Dealing with the anxiety of your dog
Anxiety in dogs can be caused by any number of things – illness, travel, thunderstorms, death in the family, separation, or they may develop unexplained phobias or neurotic behavior, barking or other antisocial behavior.
If you can identify the cause of anxiety, then the best solution for the problem is to remove the cause.
This is not always possible, however. If your dog is experiencing separation anxiety every time you leave the house and working full time outside the home, you have a problem! I guess you could stop working and stay home with your dog, but sometimes we have to be a little realistic!
For this particular problem, a number of things you can do to alleviate the anxiety of your dog when you leave – many people have found that soothing music playing while out works great.
Mozart? – That certainly used to calm my hyperactive child down a little, so Mozart would be my personal first choice, but there are many children in soothing classical and new age, or even some light rock or jazz music might work – try everything what you have in your CD collection to start.
Another wonderful idea I read about what makes a recording of his own voice and play in a continuous play while you’re gone.
And there are certain herbal and homeopathic remedies that really soothe your dog. So that could help with separation anxiety in your dog.
But what about dogs that are afraid of loud noises – my dog Kara has an irrational fear of thunderstorms, and fear of fireworks, and, well, in fact, afraid of almost any loud noises. Many dogs are like that.
A New Year, when I was away, Kara dug their way under the house and escaped (being terrified of the fireworks that were going). My neighbors had to pick it up from the pound the next morning. Apparently, the kennel is in effect New Year’s Eve, bringing together many dogs and impound them! A nice little revenue booster for the local authorities. Memory costs about $ 100 to retrieve it.
Anyway, I’ve found that peppermint oil applied on the pads of their feet have a calming effect. And a natural stress remedy also works very well.
A few years before he became interested in natural remedies for dogs – in fact the incident was a result of fireworks – Kara became very determined to continue escaping, for some reason. Once he realized he could leave, she kept trying. It was even the destruction of part of my house in his determination to try to get through the thick wooden boards that had to prevent further escapes. So I took her to the vet as it was at a complete loss for what to do with it. She was prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. This made Kara very silly, and seemed to have something of his personality was in some way. In other words, I guess it seemed drugged. I do not like.
Now I know there is much more pleasant, all natural anxiety treatments for dogs, with no unpleasant side effects. And the truth is to do the job just as well.
