Are you thinking of trying CBD for your dog’s anxiety? In this article, we help you understand how CBD can help with the symptoms of dog anxiety and how to use it to calm your anxious pooch.
Understanding How CBD can Help with Dog Anxiety
If you’re a pet parent with a dog that suffers from anxiety you know how crippling the condition can be for your dog. An anxious dog can be stressful for you too. Seeing your fur-baby suffer from symptoms of this condition and not knowing what to do about it can heart-wrenching.
Luckily CBD can help with the symptoms of dog anxiety. In fact, an increasing number of pet parents are successfully using it to treat their dogs.
What Causes Anxiety in Dogs?
There are many different causes of anxiety in dogs. Some dogs and dog breeds are more susceptible to it than others. But generally speaking, dog anxiety falls into two main categories.
Situational anxiety
Your dog is usually fine, but gets anxious and stressed out in response to certain environments, situations or things. Common triggers include thunderstorms, fireworks, and traveling. Sound familiar? Anxiety in dogs is unbelievably common.
For adopted pooches that have experienced trauma in their past, things like the vet, strangers, other dogs or busy and chaotic places can also trigger anxiety.
Recognizing the symptoms of situational anxiety in dogs
- Pacing or lifting his front paw
- Nervous licking of the lips, panting, salivating and yawning
- Whimpering and trembling
- Pushing ears back and tail tucking
- Aggressive behaviors
- Tail-chasing and circling
- Dilated pupils
- Anti-social behaviors such as moving away from other dogs or people, hiding, reduced activity, and passive escape behaviors
Behavioral anxiety
This is when your dog has a constant feeling of anxiousness. This leads them to act out or behave in negative ways that they normally wouldn’t. Sometimes situational anxiety can turn into behavioral anxiety when your dog struggles to process triggers.
Separation anxiety is probably the most common form of behavioral anxiety. This happens when you have a fur baby that is more human-dependent and relies on companionship.
Recognizing Symptoms of Behavioral Anxiety in Dogs
- Urination or defecation on the floor despite being house trained
- Destructive behaviors like chewing and scratching
- Excessive vocalization like barking and crying
- Excessive panting and/or pacing
- Actively trying to escape
- Increased, out-of-context and potentially injurious activities like constant licking, biting and self-harm
CBD Oil for Dogs with Anxiety
As of now, there are no studies using CBD for dogs with anxiety. We do, however, have some decent evidence from other animal studies. From this data, we can draw some conclusions about how CBD oil can help a dog with anxiety. It’s also helpful to remember, that dogs and humans should respond to CBD in similar ways.
What does the science say?
A team of Spanish and American scientists reviewed animal and human data from studies looking at the efficacy of CBD for treating and managing the symptoms of anxiety disorders. They concluded that CBD has unique anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) effects for a range of anxiety issues, including stress-induced and obsessive behaviors.
How does CBD work to help my dog’s anxiety?
Although researchers aren’t sure exactly how CBD works to help treat symptoms of anxiety, studies have shown that CBD can help promote the growth of new brain cells in the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the area of the brain associated with anxiety.
This is important because brain scans have shown that in humans at least, patients with anxiety and depression often have smaller hippocampi. This means that with the regrowth of neural cells in that area, feelings of anxiety can also be reduced.
Likewise, researchers have found evidence suggesting that CBD has the ability to act very much the same way as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) like Prozak and Paxil. Both CBD and SSRIs stimulate 5-HT1A receptors – a specific class of serotonin receptors in the brain.
When CBD interacts with these serotonin receptors, it blocks the absorption of serotonin and several things happen:
- Blocks panic responses
- Reduces cardiovascular, as well as behavioral responses
- Reduces contextual fear conditioning
- Modulates the defensive behaviors evoked by the presence of threatening stimuli
Interestingly, the different behaviors, symptoms, and responses CBD helps with are very similar to the types of behaviors your dog exhibits when feeling anxious.
Practically speaking, this means that CBD can help calm your dog when confronted with a trigger. Some of the common triggers for dogs are fireworks or thunder. CBD reduces his physical and behavioral responses to the triggers. At the same time, it helps prevent future anxiety attacks by reducing fear conditioning.
How Much CBD Oil Should You Give Your Dog?
The next step is to figure out when and how much CBD oil to give to your anxious pooch. Always follow the basic dosage guidelines and monitor your dog’s response to CBD when you first start using it. Once comfortable with your dog’s reaction to it you can adapt the dose accordingly. The exact CBD oil dosage will depend on how much your dog weighs and the product you’re using.
We recommend that if your furry friend suffers from situational anxiety, to give them a dose of CBD 30 minutes to an hour before the event. For example, if your dog gets anxious when you leave for work, give him a dose of CBD oil or a treat before you leave the house.
Unfortunately, triggers can’t always be predicted, so the next best thing is to give it to them as soon as you notice any anxious behaviors. Your dog should feel relief within the hour. If not, wait a little longer before giving them another dose. For more chronic, behavioral anxiety issues, we recommend supplementing daily.
For more information check out our article on how much CBD oil to give to your dog.
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