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Articles: Pets - Dog Anxiety
By Brigitte
Smith
Anxiety in dogs
can be caused by any number of things - illness, travel,
thunderstorms, death in the family, separation, or they may develop
unexplained phobic or neurotic behaviour, or barking or other
antisocial behaviour.
If you can identify the cause of the
anxiety, then the best solution to the problem is to remove the
cause.
This is not always possible, though. If your dog is
experiencing separation anxiety every time you leave the house, and
you work full time outside the home, you've got a problem! I suppose
you could give up work and stay home with your dog, but sometimes we
need to be a little realistic!
For this particular problem
there are a number of things you can do to alleviate your dog's
anxiety when you leave - many people have found that playing
soothing music while they're out works wonders.
Mozart? -
that certainly used to calm my hyperactive son down a little, so
Mozart would be my personal first choice, but there are many
soothing classical and new age, or even some light rock or jazz
music might work - try out whatever you have in your CD collection
for starters.
Another wonderful idea I read about recently
is making a tape recording of your own voice and playing that on a
continuous play while you're gone.
And there are certain
homeopathic and herbal remedies which really do calm your dog. So
those may well assist with your dog's separation anxiety.
But what about dogs who are afraid of loud noises - my dog
Kara has an irrational fear of thunderstorms, and fear of fireworks,
and, well, actually, she's scared of just about any loud noises.
Many dogs are like this.
One New Year's Eve when I was away,
Kara dug her way under the house and escaped (due to being terrified
of the fireworks which were going off). My neighbours had to pick
her up from the pound the following morning. Apparently the dog
catchers are out in force on New Year's Eve because they round up
many dogs and impound them! A nice little revenue booster for the
local authorities. From memory it cost about $100 to get her back.
Anyway, I've found that peppermint oil applied to the pads
of her paws has some calming effect. And a natural stress remedy
also works very nicely.
Some years ago, before I became
interested in natural remedies for dogs - actually it was following
the fireworks incident - Kara became quite determined to continue
escaping, for some reason. Once she realised she could get out, she
just kept on trying. She was even destroying part of my house in her
determination to try to get through the thick wooden boards I had
put up to prevent further escapes. So I took her to the vet, as I
was at a complete loss to know what to do with her. She was
prescribed an anti-anxiety medication. This made Kara quite dopey,
and seemed to take some of her personality away somehow. In other
words, I suppose she appeared drugged. I didn't like it at all.
Now I know that there are much more pleasant, all natural
anxiety treatments for dogs, which have no nasty side effects. And
they really do work just as well.
(c) 2008
Brigitte Smith is a dog lover with a special interest in natural
health for dogs. For your free special report, as well as weekly
tips, information, strategies and resources for a healthier happier
dog, click here for your dog health report: http://www.HealthyHappyDogs.com
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