Best Dog Trainer Sydney – Eazy Dog Training – Medication for Anxiety?

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Anxiety in dogs – Medication or not?

Anxiety can be very difficult to manage. Anyone who’s ever suffered from it knows this. Anxiety in dogs can also show in ways that are very challenging to tolerate, like barking, crying, destructive behaviours, urinating etc. But should you get your dog medicated for it? This is my opinion as a dog trainer in Sydney who has trained dogs for 11 years.

Figure Out the Cause First!

Before even treating the anxiety you should book an appointment with a professional, experienced dog trainer to talk about the possible reason for it. Remember, vets are medical professionals and their studies and work are usually focused on the medical side of things. They DON’T have the experience and training a professional dog trainer has. And if you ask me, they can even lack of behavioural understanding as well. I’ve had vet clients with no understanding of training their own dog!

And talking about experience, my professional experience is that most of anxieties are caused by lack of mental stimulation and physical exercise.

When we think about dogs, there are breeds that need a lot of both of them. And sometimes the owners just don’t understand the sheer volume of it. I’ve had many badly anxious working breed clients such as kelpies and cattle dogs that simply weren’t getting what they needed to stay sane.

Training First!

I’ve only ever met 2 dogs that were so severely anxious that I honestly though they should have been put down. They were both rescue dogs, working breeds, and so badly anxious that they were dangerous to their owners and other dogs. But that wasn’t the reason I thought they would have been better off euthanised. It was the quality of their life that was heartbreaking to see. And unfortunately one of these dogs ended up with owners that couldn’t handle the behaviours and worsened it all by hitting him. But the other one followed the training plan and the dog is getting better. The anxious behaviours at home have stopped almost completely and now they are working on the outside issues.

So before medication, try training!

Medication only treats and hides the symptoms, it doesn’t fix the reason. Sometimes medication is needed to get the dog in a mental state they can learn in, but even then it should be combined with training.