Many pet canines can be attached to their territory and have a protected and secured life with predictable everyday routines that commonly do not involve traveling away from home. Visiting the vet can be a challenging experience for dog and cat owners. Thankfully, we’ll discuss how to make vet visits less demanding and help your pet overcome the fear of veterinary visits.
Pointers to Help Pets Cope With Vet Visits
During veterinary visits, pets usually show stress symptoms like vocalizations, dilated pupils, attempts to hide, and frantic panting. If you’ve come here determined with your stubborn pet who does not want to cooperate with you each time you visit the vet, below are five helpful ways to help them conquer their fear.
1. Help your dog feel comfortable getting touched
Canines should not retaliate when getting touched, and this is something you must pay attention to before seeing the veterinarian. Dogs aren’t generally comfy, having their tummy prodded, tails lifted, and feet and nails touched. Daily spending time doing these actions can help your dog retaliate less and eventually love getting touched. This will help the pet groomers when grooming your furry pet and the veterinary team when administering pet vaccinations.
Every pet parent knows routine grooming and preventive care like checkups, vaccinations, sterilization, and parasite prevention are essential. Pet professionals will need to touch your pet for the said procedures. However, you’ll have no problems if you train your dog to be well-behaved when handled.
2. Take car rides with them regularly
Most dogs like riding in the car as they’re off to go to a park and have fun with their fellows. However, some pets only get in a car when going to a vet, causing stress levels to rise. To prevent pets from thinking the same, take more car trips with your canine to different areas so they don’t only associate it with veterinary visits. Following this will help remove the thought that a car automatically means vet visits.
3. Train your pet to be sociable before vet visits
Going to the veterinarian could be difficult for the pets as it’s a new place with unfamiliar animal smells and unusual faces. To help your furry baby get used to settings like this, train them to be sociable with their vet and fellows. Letting your furry buddy play with the pets in your neighborhood or taking them to cat and dog boarding facilities can help improve their familiarity.
Additionally, this can help increase their self-confidence in socializing with new people and other animals, whether in a veterinarian’s office, animal medical center, or strange places.
4. Be knowledgeable about your dog’s symptoms
Canines can’t talk and will never speak. This is why you should be attentive and courageous in informing your veterinarian about what your dog is experiencing. You may also create a list of symptoms your pet is suffering from. If you forget what to tell your vet the day of your visit, you have a list they can read. This may also help the vet to be clear and concise with the possible conditions your pet is going through.
5. Bring them hungry
This does not mean skipping their breakfast that day. The point is to not feed them too much before the time of the appointment. A hungry pet will be treat-motivated, and giving treats can be an effective distraction while the vet team is doing their job.
