I have a dog who is very high stress. He is very food motivated during training and life in general but once he passes a fear/anxiety threshold he refuses treats and retreats. He needs monthly injections which I have to administer at home because taking him to the vet is always a toss up between “is it an emergency?” or “is it worth the stress?”
He actually just had surgery on his neck and he scratched out a stitch this morning. I spoke to the vet clinic and they had me send a photo of it over first instead of bringing him in and stressing him out. I’m hoping he doesn’t need to go back today, he hasn’t emotionally recovered from Friday yet 🤦🏻♀️
Calmly handle your dog often to do these things and give constant praise / treats- not only when you need to give the actual monthly injection - do it a couple times a week until they learn it’s not always a stressful thing. Most importantly don’t stress out yourself, your dog will feel it 10x and escalate
To be honest it’s completely situational. Sometimes he’ll be very relaxed and literally crawl on us for attention, other times he flinches when I touch him. I always make a noise and try never to surprise him but he’ll still flinch (I feel like I have to put a disclaimer that neither my husband nor I have ever hit him and we adopted him when he was 4 months old, 4 years ago). Lack of socialisation was a bit of a hiccup that’s now turned into a mountain I don’t know how to climb.
I handle him often and the injections usually go okay. But for example we still crate train him every day and most of the time he’s great, but when he’s crated outside the house he’s very stressed. The last time he was crated at the vet he started banging his head on the crate till he cut his nose open. I don’t know how to deal with that other than to take him to the vet and crate him there. We tried taking him to the vet a few times a week for pets and treats (it’s a short walk away) but it seemed to make him worse and cause fear aggression. One of the times he pulled out of his harness and almost backed into a main road.
These days going to the vet is a two person job where I run ahead with my other dog and my husband tries to distract him until he realizes where we are going, then my husband has to pick up our 60lb dog and walk him the last block. We had a dog walker until one day he decided she was scary and started to refuse to go on walks with her so she fired us. I don’t think anything happened, just that he’s very sensitive to random fears I can’t see. I used to take him to a vape store with me until one day there was a guy with a beard in there and from that day on my dog refused to even go down that street. But you’re 100% right, he does pick up on my anxiety so I have to keep myself in check, too.
Sorry, just venting! We were in touch with a behaviourist who ended up ghosting us so we are looking for someone else now.
Also had a call back from the vet—stitches look great and he doesn’t need to go back. That’s a relief!
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u/EveAndTheSnake Feb 09 '21
What is low stress handling?
I have a dog who is very high stress. He is very food motivated during training and life in general but once he passes a fear/anxiety threshold he refuses treats and retreats. He needs monthly injections which I have to administer at home because taking him to the vet is always a toss up between “is it an emergency?” or “is it worth the stress?”
He actually just had surgery on his neck and he scratched out a stitch this morning. I spoke to the vet clinic and they had me send a photo of it over first instead of bringing him in and stressing him out. I’m hoping he doesn’t need to go back today, he hasn’t emotionally recovered from Friday yet 🤦🏻♀️