 Maya are you stressed out? Are you stressed out? No, you're just beautiful. That's all you are. What is up everybody this is Chris from the Rewired Soul where we talk about the problem but focus on the solution and that was my beautiful little kitty named Maya and I know a lot of you out there are pet owners just like me and you love your pets just like I do and something I try to teach all of you on my channel is that our mental health is just as important as our physical health and some of you caught my last guest video from Dr. Alex Avery who is a vet and I asked him if you can come over to my channel and talk about mental health in animals so I know that I've experienced anxiety with my mom's dog and stress for cats is kind of a big deal so for all of you pet owners out there I asked Dr. Alex to come on over to my channel talk about some of the triggers for pet anxiety as well as some solutions because you know how we do here on the Rewired Soul so without further ado this is Dr. Alex Avery from the channel Our Pets Health I will put links to his channel in the info card as well as in the description down below make sure you go check out his channel but take it away Dr. Alex. Hi so I'm Dr. Alex from the YouTube channel Our Pets Health and also from ourpetshealth.com and I'd really like to thank Chris for inviting me to come on to his channel to talk to you today about mental health and stress in cats and dogs my catchphrase is helping you and your pet to live a healthier, happier life and I strongly believe that if you have pets then their health has a strong impact on your health as their owner I mean time again it's proven that having a pet is really beneficial for our sense of well-being but having a sick pet can be very detrimental it can be very stressful and actually if you've got a sick pet and you want to learn more about this then I've invited Chris to come on to my channel to talk about some of the strategies that you can use to help cope with and deal with having a sick pet and having to look after them and medicate them and all that goes with that so that aside I wanted to talk to you today about stress and specifically stress in our cats and dogs so stress regardless of species has a detrimental effect to the body it delays wound healing it causes increased risk of infection and you know our cats and dogs that are stressed they're just miserable they also suffer from a lot of stress related conditions so cats will start urine spraying they'll start scratching everywhere they might start over grooming so they'll actually lick themselves bold and cause real damage in some cases just completely because of stress they'll also maybe develop cystitis and a male cat cystitis can actually cause a blocked bladder which in itself can be fatal and that is entirely stress related problem although there are other things that can cause that as well so dogs to experience problems they can become really aggressive they can be destructive they can just freak out when you you know leave them for just a really short period of time they can inappropriately urinate defecate so there are lots of different causes of stress in our cats they're generally solitary animals so just having lots of other cats in the house is stressful in itself even if you think they're getting on chances are that they're under a degree of stress and that can be due to availability of food water toilets it can be stressed with territory just the other cat in the neighborhood kind of walking through the back garden could be really stressful or building work that might be out in the road it might be building work in the house a new baby arriving maybe another pet another dog having strangers in the house certainly for those cats that are more prone to stress actually it can be very subtle things that just set them off and it can sometimes be really hard to to identify exactly what the stressful problem is and in some cases it's just impossible dogs to can be affected by the same thing and in dogs I guess socialization is a really big one so the need to socialize our dogs when they're puppies and cats as well really benefit from socialization but I guess we think of it more in dogs so socializing them when they're young so helping them come across different noises different people just all kinds of different experiences if they do that then they're going to be much better well-rounded individuals I'm unable to cope and a lot of the behavioral problems we see in our dogs especially is due to a poor socialization and that's really kind of a period up to about 16 18 weeks of age so it's you know their first few months of life thankfully there's a lot that we can do about it and today I want to give you 10 tips to reduce stress in your cat or dog so my first tip is that much like our mental health it won't get better by itself so if your cat or dog is super stressed about something even if they're only mildly stressed about something you really need to recognize that and do something about it it's only going to get worse with time and we see this time and again that an owner will mention you know a small behavior change one year at their vaccination and health check appointment you'll give some recommendations and they'll come back the next year and say you know things have got worse you say well have you done next wine said you know and the answer is no and there's many reasons for that you know life is busy and it may not take priority but really any behavioral problems any stress problems are not going to get better by themselves so getting them checked out getting advice and implementing some strategies is really important so one thing that will often give either as a temporary measure if we're then putting in other changes or if we're expecting kind of short periods of stress is using pheromone therapy so pheromones are chemicals that are released in different situations by different species but can only be detected by that species so in cats we've got something called feline facial pheromone so if you ever notice a cat they're kind of