| 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) 2005, Brigitte Smith, Healthy Happy Dogs
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