dog or cat inside it.
If your pet continues to be stressed out or has severe symptoms, visit your veterinarian to determine if anything physical is causing her anxiety. If she gets a clean bill of health, you may want to discuss treatment with calming medication. Also, confirm that your pet is microchipped, so that she can be quickly identified if she escapes out of fear and is subsequently found.
A consultation with an animal behaviorist may also help to allay or reduce your pets anxieties. He or she should be able to come up with a plan to desensitize your cat or dog so that when a stressful situation arises, your pet stays calm.
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When you have dogs, you get to know their personalities and behaviors like no one else, so it’s easy to tell when something is wrong. So, why is my dog anxious all of a sudden? Sudden anxiety in dogs has many reasons, ranging from fear to illness to aging. Let’s take a look at some of the symptoms, causes, and treatments for sudden anxiety in dogs to help get your pet back on track.
Changes in environment and resource guarding
Less common forms of anxiety can involve changes in environment, such as going to the vet, in the car or moving house, says Dr Nguyen.
“Even things like changes to work hours, the owners travelling — any sudden change to normal routine can prompt anxiety,” Dr Mornement says.
Resource guarding — displays of aggressive behaviour designed to scare other dogs or people off — can also be an issue if a dog is anxious about a valued item being taken away.
Its important not to dismiss behaviours that we sometimes consider normal, warns Dr Nguyen.
For example, “not eating can be a sign that we would potentially put down to [an] upset stomach, but it could be anxiety”, she says.
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One of the hard things about our relationships with dogs is that when something is up, they cant easily communicate that to us.
Thats why, with issues such as anxiety, we need to be aware of the signs so we can help our mates cope.
If you think your dog might be anxious, there are recognisable symptoms and treatments available to ease their (and your) worry.
We spoke to animal behaviourist Kate Mornement and vet Sandra Nguyen about identifying and dealing with dog anxiety.
Separation anxiety, when your dog doesnt like to be separated from you, is the most common form of anxiety.
“Dogs [often] associate everything they value in their life — company, play, food, going for walks — with when people are around,” Dr Mornement says.
And if they havent learnt to be cool with their own company, thats when they can experience separation anxiety.
Dr Mornement says dogs need to learn to cope with being away from their humans, and the best time for that to happen is when they are young.
“Dogs are naturally fearful of those events because they are loud and scary, so they learn to associate the [lower level] noise of wind or rain with those events,” Dr Mornement says.
For that reason, dogs often become anxious even if they sense a storm might be coming.