My Dog Is Stressing Me Out: Navigating A Stress-Free Festive Period With Your Dog
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The holiday season is here, filled with warmth and joy and unfortunately cries of “my dog is stressing me out!”, fear not! This guide unveils strategies to ensure a harmonious celebration for you and your furry friend.
Understanding Stress
Christmas is such a joyous time of the year but it can also be stressful as we all know, but it can also be super stressful for our dogs.
Christmas means a change in household, loud sounds, maybe unfamiliar faces, maybe too many faces, overwhelming great food and so much more. For our dogs, this change that happens in what seems an instant is sure to cause at least a little stress in our dogs which can be displayed in behaviours that in turn stress us out.
The first thing to remember is that your dog isn’t giving you a hard time, they are having a hard time. The seasonal change can cause a switch in behaviour that owners haven’t seen or it may boost current behaviours to an unwanted level. Whatever the case, our dogs aren’t doing this on purpose, and it’s up to us to guide them how to best deal with the stress of the festive period.
The next step to this is understanding the signs of stress your dog will exhibit and the common triggers you may encounter.
By understanding these 3 basic things about stress you will be able to navigate your dog through the festive period with ease.
Signs of Stress
You may be able to see the signs of stress in your dog, they may be very noticeable to some as their behaviour will be out of the norm, but for some we may not be able to see the signs without properly looking for them.
- Panting
- Licking lips
- Hiding
- Pacing
- Barking
- Yawning
- Shaking
- Ears back
- Destructive behaviours
- Loss of appetite
- Toileting in the house
- Avoidance
- Growling
- Restlessness behaviour
And more! Depending how resilient your dog is, these will vary in intensity and duration too.
Common Xmas Triggers
Christmas is full of triggers for us and also our dogs, we may think my dog is stressing me out but in reality they are the ones stressed too. Noticing that we are stressed and understanding why is the first step to combating this issue. For example the stress of having to cook Xmas dinner may have you on a short fuse, and if you don’t notice this and work on it, you may lash out at a loved one uncontrollably.
For our dogs this is the same. They may get triggered by something and if we (the guardians) don’t realise this and help them navigate through it, we may find that our dogs behaviour may become more intense.
Below are a few triggers you may find over Xmasā¦.
- People coming over – they may be expected, unexpected, known or unknown
- The doorbell
- Xmas crackers
- Fireworks
- Loud music
- Travelling
- A break in routine
- Lack of attention
- Children and babies
- Dogs – on walks or other family dogs
- Overwhelm from the smells and food
- Lack of exercise
- Being left alone
- Decorations
- Family games
- Drunk people
And more!!!
Managing Behaviour and Preventing Trouble over the Festive Period
So now that we know what to look for and what to look out for, the next thing is to manage problem behaviours and prevent issues from arising.
Problem behaviours that’s have you shouting “my dog is stressing me out” will include…
Counter surfing, jumping on guests, barking at the door/doorbell, being rowdy, destructive behaviours, peeing around the house, being opportunists, getting into presents, attention seeking behaviours, whining, restlessness and moreā¦
Some of these behaviours are going to be completely out of the blue for your dog that you’ll be able to notice, but if your dog is like mine and gets a bit excited about everything, it’s hard to tell if they’re having a good time or if they’re stressed, which is why you have to keep an eye out for the signs of stress.
5 Tips To Create a Stress-Free Festive period with your dog
Keeping Them Busy
We’ve all heard the saying āout of sight, out of mindā right? With our dogs over Christmas when there’s so much going on that can be true, and the perfect chance for our dogs to potentially get up to mischief.
Over the festive period we struggle to keep an eye on our dogs especially if there are a lot of visitors over or if you’re cooking, playing family games etc. In cases like this to prevent your dog from getting into trouble, the best thing to do is keep them preoccupied with something.
Kongs, chew toys, lick mats, antlers etc
These are my go to over times such as festive periods, holidays and āgatheringsā. These items are great for dogs as they keep them mentally stimulated, can keep them preoccupied for lengths of times, is something that they can do independently and also a great outlet for frustration and stress.
