Like us, dogs can sometimes find life too stressful for comfort. We can improve their quality of life by recognizing the signs.
You have likely experienced stress in your life and felt the physical and psychological effects that chronic and acute stress can cause. Your dog is also vulnerable to stress, and by learning to recognize the signs and effects, you can greatly improve her welfare and behavior. Learn how to spot stress and when (and when not) to intervene.
What is stress in dogs?
Stress is our natural, adaptive response to perceived challenges and threats in our environment. Dogs experience it, too!
We all know what it’s like to be stressed and while stress is a by-product of a busy and uncertain world, being overly stressed can have a significant impact on the quality of our lives. The same is true for our dogs. While pet dogs are impressively adaptive, some find it hard to adjust and consequently live in a state of stress, making life difficult for them and for their guardians.
How does stress affect my dog?
Understanding how stress affects our canine companions is made easier by the fact that dogs and humans have very similar physiological responses to stress.
- During a stressful episode, both the human and canine bodies will go through adaptive changes.
- In order to survive, energy must immediately be diverted to muscles in preparation for fight or flight. Glucose, fats, and proteins pour out of fat cells, the liver, and muscles and are diverted to other muscles that need the most energy.
- Heart rate and blood pressure are elevated in order to distribute the energy as quickly as possible and breathing becomes more rapid.
- Digestion is suppressed, growth and muscle repair are halted, immunity is inhibited and senses are sharpened. This happens within a matter of seconds and allows the body to operate at its optimum level to ensure survival.
- Good health relies on the body’s ability to return to its normal state after the stressful event has passed, but if stress is sustained or continually repeated, the body finds it difficult to achieve this.
- Humans tend to have a harder time returning to normal because of their ability to dwell on, anticipate or expect a future problem, but dogs that are sensitive to triggers that predict certain outcomes can also find it hard to ‘de-stress.’
- Dogs that suffer from separation anxiety, for example, become adept at reading their person’s departure cues sometimes hours before their person leaves.
- Dogs can also suffer sustained stress if they are frequently exposed to something or somebody they fear.
- If the body continues to work at its optimum level and is unable to return to normal, it is only a matter of time before the immune system is impaired, giving way to adaptive illnesses such as digestive upset, kidney disease, diabetes, and cancer.
Signs of stress in dogs
- Stressed dogs are often highly reactive and unable to settle, jumping at the slightest sound or movement.
- Visible signs of stress include dilated pupils, sweaty paws, shaking, vocalizing excessively, or salivating. These signals can occur by themselves or together.
- Other manifestations of stress include yawning, sneezing, lip licking, or intense displacement behavior such as sniffing, licking, excessive grooming, spinning, or self-mutilation.
- The dog may urinate or defecate more frequently and often experiences digestive upset such as diarrhea.
- Some dogs may display symptoms that look very like human depression, including the inability to sleep, low energy, lack of appetite, and a limited desire for human or dog interaction.
- Learned helplessness, where the dog shuts down and ceases to learn, (often misread as a dog becoming calm) is yet another symptom of stress and can occur if a dog is severely punished or suffers abuse.
- Aggressive behavior such as growling, snapping, or biting is another common symptom of stress that is often misunderstood and mistreated.
Eustress vs. distress
Stress is a physiological and emotional reaction. It includes changes in breathing and heart rate, changes in muscle tension, and elevated energy and alertness.
In dogs, we often see these signs by noticing that a dog’s face and body become stiff or tense, they may pant or breathe more deeply and rapidly, their pupils may dilate, they may fidget, pace, or hide, and they may seem much more alert to small changes in their environment. Stress includes both perceived negative events (such as a feared event, like going to the vet) and perceived positive events, like an intense game with a beloved toy.
The “good” stress is called eustress, and “bad” stress is known as distress. We will be focusing on distress in the rest of this piece, but it’s important to remember stress can happen in positive moments in our dogs’ lives, and it’s not always a bad thing!
Acute stress vs. chronic stress in dogs
Like humans, dogs can experience acute stress, where a temporary situation causes a momentary spike in stress reactions. And again like us, dogs can experience chronic stress, where they remain in a state of stress over days, months, or even years. Not all stress is bad – occasional stress is a normal coping mechanism for our dogs. But too much stress, or remaining in a stressed state for too long, can have nasty physical and behavioral effects on our dogs.
