A friend recently started describing how his sixteen year old dachshund was keeping him up at night by pacing and panting. Dogs experience stress and anxiety for various reasons including age, pain, fear or separation anxiety as we talk generally about in our article on dog stress and dog separation anxiety.
The important thing is to know the signs of stress and anxiety and how to ease dog anxiety.
Dog anxiety can be eased naturally and effectively with a combination of treatments that provide comfort and calm their mind. The important thing is to treat dog anxiety as left untreated can lead to ongoing and pervasive destructive behavior.
Signs of Dog Anxiety
Some of the main signs of dog anxiety are easy to spot such as panting, barking, pacing, and drooling but you may not immediately associate them with dog anxiety, however, associating dog anxiety symptoms will allow you to treat them faster.
Five Natural Products that May Help You Ease Dog Anxiety
Before trying any of these remedies that will help you ease dog anxiety please make sure that you consult a vet. Anxiety could be related to another issue such as pain that may require veterinary assistance.
Thunder Shirt.
Many Pet lovers rave about the benefits of the Thunder Shirt anxiety vest. Similar the concept of a weighted blanket for people that is used to ease anxiety through pressure.
According to a the experts at Dream Cloud Sleep, the blanket promotes deep touch pressure or DTP that helps patients to regulate their emotions as well as their behavior. Deep touch pressure helps stimulate the production of serotonin and dopamine, which are known to have a calming and relaxing effect. Some research indicates that experiencing a slow and gentle touch can activate certain areas of the limbic system.
The slight weight of the Thunder Shirt does the same for pups and has the same calming effects.
Try the Thunder Shirt on Chewy by clicking here
Try the Thunder Shirt on Amazon by clicking here.
Pheromones.
What are pheromones for a dog you ask?
There are two types of Pheromone products one, that are pheromones that mimic the pheromones released by lactating dog mothers to have a calming effect on dogs and another that is a herbal blend that stimulates the dogs own production of pheromones.
A 2005 Study on the behavioral effects of dog appeasing pheromone (DAP) on reducing stress in dogs led researchers to continuously administer pheromones over a 7-day period to adult dogs housed in a public animal shelter.
The preliminary tests indicate that DAP is a useful palliative tool for reducing some behavioral indicators of stress in dogs, like barking frequency.
However, most experts indicate that although Pheromone treatment may be helpful it should be used in a combination of other treatments such as behavior therapy.
Buy Pheromone Collar on Amazon Here
Buy Pheromone Spray on Chewy Here
Calm CBD Hemp Spray.
CBD from hemp has been studied and such studies now appear in several peer reviewed journals discussing the research related to its calming benefits due to its interaction with the endocannabinoid system of all mammals. As Dr. Hurd, a CBD researcher told Business Insider, CBD can activate some serotonin receptors, and the serotonin system is associated with alleviating anxiety.”
Calm CBD Hemp Spray not only includes USA grown hemp that is manufactured in the US but it also includes calming terpenes. Terpenes also add therapeutic value to CBD, based on their unique medicinal properties that have been increasingly researched, however, there are calming terpenes, like the proprietary blend in Calm CBD Hemp spray that add to the balancing and calming benefits of CBD itself in what is known as the entourage effect.
CBD has been a godsend to many pet lovers for its pain relief efficacy and its use to ease anxiety in dogs. Calm CBD Hemp Spray is not simply a CBD oil it is a specially formulated water soluble spray developed for its Calming effectiveness.
The processing that was done to make Calm water soluble is so that it is now nano sized particles and will be absorbed better and faster by pets so that they can experience the benefits faster.
A quick note on CBD for pets. You will see many hemp products advertised on Chewy and Amazon that contain hemp as we discuss here. Chewy and Amazon prohibit CBD so the companies use hemp seed oil which has no CBD in it and little if any calming effect derived from the hemp.
You can find CBD for pets in our pet collection.
You can also easily make Calming CBD dog chews.with Calm CBD hemp spray with our recipe here.
Relaxmydog.
Relaxmydog Is a subscription service that provides instant access to Music and TV that has been proven to calm your pet.
RelaxMyDog provides music and videos specifically designed to help dogs overcome anxiety, loneliness, stress, boredom, and hyperactivity. Many pet lovers use You tube videos, white noise, and television to calm their pets but with relax my dog there will be no ads and you can leave on as long as you like.
Relax my dog is a subscription service for pet lovers that you can sign up for here.
Kong Toy.
We love the Kong toy and we love it even more when it is stuffed with something that dogs can chew on as it will stave off boredom which usually results in the destructive behavior that follows on after anxiety.
Check out the Kong toy here from Amazon
Check out the Kong toy here from Chewy.
Do not forget our Kong Calming recipes to reduce anxiety that you can stuff the Kong toys with that are available here.