Spot Dog Anxiety Symptoms

Dog anxiety symptoms can show themselves through a wide range of behavior, from milder problems such as your dog following you around the house all day and never letting you out of their sight, to extreme behavior like chewing their way through plasterboard walls while you’re out.

Many Symptoms of Dog Anxiety Go Undiagnosed

Unfortunately, many symptoms of separation anxiety in dogs are put down to ‘bad dog behaviour’ by their owners, who fail to recognise that their dog is suffering from a serious problem. As a result, separation anxiety is becoming one of the major reasons behind dog owners deciding they can no longer cope with their dog and giving them up to rescue shelters.

It makes sense that if you can’t identify the problem, you don’t have much chance of working out how to treat it either.

However, its not always easy to spot the symptoms and understand what a particular piece of behavior might mean. Infact one of the difficulties of identifying your dogs anxiety problems is that the same piece of behavior can mean different things depending on the circumstances. Let me give you an example.

How to spot the Difference Between Dog Separation Anxiety and Attention Seeking Behaviour

If your dog is urinating in the house, that can be a major indicator of separation anxiety – but only if they do it when you are out. If a dog urinates in the house while you are present (and I’ve had plenty of dog owners tell me that their dog has waited until they were watching before they peed) it is much more likely to be about pack leadership and your dog asserting his status over you.

Broadly speaking, if a dog exhibits a ‘bad behavior’ in front of you, they are more likely to be doing it for attention seeking reasons, or as mentioned before, to assert their dominance, than because they are suffering from anxiety. Being able to distinguish between the two is very important as you will need a different approach to solving attention seeking behavior problems.

The full range of anxiety symptoms include your dog barking, howling, whining or crying when you leave them alone, chewing everything in sight, destructive behavior such as your dog scratching doors, destroying furniture, or carpets, pooping or peeing in the house, following you everywhere and getting distressed when you’re out of their sight, trying to escape, or jumping all over you when you return.

If you’d like to have more details about the symptoms of separation anxiety in dogs click on the link, or sign up for our free report by putting your details into the box on the right.

If your dog is suffering from dog separation anxiety they won’t necesarily display all the symptoms we mentioned above. Their individual personality will affect the way they react to the absolute panic that can be brought on by being separated from their owners.

Your First Step in Spotting Dog Separation Anxiety

As a first step, start watching your dog more closely to see if the behavior that’s driving you crazy actually gets them your attention (even if it means you’re cross with them), or whether it happens as a reaction to you leaving them alone. Knowing this one thing will make all the difference.

If you think your dog could be suffering from separation anxiety and would like to find out more about dog anxiety solutions that will help you stop your dogs behaviour problems, click on the link.