The anxious dog kit: 20 things that actually help

Most of what gets sold as a calming product is sold to the owner, not to the dog. This guide is the short list of things that genuinely change how a worried dog copes, grouped by the situation that sets him off rather than by the aisle they sit in.

Twenty products, all available on Amazon UK. Before any of them, one honest sentence: nothing on this page treats anxiety. What the things below do is make a worried dog more comfortable and take the edge off the ordinary worries that fall short of a clinical problem.

First work out what you are actually dealing with

Anxious is a word people use for four quite different problems, and the fix is different for each.

Separation distress

Starts within minutes of you leaving. Vocalising, pacing, drooling, scratching at the door, occasionally soiling a house-trained dog. The tell is that it happens whether you are gone for ten minutes or ten hours, and it is at its worst at the start.

Noise phobia

Fireworks, thunder, gunshots on the television, the smoke alarm. Sudden onset, obvious trigger, and it generalises fast: a dog who panicked at fireworks in November is often frightened of the bin lorry by February if nothing is done.

Novelty and environmental worry

The vet, the groomer, the car, visitors, a new floor surface. She is fine at home and falls apart outside her routine. This is the one that responds best to management and repetition.

Under-stimulation dressed up as anxiety

Chewing the skirting boards, digging the sofa, whining at nothing. Genuinely common and genuinely misdiagnosed. A working breed on two short lead walks a day and no mental work will look anxious and is mostly just bored.

Sleep and settling

An anxious dog who does not sleep properly gets more anxious, and the loop tightens. Watch how he sleeps for a week before you spend anything, as we set out in the dog beds guide. A curler and a sprawler want opposite beds and buying the wrong one is the most expensive mistake on this page.

Give her a den

Dogs settle better in a defined, enclosed, slightly dark space with one entrance. That is not sentimentality, it is just what they choose when you give them the option. A covered crate in a quiet corner is the cheapest version. Our crate guide covers sizing and the four crate types.

One rule that matters more than the equipment: the door stays open. A crate a dog chooses is a den. A crate a dog is shut into while frightened is a trap, and it will make the next fortnight worse rather than better.

Fireworks, thunder and the doorbell

Bonfire Night is the fixed point in the British calendar for this, but the season now runs from mid October to New Year and Diwali sits in the middle of it. Start preparing in the first week of October, not on the fifth of November.

The free measures do more than the paid ones. Close the curtains, put a radio or the television on at normal volume, walk her before dusk so she does not need to go out after dark, and do not fuss over her when she hides. Comforting a frightened dog is fine and does not reinforce fear, but following her about and checking on her tells her that something is genuinely wrong.

Being left alone

The mechanism to aim at is simple. You want the moment you leave to predict something good rather than something frightening, and you want the first thirty minutes filled with an absorbing job. Food does both.

Freeze everything. A stuffed toy handed over at room temperature lasts four minutes and a frozen one lasts thirty, and thirty is roughly the window in which most non-clinical distress either settles or does not.

A lick mat belongs in this list too, and ours launches on Amazon UK this autumn alongside the rest of our range. You can see it on our products page, and the lick mats and slow feeders guide explains why licking in particular settles a dog.

Chewing and licking are self-soothing

Both release tension. A dog who chews when he is worried is doing the canine equivalent of pacing, and the useful response is to give him something legitimate and hard-wearing to do it on rather than to interrupt him.

Match the chew to the chewer honestly. Most destroyed toys are a sizing failure, not a quality failure.

Slow the meals down

Fast eating and high arousal travel together. Turning one bowl of food into fifteen minutes of problem solving is the single cheapest change most owners can make, and it works on the boredom-shaped anxiety described at the top far better than any plug-in will.

The car

Car anxiety is often two problems wearing one coat: motion sickness and the fact that the only journeys a lot of dogs make end at the vet. Fix the second one by driving somewhere good five times for every time you drive somewhere clinical.

What we would skip

• Calming supplements and treats. The market is enormous, the regulation is light and the evidence for most of them is thin. If you want to try a supplement, ask your vet which one, because they see what actually works across a caseload rather than one dog.
• Anti-bark collars of every kind. Citronella, ultrasonic, static. Suppressing the noise an anxious dog makes does not reduce the anxiety, it removes your only warning signal.
• A second dog to keep the first company. A dog with separation distress is attached to you, not to dogs in general. You will usually end up with two anxious dogs.

Talk to your vet

Everything above is management. It makes a worried dog more comfortable and it gives you room to work, but none of it is a diagnosis and none of it replaces a professional who can actually examine your dog.

Your vet is the right first call about any change in behaviour, and they can refer you to a qualified clinical animal behaviourist if that is what is needed. We are not vets and we cannot tell you what is going on with your particular dog.