Pets -just like humans- can experience anxiety and get stressed due to many surrounding factors. Understanding the nature of your pet, managing anxiety, and calming your pet help pets to get better life quality. If you are eager to know the calming techniques for pets, read this article.
Common causes of pet’s anxiety
Before knowing calming techniques for pets, we should know first the most common causes of anxiety in pets so you can avoid or get rid of these factors as a step in calming your pets.
Fear anxiety
Many triggers are potential to start fear and anxiety in pets. Children, loud noise, stranger people, unfamiliar stuff, new environmental changes, veterinary visits, limited space or even car ride if not used to it.
Separation stress
This stress occurs when the pets are taken away from their family, rehomed in another house, or even left alone for a long time at home.
Genetic susceptibility
Some dog breeds are more prone to experience anxiety as; German shepherds.
Traumatized pet
Pets that go through some traumatic events or experiences like car accidents or pain during nail trimming or being neglected may develop anxiety easily.
Medical status
The pain your pet feels due to some chronic diseases makes the animal more sensitive to any external influence or change and causes it to feel stressed and fearful.
Aging
Just like humans, aging in pets is accompanied by memory loss, decline in alertness, consciousness, perception, and the physiological functions of the body, they also become more susceptible to dysfunctional disease similar to Alzheimer’s Disease in humans. Cognitive dysfunction syndrome CDS makes your pet confused and scared from little stimulation.
Lack of exercise and socialization
Pets should be trained and socialized from a young age so they get used to people being around and crowded. Unsocialized pets become fearful and anxious when they meet new people, go to new places, or other animals and so become violent and aggressive.
Symptoms of anxiety in pets
Before applying the suitable calming techniques for pets, you may know that your pet suffers from stress by noticing one or some of these symptoms.
- Excess unnecessary barking (in dogs) or whining (in cats).
- Restless, moving around alot without a purpose (pacing)
- Excessive grooming (especially in cats) as; licking.
- Strange behavior like destructing objects in absence of the owner.
- Increased aggression towards people and other animals.
- Excessive abnormal Panting and drooling.
- Dogs may show symptoms like tucked tail, back-warded ears, dilated eyes. It’s dangerous to deal with the animal at this point.
- Loss of appetite and weight loss in the long run.
- Anxiety in cats is usually accompanied by urine marking, urinary tract disorders.
calming techniques for pets
Pets are companion animals that some people use to release stress and to be comfortable with. So calming and soothing your pets directly affects the life quality of humans and makes them less stressed too. Here are some of the most effective calming techniques for pets that are recommended by experts.
Create a relaxing environment
If your pet is stressed by a specific event or family gathering at home, it would be better if you proactively prepared a relaxing safe space or shelter.
provide this place with stuff that helps the pet express and practice its natural behavior.
Cats -for example- enjoy climbing so think about providing her place with cat trees, window seats or elevated beds.
They also like scratching their claws to mark their spaces. And also prefer to sleep in warm spaces. So providing blankets or beds in sunny places makes your animal more comfortable.
Remove the stress triggers
The first thing to do before medication, exercise or any other stress- relieving technique is to remove the stress-triggering factors. If the stress cause is another animal, children, or surrounding people try to walk away from this area and to draw the animal’s attention away to distract it.
Petting animals
Petting animals and interaction with them stimulates the body to release oxytocin (the anti-stress hormone) which makes them and us more relaxed and improves mental health. On the other hand, petting animals lowers cortisol hormone levels which is called stress hormone. Lowering cortisol levels help lower heart rate and blood pressure and so relieve stress.
Establish a daily routine
Making a schedule for your pet is essential for making an animal more secure and comfortable. This includes; feeding time, exercise and outing time, play time, sleep time. Maintaining a stable schedule helps your pet not to get stressed or confused. Fixing feeding and exercise times also help in maintaining mental and physical health.
Sticking to bedtime routine makes sure your pet will have a good enough night sleep.
Exercise and outing
Regular exercising is crucial for a pet’s physical and mental health. It also helps burn excess energy especially in hyperactive dogs and releases anti-stress hormones (endorphins) that help the body to relieve stress and reduce anxiety.
Socialization training
In addition to being a crucial step in the calming techniques for pets, It’s important to train new pets to be sociable to surrounding people and to safely explore the new environment and remove the potential stress triggers.
Grooming your pet
Grooming is one of the natural calming techniques for pets, strengthening the communication bonding between the animal and its owner. In addition to this bonding, brushing coat and regular grooming keep your animal clean and fresh. It also promotes releasing endorphins that relieve stress as mentioned above.
Giving supplements and vitamins
Besides being one of the calming techniques for pets, fortifying your pet’s diet with probiotics and calming supplements like minerals and vitamins helps maintain the pet’s health and improve the mental health of your pet, making them less anxious and more optimistic and full of good energy.
Veterinarians may recommend medical chewing tablets containing thiamine, theanine, melatonin and colostrum. Supplements come in many flavors and shapes to attract the pet.
Pheromones
Animals’ communication is via releasing pheromones. Pheromones are released to attract other genderm, gaining dominance, or declaring submission. So when animals are in a new house or anxious it would be helpful to use synthetic pheromones to calm them down. These new calming techniques for pets come in the form of sprays, plastic collars, and diffusers.
Try anti-anxiety vests
Using the vest-like ThunderShirt wraps had shown promising results as calming techniques for pets. Using these vests during thunderstorm, car riding, fireworks, vet visit, and other stressful situations. The lightweight vest works as a gentle hug around the dog’s chest and abdomen, which helps relieve stress and anxiety.
The vests come in different sizes and can be adjusted by hook and loop straps
Calming toys to new puppies
There are newly-produced toys and puppy-like toys that are used to calm down the puppies by combining soft fabric softness, warmth, and rhythmic steady pulse. This generated pulse is very soothing to young puppies that were separated recently from their mother for adoption or orphaned puppies.
Puzzle toys
These are perfect for distracting old senior dogs away from stress triggers and to keep them engaged with you. They are useful to keep their mind stimulated and reduce aggressive behavior such as chewing and ripping objects.
Listen to classical music
Some dogs get stressed when getting out of the house. classical music has the ability to relieve stress in humans; it also has a magical effect as one of the calming techniques for pets.
Desensitization
It’s about getting your pet used to the thing it fears by starting with low levels of stimulation then gradually increasing the exposure levels to final all out events.
Moving from one level of stimuli to another is challenging. Your pet’s reaction with the stimuli determines whether it is ready for the new level or not.
Before increasing the challenge, your pet’s reaction should be positive and the pet should be calm and relaxed.
Conclusion
Making your pet relaxed, finding the suitable calming techniques for pets and overcoming the stress-causing situations is a priority to every pet owner. Animals are the source of comfort and relaxation to animals so improving your pet life quality and anxiety will definitely have a great impact on your life as well.