If you’ve read some of my other posts you may know how much Jasper and I love his Kong. I used to think my dog is stressing me out but Kong dog toys are amazing! When frozen it can keep him busy for an hour or two at times and you can combine so many ingredients to keep it entertaining.
Discover more about the Kong below
Create A Calm and Safe Space For Your Dog
Make sure your dog has somewhere they can go when things get a bit overwhelming for them. A crate, or bed in a separate room away from the hustle and bustle is a great idea. Adding calming scents, toys, water and blankets will make it a nice little escape.
Make sure that in making these safe areas that you also avoid annoying your dog here and the same goes for your guests, if your dog retreats to their bed, don’t allow guests (especially children) to pester them here.
Set Your Dog Up For Success
This next one is so important but is something we don’t really think about. Yes our dogs are opportunists and can get into trouble but how much of that do we prevent from having? Can you blame your dog for counter surfing if you leave food in the table to grab something from the kitchen while your dog is free roaming? Can you blame your dog for toileting in the house if you missed the usual toilet break window?
We have to set our dogs up for success, especially over the festive period. This will mean you have to be proactive and if your dog does something, how can you stop it from next time?
Things like using baby gates and barriers to section off areas of the house is a great example. You can also do things like keep advent calendars out of reach, presents sectioned off, creating a safe space for your dog etc.
Have a think about these things prior, sort of like a risk assessment, the more things you can prevent the less issue you will have over the festive period with your dog.
Keep To A Routine
Even though the festive period means a change to all our routines, we want to try keeping our dogs routine the same as possible, or adapt a routine that we can stick to for that period.
Keeping things to same and consistent over this stressful period reduces the dog from worrying about when they are going to eat or they may be expecting to go to the toilet etc. Things such as this which seem small to us are such big things to our dogs, because at the end of the day they have no control of these things.
The most important thing is to keep feeding times, sleeping times and walk times to a routine. If you struggle with time check out my blog post on exercising dog in winter weather for 5 indoor activities you can do to keep your dog active and burn some energy which can come in useful if you have to cut walks short or push them till later.
Have Basic Ground Rules For Everyone To Follow
One of the most annoying things about having a dog is that they can easily be influenced by others and their environment which can create a lot of stress and confusion.
For this reason, I always have rules for when people come over, nothing crazy, just things like ignore Jasper when you get in till he’s chilled out, don’t feed him, if he starts getting too much stop giving him attention, don’t enter his safe areas, let him come to you etc etc etc.
Have a few ground rules for when people come over, as mentioned, this doesn’t have to be crazy, just ensure that people and their behaviour isn’t going to add stress to your dog.
My Dog Is Stressing Me Out…Dealing With The Stress Yourself
The final thing I want to touch on here is dealing with the stress ourselves. Have you ever noticed yourself getting stressed through the day and things build up and then your pocket gets caught in the door handle? You lose your mind right? Because you hit your limit. What if you took 5 minutes for yourself when you noticed the stress building, do you think you would have reached that point?
Its hard to be mindful and present of our actions, it’s something I’ve slowly been trying to learn but as mentioned it’s hard. The thing is when we get stressed and react to others, we can apologise, with our dogs we can too but this can really damage a relationship if you don’t have a grasp on your own stress and do this on occasion. A lot of us can lose.it and shout my dog is stressing me out but you need to be able to handle and deal with that stress, if you can’t it will just stress the both of you out more.
Be patient with your dog, use the above tips to help ease the festive period but also be mindful if yourself. Take 5 minutes when you need them, pop outside, in the other room, even just sit in the toilet for 5.
Final Thoughts
Incorporate these tips into your festive plans, and soon the phrase “my dog is stressing me out” will be replaced with “my dog brings joy to the holidays!”
How are you preparing for the holidays with your dog? Feel free to leave a comment below š
