Signs that your dog may be suffering from anxiety

We tend to think that joy, fear, and sadness are emotions that are unique to humans. But science is slowly discovering that this statement is not entirely true.

On July 7, 2012, an international group of neuroscientists gathered in Cambridge, UK, and formulated the famous Cambridge Declaration of Consciousness.

In short, experts have determined that our species is not unique in having the neural underpinnings that generate consciousness. In other words, non-human animals have the ability to feel emotions, and thus can display intentional behaviour.

This also applies to the ability to feel that this article is about: anxiety.

In both dogs and people, anxiety is simply a form of reaction to certain problematic situations. But when a certain intensity exceeds or exceeds adaptive capacity, anxiety becomes pathological.

Warning signs

How can we determine if our dog is in this condition?

Different forms of behavior indicate your willingness to escape from feeling restless, nervous, insecure, and upset.

Anxiety arises when the dog anticipates that something bad is about to happen. This expectation triggers the sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the body’s reactions to dangerous or stressful situations, causing the animal to display extreme behavior.

When anxiety is pathological, the symptoms that we can find are: constant alertness, hyperactivity, excessive licking, hair loss, digestive problems, howling, trembling, whining, excessive barking, exaggerated fear, aggressiveness, destructive behaviors, which can Increase when dogs. left alone.

The situations capable of triggering this pathological anxiety are also varied: fear of being alone, noises such as fireworks, storms or traffic … Any incident that exceeds your ability to adapt or that is repeated often can trigger anxiety.

These problems are often the result of a human misunderstanding of their needs, as a species and as an individual.

Diagnosis and treatment

If the pathological anxiety persists for a long time, it can cause diseases over time, such as digestive disorders, increased incidence of tumors or changes in the immune system, not to mention the harm to the symbiosis of the species.

Added to this is our sadness and frustration at seeing a pet suffer, without knowing how to help it.

The first step in treating anxiety, after it’s been diagnosed by your vet, is behavioral therapy, which is conducted by an ethologist, or animal behavior specialist.

Medications can be given if the specific condition requires it, also under the supervision of your veterinarian.

This intervention can be compared to the intervention of a psychiatrist and psychiatrist in humans. A psychologist specializes in understanding behavior, while a psychiatrist specializes in mental disorders and their pharmacological treatment.

Although each case has its own characteristics, behavioral therapy should include the following goals:

• Reduce your dog’s stress levels.
• teach him to manage problematic situations;
• Offer him the resources to calm down.
• Reduce your sensitivity to signs of anxiety. Our actions of picking up keys, putting on a coat, or putting on shoes, for example, can be interpreted by the animal as a precursor to being alone. We must make it clear to him that this does not necessarily mean that we are leaving;
• Assign the dog a clear function within the family. We need to do activities with him to make him feel included, such as playing games or going out for a walk, so that the dog and the owner can have fun;
• Make the dog socially independent. That is, we cannot be with him all the time, not solve all his problems.

If the learning process is difficult because anxiety levels are too high or because of the animal’s specific circumstances, the process must be supplemented with medication.

It may be appropriate to resort to medication, for example, when a dog becomes anxious when left alone, and when his guardians are working on him, he needs to spend at least eight hours without company. A dog cannot be in constant distress.

It is also necessary to understand that, in the same way as in our species, there are conditions that generate long-term stress – leading to an ‘anxious state’ – and personality profiles that are more anxious in nature, the so-called ‘trait anxiety’.

The search for and combating the causes of pathological anxiety should not be limited to controlling the consequences of using medications, but also improving the attention we give them as sensitive social beings that need activities that are appropriate for each individual.

* Nuria Maximo Bocanegra is an Occupational Therapist, Professor in the Department of Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation and Physical Medicine, as well as Director of the Research Chair with Animals and Society at King Juan Carlos University, Spain.

Mónica Kern, a dog trainer who specializes in guide dog training and a volunteer for the animal-assisted intervention organization Perruneando Madrid, Spain, collaborated with this article.

This article was originally published on Academic News Conversation It is republished here under a Creative Commons License. Read the original in Spanish.