ANXIETY

Separation anxiety, most commonly afflicting dogs, birds, mice, and cats, is a pet’s exaggerated fear over separation from its owners. Separation anxiety can be diagnosed by noting its signs and symptoms in your pet. This is best managed by the pet’s owner since nobody is more familiar with a pet than the owner. Separation anxiety can result in chewing, pawing, digging, and other bad behavior, but it should not be confused with boredom, which also results in similar behaviors. Separation anxiety often begins as a panic once the owner has left, boredom set in after an hour or two.

Signs of separation anxiety are generally expected in an infant of any species, particularly puppies. Usually, as time passes, normal puppies and other pets demonstrate these signs less and less as they become more familiar with their surroundings and more confident about being alone.

Signs of separation anxiety in pets include fearfulness (worry, apprehensiveness), clinginess, hyperactivity, barking and yelping (screaming in birds), destroying objects, urinating inappropriately, defecating in the house, vomiting, diarrhea, salivation, and depression or aggressiveness. These signs tend to become most apparent when the pet is about to be left alone or thinks they are about to be left alone. Eating behaviors can also be affected. Some pets will over-eat; some will under-eat. Other indicators are when pets twitch their ears, pace, pant, hide or jump. Animals such as parrots and cats can over-groom, resulting in bald areas on their chests. These behaviors can set in when a pet has been left alone for no longer than a few minutes. Occasionally, separation anxiety is caused by a change in routine that requires the pet to be left alone for longer than normal. Unidentified changes in older pets may also cause sudden separation anxiety. This is sometimes mistaken for senility.

Some puppies, kittens and parrots, for reasons not entirely understood, retain their normal early fear of being left alone. This can be seen in puppies that were removed from their parents too young or whose mothers were unavailable. Others come from families of dogs genetically prone to anxiety. However, this is most often prevalent in multi-owner dogs that bounced from one home to another, from shelter to shelter.