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Chapter 52. Anxiety -- Thy Name is Universal
Scientists have written books on the physiological effects of stress and anxiety on humans and animals. However, not too much has been written about the manifestations of anxiety in dogs and cats. As in humans, they can vary from animal to animal.
When humans are stressed or suffering anxiety, there are many things we can do, both, positive and negative.
Meditation, Yoga, exercise, faith, creative endeavors such as art, writing, acting, or music are some of the positive ways humans deal with stress or anxiety. Drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, excessive eating or sleeping, anorexia, insomnia, tempter tantrums or other antisocial behavior are some of the negative means.
Animals are far more limited in the options available to them to handle anxiety.
A cat who suddenly finds him/herself in a strange and new environment will typically seek a place to hide and/or s/he may hiss or growl at any potential and perceived "threats" whether animal or human. These behaviors are reactions to anxiety and do not indicate the cat's behavior or personality under normal, secure circumstances.
A dog who find him/herself uprooted from their normal environment may or may not show immediate reactions to anxiety. A dog in a shelter, for example may seem outwardly calm and collected in a shelter cage or s/he may bark hysterically, or make attempt to escape. But, none of the behaviors indicate anything about the dog's behavior or personality in a familiar, secure environment.
When placed in a new home, (i.e. foreign environment), many dogs will typically display anxiety, by excessively barking or chewing up household objects when left alone. ("Separation Anxiety"). Other dogs may display extreme clinginess or, at the other end of the spectrum, wariness towards the new caregiver or the new caregiver's friends or relatives. Still, other dogs will "mark" (pee) all over the house and refuse to eliminate when taken out (fear of inviting attack from other animals in the new territory).
Dogs will, in fact, manifest anxiety in a variety of different and contrary ways. In this sense, dogs seem more complicated than cats who typically hide or hiss/growl when uprooted to a new environment.
The important matter to understand is that it is extremely stressful and anxiety-producing to any animal (including humans) to lose one's "home" (territory) and be transported someplace foreign and strange.
It does not matter if the new environment is a palace with a Garden of Eden. It does not matter if the people in the new place are walking saints. What matters is that the animal's former life is seemingly down the toilet. Such circumstance would virtually never happen in the natural world.
Almost all animals spend their entire lives in a specific territory (except when choosing to migrate, as many species of birds or fish may do). Wolves and big cats (from whom domestic dogs and cats evolve from) may wander many miles in their territory, but they would never find themselves suddenly transported to another environment, away from everything they know.
Yet, we do this with cats and dogs all the time -- and then wonder why they often exhibit strange or even "antisocial" behavior?
We need only ask ourselves how we would be were we suddenly to wake up one day and find ourselves in a new place, surrounded by new and strange people with no idea of what happened to our former life and all the people or animals in it?
Would such not arouse the "fight or flight" instinct in us?
What if we were not able to "fight or flight?" Would we not seek to hide?
What if we were left alone in a strange room or house where hiding was not an option?
Logic dictates that we would seek the normal remedies we, as individuals seek to deal with stress and anxiety. Were those not available to us, we would either sleep or try to break out of our strange and frightening confinement.
So too, is it with cats and dogs.
It can often take weeks or even months until we truly "know" the new animal we have taken into our home. Patience, time and understanding are critical to an eventual good outcome.
While it is true that there are a few animals who, due to poor "wiring" (i.e. genetics) or past trauma, never adapt to normal life, (as with people) such animals are the exception, not the rule.
Anxiety, thy name is Universal.
A sense of security, stability and predictability is usually the cure. Those things take time.