Canine Anxiety

How to Deal with Canine Anxiety

Hello, it’s Boris from AskBoris.com and this page is about a very strange human word called Anxiety. Weird word – what does it really mean?

As far as I can figure, Anxiety is when we dogs feel nervous, confused or that something is not quite right in our world.

It makes us feel sad, lonely and depressed, and often happens when our humans leave us alone. We feel panic and fear and sometimes we get mad — that’s when we chew up the couch or pee in the human’s shoes.

If you humans are worried that your dog is feeling these troubling emotions, keep reading because there are so many anxious dogs out there we could start our own support group!

Here’s Sheila, our Quirky Questions Psychologist to talk more about this common anxiety problem that affects many of our depressed fur friends, and what you humans can do about it.

Sheila Yorkshire Terrier Quirky Questions Spokesdog

When humans talk amongst themselves about anxiety they usually mean something called “separation anxiety”, and all this really means is that your dog is not happy when you leave them alone.

Come on you humans, in the first place, dogs are pack animals.

This means that they live together with other dogs or humans, in a family pack, so they would never choose to be by themselves.

It’s no big surprise that when you humans, who are supposed to be our pack leaders leave us alone, we feel afraid, nervous, and unhappy.

When you leave us alone, we don’t know what to do without your guidance.

Sometimes anxiety or doggy panic attacks can be caused by loud, unpredictable noises, when we hear sirens, fireworks, gun fire, alarms, thunder storms and more, and can seriously disrupt a dog’s health.

Unfortunately, so many humans want to have it all, and share parts of their lives with a fur friend even though they may have to leave them alone for many hours every day.

This is a common problem for many of my fur friends, and as a result, there are things called “desensitization devices”, that humans buy for us when they feel guilty about leaving us alone.

You know there are a lot of dogs being left alone, because there are a lot of “desensitization devices”.

There are calming collars and shirts, and many other products, ingredients, supplements, medications, oils, chews, treats, and natural formulas, plus advice of behaviorists and therapists, all designed to help our shattered doggy nerves.

If your dog is suffering and is displaying symptoms of anxiety, depression, stress, and you can’t be at home with them all the time, they need support, and there is a lot of help to be had, if you just know where to look for it.

Maxx and His Doggy Anxiety

In 2010, Maxx was found by a policeman walking down a highway. That lucky day brought us together… but… for a year, every time we drove that road Maxx shook all over. Occasionally, since then he would shake when we drove on that same road for reasons we have never figured out. Yesterday, 11 years later. was one of those days. I held him, and reminded him over and over that we loved him and would all be going home really soon. After a few minutes, and once we were a distance from the road, he settled down to his usual self. He didn’t want to talk about the problem and further.

Dr. Sheila Jackman

Psychologist