Three supplements that might help your anxious or reactive dog (that aren’t CBD Oil or Turmeric)

If you have an anxious or reactive dog you will know how distressing it is to watch your dog try to cope in the world. Dogs that suffer with anxiety based behavioural problems, whether that’s separation anxiety, reactive behaviour, noise aversion, fear aggression, or something else, often need a little more help that just rehabilitation work alone. So here are three supplements that might help your anxious dog, (that aren’t CBD oil or Turmeric).

Magnesium

Magnesium plays a crucial role in helping our mind and bodies to function efficiently. It helps us sleep better, maintain a better mood, and reduces impulsive behaviour. A lack of magnesium can contribute to the kind of behaviours we typically see in anxious and reactive dogs such as hostile and aggressive behaviours, argumentative behaviours, and non-cooperative and challenging behaviours such as resource guarding.

A good clue that your dog might be suffering from a deficiency could be muscle twitching, restlessness, and anxiety itself. It interesting to note that heightened stress levels can itself reduce levels of magnesium, and so can illness. So in these cases, a boost could help your dog.

Possible dose (check this as products/dogs differ): 2mg/kg. Here’s one available on Amazon

Ashwagandha

Ashwagandha is an evergreen shrub found in places like Asia and Africa. The leaf and root have been used as a supplement by people for centuries, but more recently the benefits have been studied in animals and especially n particular, dogs. Ashwagandha has a balancing effect on Cortisol: the stress hormone responsible for fight or flight mode in our dogs. So, when our cortisol levels get out of balance, and at the wrong time, we suffer with chronic anxiety. This imbalance can also effect our sex hormones, appetite, pain levels, and ability to heal too. Using it can balance and normalise that cortisol production, so its only produced when its needed, bringing a sense of calmness, hormonal balance, and reduce inflammation.

Inflammation can cause an increase of cortisol too, so it’s important to rule out pain and illness when dealing with stress. When pain or injury increases cortisol levels, the body is in fight or flight mode, and so stress responses are naturally increased. This leads to elevated reactive and anxious behaviour. It doesn’t have to be obvious or severe pain either. Even inflammation from a headache or migraine, a stiff hip, allergy, sore muscles, obesity, tooth ache, neck strain, bruises, even dehydration and poor diet, can cause enough inflammation to lead to elevated cortisol.

The problem with Chronic Cortisol…

Elevated cortisol can become chronic when the source of the increase is prolonged or happens very regularly. This means that the body loses the ability to regulate stress levels when the stressor goes away and levels remain high all day. Pain does this, but also behavioural issues such as separation anxiety, fear on walks, and territory guarding.

You might suspect your dog has chronically high cortisol levels if they appear hypervigilant, find it hard to settle during the day, if they struggle to concentrate and learn normally, if reactive and anxious behaviour is spreading or getting worse, or if they resource guard and leave food. But any anxiety or reactive behaviour could benefit.

I have personal experience of this one – check it out on amazon

Possible dose (check this as products/dogs differ): 15mg/kg. Also try: Rhodiola roseas, tumeric and ginseng

You might also be interested in this blog on stress management for anxious and reactive dogs

Probiotic

Probiotics can help with gut health. A healthy gut plays a crucial role in the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and GABA, which are essential for regulating mood, sleep, and stress responses. A healthy gut also improves digestion. We all know how important a good diet is on our dogs health and behaviour, but if their gut health is poor our dogs won’t see the benefit of that great food. Crucially, for our anxious dogs, it also reduces inflammation which, as we just found out, can stimulate the production of unwanted cortisol.

Here’s one on amazon

Not miracle cures

Supplements are not miracle cures for anxiety and reactive behaviour though. On their own they might appear to make little difference to your dogs mood and behaviour. So only consider using these alongside a reward-based rehabilitation plan. I didn’t say reward-based by accident either. Non reward based methods are known to increase the stress hormone cortisol, which contributes to overall stress levels. At best, they will balance each other out, but you certainly won’t see any improvement in your dogs anxiety. It would be like shouting at an anxious work colleague all day and then giving them a diazepam to reduce their stress levels!