animal health consulting
The highly sensitive dog
a different take on anxiety and fear disorders in dogs
Christine King BVSc, MANZCVS (equine), MVetClinStud
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5. Limit triggers
This one is mostly for noise-sensitive dogs, although any highly sensitive dog can benefit from the strategies that are aimed at calming an overwrought nervous system. As a long-term plan, limiting triggers such as strange people or new situations only serves to make your dog’s — and, by extension, your — world smaller and more ‘dangerous’. Those anxious or fearful dogs tend to do best with positive training aimed at expanding their tolerance, and therefore their horizons.
An important distinction here is that noise-sensitive dogs may be dealing with more sensitive auditory systems (hearing) than dogs who are not abnormally reactive to loud noises. Whether the underpinnings are structural or functional (or both), protecting the auditory system from potentially damaging frequencies or intensities of sound can help with the dog's reactivity to loud noises and it may reduce the incidence or pace of age-related hearing loss in noise-sensitive dogs. (I said “may” because this Finnish study only posits a genetic connection between noise sensitivity and age-related hearing loss in dogs.)
Here are some things that may be useful in noise-sensitive dogs before or during thunderstorms, fireworks, and other noisy events:
* Ear plugs, such as a cotton ball in each of the dog’s ears. Lightly smear one side of the cotton ball with Vaseline so that it forms a better seal and makes it easier for you to remove the cotton ball later. If your dog objects, don’t force the issue; just draw a line through this one.
Bear in mind that dogs and humans have different shaped ear canals, so use an ear plug that can easily be removed with your fingertips. For example, the moldable silicone ear plugs for humans can easily get stuck in the dog's ear canal.
The goal is not to obliterate all sounds; just to lessen the intensity of the short-sharp sounds (thunder claps, explosions from fireworks or gunshots, pneumatic nail guns) that are so disturbing to noise-sensitive dogs.
* Basement or other ‘quiet’ room that reduces the intensity of outside noises. Again, the goal is simply to lessen the intensity of the offending sounds. Combined with positive training (e.g., praise for remaining calm or being less reactive than usual), sound attenuation with ear plugs or an underground 'quiet' room may help a great deal.
* Body wrap, such as a Thunder Shirt (snugly fitted vest) or home-made wrap. This is the solution that worked the best for my own very noise-sensitive dog. Rather than buying one of the vests, I dug out a couple of old stable bandages (leg wraps for horses) and wrapped them around her body as snugly as I could (see photos).
I would do this before dark on a night when fireworks were scheduled and also when a thunderstorm was forecast or already on the horizon. I’d leave it on her until the noisy event was over; sometimes it stayed on all night, although often by morning she was wearing it as skirt. It didn’t matter, because as soon as the wrap was on, she’d settle down and even curl up and sleep through the storm or an entire 4th of July extravaganza. Amazing, given how noise-sensitive she was!
This quick, simple, inexpensive, washable, reusable wrap worked very well for us, even when I didn’t manage to get it on her until she was already pacing and panting because she’d heard the storm coming long before I did, or because some idiot had been exercising his “2nd-amendment rights” (to be a gun-toting Neanderthal!). But I digress…
That raises an important point about any and all methods for calming your dog: they work better when started before the stressful event rather than after the event is well under way. All is not lost if you miss that window of opportunity, but make the most of it when you can.
Wrapping the body snugly, particularly the chest, is a technique that’s used in humans for calming the nervous system. There’s even a line of “calmwear” originally designed for autistic children.
The premise is that applying uniform pressure to the body surface and underlying muscles reduces sensory input to the sympathetic trunk — a main highway, as it were, which connects the spinal nerves up and down the body, alongside the spine. These nerves belong to the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system, which is best known for mediating the “fight or flight” response to danger, whether real or perceived.
In highly sensitive individuals, the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is chronically on high-alert unless careful attention has been paid to creating and maintaining a calm environment, stable and loving social bonds, positive training (in people, self-training such as mindfulness), and a healthy diet.
