Dog Anxiety Often at Heart of Dog Behaviour Problems
Dog anxiety is a problem that affects many of our dogs, whether that is anxiety brought on by fear of noises such as fireworks, or thunderstorms, or anxiety in dogs that is triggered by leaving them on their own.
Many dog owners complain about ‘bad dog behaviour’ not realising that it is the result of dog anxiety and instead blame themselves for having a poorly trained dog. This misunderstanding can lead to an approach to the problem that is only going to make the anxiety worse.
Take for instance a dog pooping in the house. To their owner it can look like he just needs more house training, rather than treatment for anxiety, equally a dog chewing everything can be labelled as a destructive dog rather that needing a cure for anxiety.
Dog Anxiety Symptoms Fall Into 3 Groups
There are 3 main categories that dog anxiety symptoms fall into and some dogs will show many of the behaviours listed while others might only show a few. This is largely because dogs have different traits and personalities and so will experience anxiety in a different way to even a dog living in the same house.
Group 1. Noisy Anxiety Symptoms: Like excessive barking, howling, whining, yelping and crying when left alone.
Group 2. Anxiety Driven Behaviour: Including in extreme cases behaviour like destroying furniture or chewing through plasterboard walling, and more frequently, scratching doors and skirting boards to try and get out, pooping and urinating in the house, chewing your possessions, or themselves.
Group 3. Physical Symptoms of Anxiety: Including pooping and urinating in the house, manic behaviour when you return home, pacing, trembling, salivating, hiding and refusing to go out of the house or get in the car.
What Causes Dog Anxiety
A dog suffering from anxiety does not mean that the dog is being neglected, in fact it can be the exact opposite, which is why many dog owners find it hard to understand why they have an anxious dog. However, a dogs anxiety can be triggered in all sorts of ways, but is typically brought on by a major change, including:
*Moving House
*Someone from the family leaving or another dog dying.
*A new dog arriving in the house
*Arrival of a baby
*An accident or operation that leaves them vulnerable
*A frightening experience early in the puppies life
*Changes in your own health
Pack leadership can be another source of anxiety for a dog as a dog naturally needs to know who the leader is and can decide that it is them. If this happens, they also take on the responsibility for the rest of the pack (family), a job they cannot do when you go out and leave them home alone and therefore can cause extreme anxiety.
Treating Dog Anxiety
The approach to treating dog anxiety varies enormously from the use of drugs to control the anxiety, through to specific training programmes or the use of products designed to help alleviate the anxiety.
Training Programmes For Dog Anxiety
Training will be aimed at altering a dogs behaviour around the things that cause them anxiety and should be based on using positive reinforcemet methods. Desensitising a dog to some of the anxiety triggers should also form a part of the training programme, allowing you to gradually remove some of the triggers that set of the anxiety.
This might sound complicated but in reality can be as simple as starting by leaving your dog alone for a few seconds until they do not get anxious when you do and then increasing the time they are left by a few more seconds, each time waiting until they are calm and relaxed before moving on.
As well as patience, training needs you to be consistent in applying it and so giving out consistent messages to your dog. There is no place for using punishment based methods in dealing with anxiety as this is likely to make it worse. Neither should you be comforting your dog when they experience anxiety as it can turn into attention seeking behaviour.
Medication for Dog Anxiety
There are a variety of non- prescription meds that can be bought over the counter (or on the internet) that claim to help calm a dog and at the same time are naturally based, so contain nothing that could be harmful to your dog.
You will need to see your vet to be prescribed anxiety medications. These dog drugs can have a seditative effect on your dog and may alter their general mood. You need to allow a few weeks to get the level of medication right for your dog and need to watch out for side effects which can include lethargy or depression, sickness or diarrhea, allergic reactions and in some cases the potential of liver damage.
Many vets will recommed the use of a training programme alongside medication for maximum effect.
Products Designed to Help Dog Anxiety
Other products on the market tat claim to help with anxiety symptoms range from toys stuffed with food that will help to distract a dog while you’re out, to dog jackets that fit tightly to apply pressure to the dogs body and so make them feel more secure, and synthetic pheremones that are pumped into the room via a plugin (that act much like the air freshners you see advertised) that mimic the pheremones produced by the mother of pups and known to have calming effects.
Dog Anxiety Solutions
Whether faced with mild anxiety symptoms or extreme ones, ultimately you’re going to need a permanent cure as dog anxiety rarely disappears on its own. Some products may offer your dog more instant relief and mean less work for you, but putting your dog on prescription drugs for the rest of his life is perhaps not the best option! Invest some time into finding out more about your dogs type of anxiety, before using the traing programmes and product available to you to start tackling this problem now.
The Author has learnt about dog anxiety directly with her own rescue dog and has been learning about the consequences of anxiety and the most effective ways to reduce anxiety for the last 2 years. Discover more about dog anxiety by visiting her blog.
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