How To Help a Dog With Anxiety

Just like humans, dogs may experience anxiety at certain points in their lifetime. But not all dogs will expose enough diagnosable signs for dog owners to figure out whether they are suffering a change in their mental health. Therefore, dog owners need to take a closer look at their dogs' strange behaviors and take them to the veterinarian for more accurate treatment. Fighting with anxiety is never a alone work, it needs to deal with more than one subject. It’s the same when fighting with anxiety in dogs. Dog owners play the necessary role to help a dog with anxiety can get over it better and faster.

Anxiety in dogs may be caused by a lot of different reasons. They could be his age issues, his living environment, especially those separated from family members, and his fear. Hence, it’s important to understand the root of the problem for dog owners or veterinarians to find a better treatment for dogs’ anxiety.

In this article, let’s find out what signs can help you recognize your dog’s anxiety along with what are dogs’ anxiety treatments that you can apply to your situation. Hopefully, by the end of the day, we know the solution to your dog's anxiety and make their lives better.

Symptoms of anxiety in dogs or humans are the chains of abnormal behaviors that you can notice easily. Some strange behaviors dogs may have from occasional anxiety events, and wouldn’t last long. Even so, if you notice the repetition of the following actions, you’d better take your dog to have a check-up immediately.

• Getting aggression frequently
• Barking or howling excessively
• Urinating or defecating in the house
• Drooling
• Panting and pacing
• Destructing stuff

Among all of the most common symptoms above, your dog getting aggressive is the most dangerous one. Once the dog gets aggressive, it might attack directly or indirectly family members or other animals. This will lead to more severe issues for you or even people around.

The early detection of anxiety signing from your dog plays a vital role in helping the treatment more effectively.

In case the anxiety symptoms of your dogs are still at a moderate level, you may want to try certain proven treatments that could reduce the state of anxiety of your dogs at home.

Anxious dogs have to deal a lot with confused feelings, so make sure you spend enough time with them, especially take them out for a walk or exercise.

Exercises show effectiveness in helping with anxiety since it produces beneficial endorphin relieving stress. Try to arrange your schedule to spend productive time with your dog. For example, taking him to a park and playing ball, or simply taking him out for a long walk is enough to either burn and distract his negative energy and tighten the bond between you guys.

One more hug or one more touch isn’t that expensive to not give extra of them to your dogs. No matter how stressed your dog is, to them there's nothing in this world that is more soothing than a touch of his/her owners.

Get your dogs on the couch and give them a lovely long petting time, meanwhile, you can enjoy your favorite television program as well. Babying your dogs or cuddling with them will help both of you release all anxious feelings and just focus on the good time together. It’s a two-way helping.

Think about a dog with anxiety as a baby. Babies always need a swaddling cloth to protect their bodies and also calm them when going outside or moving somewhere. Dogs with anxiety are fragile and need more care just like a baby. So it’s proved that a calming coat or a dog shirt helps put a mild pressure on the dogs’ body which somehow will calm their anxious feelings.

It’s easy for you to find dog’s blankets or shirts from any pet shop out there. However, since they’re in the mood, let’s make them feel more special and loved with personalized products instead. You can find personalized blankets at Pawsionate, where you can pick the size of the blanket, put your dog image on the blanket with a lovely message as well.

Want to show them your love even more intensely? Get a personalized t-shirt for yourself. With the image of your dog in the middle of the shirt, and wear it whenever you want to take him out, he can definitely feel how important he is to your life.

The power of music is undeniable. It’s been used over decades to reduce pain for patients, enhance the healing process, and apparently it works for any creature in this world. Hence, our 4-paw fellows are not exceptional.

Music also helps to reduce the noise from the street or other scary sounds that might cause anxiety in your dogs. According to recent research, dogs seem to prefer classical music rather than other genres. Hence, you can try some typical music that a lot of hospitals use such as relaxing harp music, sleeping or calm music.

If you try all of the above methods and the situation doesn’t go anywhere better, it’s time to get your pet to the vet. To this point, veterinarians probably will diagnose your dog’s issue and give him some anti-anxiety medicine and help you find the best treatment plan to follow.

In some cases, the situation gets worse, you will be asked by veterinarians to prepare leashes, or even basket muzzles ahead of time to avoid dangerous incidents. Therefore, you should try to recognize what is the root of the problem or in other words what really triggers their emotion terribly and avoid what happens around your dogs as much as possible.

Sometimes we, dog owners, are so busy with our daily work and enormous no-name tasks that we accidentally somehow forget or spend less time with our dogs. And that may affect their emotion, especially if they are at puberty or the aging period. Their emotion is unstable at those certain times and our provided environment or behaviors can be one of the reasons leading to the anxiety in dogs.

Therefore, it would be so much better if we can notice our dogs’ abnormal actions and spend more time taking care of them or simply cuddling with them for a while will help the situation a lot.

With our 5 methods above, applying one or all of them to your dogs will create some better results. No matter if it's a long walk, a cuddle, a personalized blanket or t-shirt, or even music time together, the main point here is you trying to show your dogs the love you have for them.

Even if your dogs’ situation is severe instead of mild as you expected, just be patient with him and the treatment process that veterinarians provide. Love your dogs unconditionally and believe in the healing path will support them a lot on their way to recover their emotions.