A third f-word that’s often added to that response is “freeze.” Animals (and people) may also freeze or remain still in the face of overwhelming stress, neither fighting nor flying/fleeing. You may have noticed that “freezing,” “staying still,” and “staying close to the owner” are behaviours used in the Finnish study as being common reactions in noise-sensitive or fearful dogs. Not all overwhelmed dogs act out; sometimes they act ‘in’, which is also a trait of HSPs.
Before moving on to the next and final strategy, I want to say a few words about leaving a radio on in the background for animals. In my considered opinion, it’s not particularly useful. Dogs don’t seem to identify voices coming from a radio as being human — or, at least, not of the people they know and love. So for dogs, the radio is likely to be just more noise. Most of the time they’ll simply tune it out if the volume is low, so it’s fairly benign. However, it's not a good thing if you're relying on the radio instead of making more difficult but vastly more meaningful changes in your dog’s daily life (e.g., more time spent with you).
6. (Phyto)pharmaceutical help
I’ve left this one until last because I think it carries the greatest potential for misuse. There is a place for sedative herbs and anti-anxiety medications, but neither category (plant-based [phyto-] or conventional pharmaceuticals) should be used in place of strategies 1–5. In addition, their need is greatly reduced when these other strategies are implemented with diligence and care.
Medication use falls under the veterinary-client-patient relationship, so I’ll say no more about it here, other than to make one comment about fluoxetine ('Prozac'). Please resist the temptation to go this route unless the only alternative is rehoming the dog. Fluoxetine is not a magic pill; it’s only a partial solution, its side effects (insomnia, restlessness, agitation, hyperactivity, and panic attacks, not to mention vomiting, diarrhoea, and seizures) can be worse than the behaviour itself, it’s expensive, and getting the dog off it can be difficult. No medication, including this one, is a good substitute for addressing the underlying reason for the unwanted behaviour.
There are many different herbs with calming properties, and too many commercial products to list. I’ll add flower essences and essential oils here, although one could argue that they are distinctly different from herbal medicine. Sometimes these plant-based therapies are helpful, other times not. Typically, they’re insufficient when they’re used as the first or only line of treatment.
One notable exception is a group of herbs called adaptogens. In brief, adaptogenic herbs act as very mild biochemical stressors that stimulate a broadly adaptive response (hence the name, adaptogen). I have written a few articles about them, including one on working dogs and one on senior dogs.
Here are my favourite adaptogenic herbs: Siberian ginseng (Eleutherococcus senticosus), Asian or American ginseng (Panax species), rhodiola (Rhodiola rosea), schizandra (Schisandra chinensis), and maral root (Rhaponticum carthamoides). Of these, rhodiola may be the most interesting for these dogs because of its moderating effects on cortisol production by the adrenal glands. (Cortisol is a principal 'stress' hormone.)
Adaptogenic herbs are a good place to finish this article on the highly sensitive dog, because they encapsulate my approach to dealing with highly sensitive animals:
Change what you can, and help the animal cope better with the rest.
You won’t be able to change everything, and you won’t always get it right. Just change what you can, and help your dog cope better with the rest.
© Christine M. King, 2019, 2022. All rights reserved.
First published on WordPress, 03 Feb 2019.
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Applying a home-made 'thunder wrap' (a pair of old stable bandages, wrapped snugly around Miss Lilly's body).
Notice from the set of her ears that she's already a little anxious. While hard to see in this photo, she is also panting. That was classic Miss Lilly is Anxious.
The other dog in this photo couldn't care less that a storm was rumbling in the distance. That is classic noise sensitivity alongside normal reactivity.
Securing the first of two bandages by tucking the end under the preceding layer.
Applying a second bandage over the first, as one bandage was not quite long enough for Miss Lilly's body.
The completed 'thunder wrap.' The second bandage allowed me to wrap her chest more snugly and extend the wrap down over her belly.
... and now you can see her worried expression. Miss Lilly loved people, including the friend of ours who took these photos. This facial expression and tense hindlimb stance (a subtle crouch) is her barely-controlled noise sensitivity in real time. She was also shaking slightly by this point.
But a short while later, she was lying calmly at my feet while our friend and I enjoyed the changing light. (I love a good storm!)