Dogs or other pets suffer from anxiety and stress like humans do. It can be very difficult to recognize pet anxiety.. Sometimes, your pet could try to tell you that he or she is stressed by pushing his or her ears back, salivating, tucking his tail, lifting his front paw, yawning, or licking his muzzle.
Some other considerable signs of dog anxiety include hiding or cowering, expressing his/her anal glands, trembling, or panting. They are highly receptive to humans but they can mirror the emotions of their owners.
Based on the vets, coming out of the covid-19 mass confinement isolation might be a very big problem for the dog’s anxiety these days. Every dog or other pet owner has to understand how to get rid of him/her from the behaviours of stress and anxiety to become a normal pet.
Enrichment For Pet Anxiety
When your house is always keeping your pet more engaged and entertained, it is the best key to reduce the anxious behaviour of your dog. For the proper enrichment, the pet owners have to find the various types of entertainment which your pet enjoys the most and using them to get their attention away from your absence.
- Puzzle toys – You can feed the meals to your pets using the various puzzle toys which distract your dog and make him/her think & happy. It will reduce your dog’s anxiety and also make him/her eating more amount of food.
- Frozen treats – Freezing the wet food snack in the toy or kong can be a long-lasting and evergreen tasty distraction to anxious pets. If you are thinking to go with the food-related enrichment to reduce the stress of your pet, you have to remember that you should be built such meals or treats into the pet’s daily calorie count.
- Leave the television or music on – So many numbers of pets can able to find the best level of entertainment from the visuals & sounds, and the background noise from the television. For the dogs with noise oriented anxiety, having this surroundings noise can be very helpful to reduce the reactivity of the pets to the sounds of music coming from the outside portion of the house.
- Non-food related toys – The pet owners have to make sure to leave out the favourite toys of your pet so he/she can entertain themselves at home.
Crating For Pet Anxiety
Crating a pet for the reduction of anxiety is not a simple and straightforward thing because it requires being the personal decision of the pet owner. For this purpose, regular training is the most important thing to ensure it is highly suitable for your dog or other pet. The main purpose of the crate is to provide your pet with a completely safe, having space where they can relax until a pet owner returns home.
Don’t force a crating because forcing this crate on your pet will make its anxiety too worse. If your dog or other pet sees the crate as the punishment, this crating can lead to the sudden progression of his/her anxiety or make severe injury. For this reason, you should need to slowly train your pet with the crate.
Proper training will introduce your pet to the crate and also show him or her it is a completely safe space. Similarly, it also allows you to watch their reaction to this crating experience. Once your pet recognized a crate as the safest space to wait for you, then it could be an excellent tool to reduce its anxiety.
Whenever you are searching for an alternative to a crate, it might be either a particular floor or a room to isolate your pet to the particular area of the house. If you want to give some toys to your pets, you should need to remove some dangerous items that your dog might try to get into such as toxins, food, or objects your pet can mistakenly chew or ingest.
Arrivals & Departure Triggers
When you go out or work and say goodbye to your pet, it will suddenly trigger their anxiety. If you come back in the evening time, he or she is too anxious due to your absence. To get rid of this issue, it is always suggested to downplay the triggers of your departures and arrivals which can help make your absence only less noticeable by your pets.
To do this at your home, you require to make sure your pet is prior distracted to you starting your routine of packing up to leave the house and you have to sneak out of the house as much as possible. When you arrive back home, you have to continue the same and ignore your pet for a few minutes until he or she has settled down. After that, you can engage and give him or her all your attention and love.
General Anxiety Management
Some of the pets have generalized stress and anxiety which becomes truly unmanageable when you leave them alone at home. To calm down such kinds of dogs or other pets with general anxiety, you have to follow these common tips suggested by the pet experts.
- Exercise – By taking your pet to the park or on a long walk before you leave the house will be a very good exercise and make him or her ready to react to your absence. If you have a cat at home, you have to do some active playtime with their favourite mouse or laser toy.
- Pheromones – For both cats and dogs, there are several types of natural pheromone products available to naturally help to reduce anxiety at home.
- Medication – It is a wonderful option to try anti-anxiety medicine for pets in cases of extreme anxiety or stress.
Bottom Line
You should try all these methods or options of managing the pet’s anxiety but. If its not working then you have to immediately consult with your veterinarian doctor to find the best option for your pet.