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The Thundershirt from my last pet blog made me start to wonder about pressure as a treatment for dog anxiety. As I said, I’d never heard of the practice before, so I’m curious as to whether or not it’s a legitimate calming method or something made up by Thundershirt salespeople.
After spending a while researching the topic, I’m more inclined to believe the latter. Multiple searches using varied forms of the phrase “pet anxiety pressure treatment” resulted in page after page only talking about the subject specifically in relation to selling the Thundershirt.
I’m ready to consider the “pressure as an anti-anxiety treatment in dogs” theory debunked. At least, I wouldn’t go so far as to believe Thundershirt’s claims of their product as a cure-all for everything from canine anxiety over loud noises, separation, and travel to problems with barking and leash pulling. However, I don’t tend to believe in any cure-alls, especially when it comes to pets.
My exhaustive search for any details on pressure therapy did finally turn up a hit or two on wrapping dogs to relieve anxiety, something I’ve done once or twice with Chihiro, especially when she was a puppy. While the reach of the Thundershirt’s assertions is outrageous, the actual pressure therapy practice might be tangentially related to a valid method for calming dogs.
A proven treatment exists for calming dogs by wrapping them in anything from Ace bandages to old t-shirts to blankets. Dogs are effectively swaddled snugly in order to calm them; I don’t know why it works, but it does. The day I adopted Chihiro her foster mother recommended that I wrap her up in the blanket I’d brought, leaving just her nose and her eyes exposed, to help calm her on the ride home.
As our car containing our new puppy pulled away Chihiro began to cry, nose pressed against the window looking back at her foster mom. I proceeded to wrap her in the blanket, and she remained calm for the rest of the ride.
To this day Chihiro loves to envelope herself in blankets; if anyone’s sitting on the couch with a blanket draped over their knees, she’ll squeeze herself between the person’s feet and the blanket and curl up so that only her nose sticks out. She doesn’t seem stressed when she moves to curl up under the blanket, but the fact that she seeks it out likely means she finds it soothing nonetheless. That or she just enjoys the warmth.
The sites that talk about wrapping dogs do mention pressure-creating wraps like the Thundershirt and similar products as alternative methods to achieve the same results. However, the key to wrapping dogs is to only do so snugly, not to apply any significant pressure.
Also, for wrapping therapy to work you must first swaddle your dog at times that it is calm so that it associates the wrapping with that feeling. Although the first time you wrap your dog when it is anxious it might be surprised into calming down, in the future it will likely take more practice before the desired results are achieved.
Thus while the Thundershirt might apply wrapping treatment principles for some calming effect, it doesn’t seem worth the price. You can try wrapping your dogs in whatever spare cloth you find lying around the house, and save yourself the $40 and false promises of instant cure-alls.
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