When I brought my pet beagle home, she was still only a few months old, and we became best friends as soon as our eyes clashed. (Hahaha, no kidding there, she picked me!). While as a bit of pup, my beagle loved chewing on every object around; she’s a relatively calmer and patient pup for her age. But whenever we had to go to the vet, she’d get super upset and start to struggle at every step; she wouldn’t even enter the waiting room without putting up a big fight. I knew that this wasn’t a normal or even a natural response.
That was when I started looking for answers and found out that my dog may have been experiencing a trauma reaction. In one of its studies, the AMVA (American Medical Veterinary Association) had recorded that the percentage of pets becoming anxious during visits had gone from 49% to 51% in 2015 in a brief span.
In another study, the researchers found that since a vet’s clinic is a strange unknown place with many other animals and medicines and injections, your pet might be attaching trauma and anxiety with the clinic.
After this, I started going through behavior studies for pets.
I learned that while some dogs might have problems due to past experiences, others may just be difficult because of wrong behavioral reinforcements. And some dogs might just not be comfortable with the constant physical contact that the vet has to establish with the dog.
Also, cleaning products such as soaps and detergents could emit a powerful odor that could make the dog uncomfortable.
How I Helped My Pet?
Most pets only go to the vet’s clinic when it’s time for their vaccination which means injections and fatigue. Also, the environment with all the unwell animals around can be uncomfortable. Hence, all the anxiety. One way of dealing with this could be that if you start visiting your pet’s vet more often and go there to randomly meet up with the vet and let your dog hang around for some time, and when they start to calm down, reward them with treats.
Visiting the vet has helped my dog become less anxious and feels visibly less tired when we come back from the vet’s.
So now that you know what might be causing the problem, it’s up to you to figure out what works best for you and your pet.