Anxiety at home or on walks
Is walking your dog sometimes more stressful than relaxed? Do they react to other people? Other dogs?
Do you worry about leaving your dog at home while you’re at work? Do you come home to destruction or are your neighbours letting you know your dog barks or paces during the day?
These could be signs that your dog may be suffering from different forms of anxiety.
When your dog gets stressed or anxious, they go into a fright, flight or freeze mode. When they go into this mode, their brain switches from their “thinking centre” to a “fear centre”, where they can no longer have the capacity to learn or reason adequately due to fear and stress.
Often this can lead to stressful or even dangerous situations if you find your dog gets anxious on a walk or upon seeing other dogs/people.
If your dog struggles to settle at home, especially if you leave for work, and becomes stressed or destructive, they are actually not getting enough rest and can start to suffer medically. Some anxious dogs won’t eat or drink when you’re not at home.
If you think this might be happening in your dog, there are many solutions that can help your dog relax, help you train your dog to enjoy more positive encounters with other dogs/people and to also lead a much happier, stress-free life.
We conduct full behaviour consults here at Brudine where our vets will send you a detailed questionnaire prior to the consult to get a thorough history and background on your dog and their behaviours. We will then get you and your dog in for an extended consult to go over the questionnaire, teach you training techniques, and develop a detailed plan to help you and your dog improve their behavioural issues. This can sometimes involve the use of medications depending on the assessment of the behavioural issues by the vet.
There is no quick fix when it comes to behavioural issues and anxiety in your pet, but there are a huge amount of things that we can do to help equip you and your dog to manage them.
If you would like more information, feel free to contact us on 6258 1668.