Research on dogs has suggested that experiencing high stress is linked to both negative health and behavioral outcomes for dogs, including gastrointestinal issues, fearful, aggressive, and reactive behaviors, and chronic health conditions.
Acute stress
When a dog experiences a temporary stress response, we call this acute stress. Acute stress can be good, like a physically taxing (but not overtaxing) run. It can also be undesirable, like a stressful but short visit to the vet. Allowing some acute stress in our dogs’ lives is likely both inevitable and not all bad.
When considering whether to try to change your dog’s stress levels in situations that evoke acute stress, ask yourself the following questions:
- Is this eustress or distress?
- Is my dog able to recover quickly and easily after the stressful event is over? Or does he struggle to settle down either emotionally, or physically?
- If my dog is distressed, is there anything I could do to help him be more comfortable in this situation?
- Could training or medication reduce his distress? Could I avoid putting him in this situation altogether?
Chronic stress
Chronic stress refers to a sustained stress response your dog experiences that can continue over hours, days, or longer. Chronic stress may be harder to spot since you cannot notice the sudden behavioral and physical changes in your dog that you can see in acute stress. But, there are signs that your dog is experiencing chronic stress, including:
- Changes in appetite, sleep, or playfulness.
- Frequent body language signs associated with fear, stress, or anxiety, such as paw lifting, yawning when not tired, lip licking, and tension in the dog’s body or face.
- Unusual energy levels causing the dog to be chronically over-excited or lethargic and withdrawn.
- Chronic health conditions, such as gastrointestinal upset (including diarrhea or vomiting from no other known condition).
- Poor adaptability to even mildly acutely stressful situations - dog “melts down” or “shuts down” at even the slightest extra stressor.
Unlike acute stress, chronic stress is always worthy of intervention, because managing your dog’s stress levels keeps your dog healthy both mentally and physically, ensuring a better quality of life for your dog and the whole family.
But… it’s tricky! All of the signs above can be related to other conditions, and that’s part of what makes stress sometimes hard to spot! Work with a qualified trainer and with your veterinarian if you suspect your dog may be suffering from chronic stress.
Resilience and stress
Some dogs, like people, are more sensitive to the mental and physical manifestations of stress than others. What might cause sickness in one dog will have no effect on another even when both dogs are exposed to the same stressors. This ability to adapt to stress and recover from it is called resilience, and you can help your dog develop more of it. The first step to increasing resilience, for any dog, is to discover his or her individual patterns and stressors and make a plan for each.
What can you do to minimize stress for your dog?
- It may help you to make a list of everything your dog finds stressful, and then work through that list tackling each issue slowly and sensitively.
- Desensitization, counter-conditioning techniques, and managing a dog’s exposure to stressors, along with humane teaching methods and confidence-building exercises, can really help to minimize stress.
- Minimizing potential stressors at home and watching how you manage your own stress is important, as dogs are very good at picking up on a person’s emotional state.
- Controlled exercise is also a great way to alleviate stress for some dogs and people as exercise has been shown to improve cognitive function, encourage confidence, stabilize mood, and reduce reactivity as well as improve the relationship between dog and guardian.
- Problem-solving games and toys can help activate the thinking brain in stressful situations, which in turn deactivates the emotional brain and allows the dog to concentrate on something more positive.
Veterinary care and complementary therapies for dog stress reduction
Along with training and behavior modification, unmanageable stress is a health issue and deserves the care of a veterinarian.
- Discuss your dog’s stress with his veterinarian, or a qualified veterinary behaviorist. For some dogs, chronic stress or acute stress is so serious that they are unable to learn new coping responses without the help of medical intervention. By working with your veterinarian, you can help determine what kinds of medical interventions may alleviate your dog’s current suffering AND provide you a path forward to a place where he can be comfortable enough for learning to occur.
- Undetectable by humans, appeasing pheromone is a synthetically produced substance that mimics the pheromones of a lactating female and is said to produce a feeling of well-being and reassurance for dogs, thereby reducing anxiety. It is available in spray form or is contained within a collar that is worn around a dog’s neck. It is also available as a plug-in that allows the substance to diffuse around the home.
- Massage, t-touch, or other complementary therapies such as Reiki or acupuncture might be helpful for some dogs.
- Specially-designed bioacoustic music can also have a significant impact on relieving stress in some dogs.