like brushing their cheek up along something they're releasing this this pheromone against that object into their environment and that helps them feel at home it helps kind of mark their territory mark their safe space and dogs have a kind of similar effect with a pheromone called dog appeasing pheromone so these things they're like little plug-in air fresheners although they also come in collards for dogs and sprays for using in say cat carriers or in cars or something like that and they just help our dog and our cat to relax help them feel more at home and can really go a long way to helping reduce stress hopefully what other measures are taken to reduce that stress long term although you know these pheromones can be used long term it gets quite expensive if you're doing it that way I mentioned before cats and resources that's a big stress for cats and you know only having food in one place in a multi cat household it's really a no-no and it's bound to be stressful as a general rule for food and for water and for litter trays we should be having one more of each of those than the number of cats in the household and that's in separate places as well so if you've got three cats really you need four food bowls and that is food bowls in different locations not right next to each other for water bowls they could be next to the food bowls and for litter trays and litter trays need to be separate from the food and water stations you know that's fairly self-explanatory we don't want to eat in the toilet and nor do our cats so the next thing that we can do is we can provide a safe space for our pets to go so cats they like getting up high they like going into enclosed spaces so maybe the top of a cupboard top of a wardrobe something like that you know somewhere that your cat likes to go you just leave you know always leave the door open so they have access to that you know provide a nice soft bed a blanket down there just so that if they're feeling anxious they're feeling stressed that's their safe place that they can go with dogs we could have their crate if you've got a crate for them or that spot behind the sofa just out to the way it's quiet it's maybe a little bit darker but it's their safe space that they can go if they are feeling a bit stressed and they will often take themselves away to that spot if things are just getting a little bit too much okay so my fifth tip to reduce stress in our cats and dogs is to recognize stressful events and act appropriately so if you know that your dog always gets really stressed around fireworks or around storms and thunder then recognizing that a certain times of year that that might be a problem or you know watching the weather forecast and and anticipate when storms are coming and acting accordingly so there are different strategies that we can use for for phobias like that and that's you know too much to get into today but find out what works and anticipate those so it might be a thundershirt it might be playing music closing the curtains might be actually trying to desensitize them to that fear so recognizing the fear and acting accordingly it's not going to get better by itself like I said before exercise is my next tip it's good for us it's good for our dogs and it's good for our cats so it's been shown that regular walking of our dogs can help just reduce their stress levels I haven't read anything about cats but I can't see why they'd be any different so playing with them you know getting a laser getting a mouse toy out and playing with them but just getting out and about getting them to exercise raise their heart rate burn off a few calories has been shown to significantly reduce stress in dogs and I imagine the same is true for cats okay my next two tips are more for cats one is to secure their environment there's nothing more stressful than having other cats come into the house and eating your pets food using their litter tray it's just a nightmare and as you can imagine they really don't cope with that very well so securing the house now that might involve actually not using a cat flap letting them in and out through the door or it might involve using a microchip cat flap so it actually just reads the microchip that hopefully is already inside your cat just under their skin it reads that microchip and will only let them in or out obviously it can be programmed to several different chips if you've got a number of cats but they work really well I certainly had the problem with my cats where other cats were coming into the garage they were eating the food and yeah my cats were getting stressed microchip cat flap reader they just sorted that out completely the next tip is to allow your cat to come and go as they please so our cats you know they're very territorial but they will share territories with other cats and they are very well aware of who's where and when they will pass through each other's territory so they develop a strategy to avoid confrontation and avoid fighting if you though are kicking your cats out or only letting them in at certain periods of time then you know when they want to be in certain places it isn't going to coincide with when they're actually there so that again will lead to stress and my final tip is just to seek professional advice so that might be from your vet it might be from an animal behaviorist or a trainer so just approaching these people just having a chat about what problems you're experiencing and recognizing that there will be solutions so there's seldom a quick fix but with a little bit of effort especially if you're recognizing it soon and acting soon a little bit of effort upfront will make all the difference to your cat or your dog's stress levels and if you don't have a stressed cat or a dog then you won't be quite so stressed as well I'd really like to thank Chris again for inviting me to talk to you guys remember head over to my channel our pets health or our pets health com where Chris is going to have a video up for me all about helping you guys cope with the stress of looking after a dog or a cat with long term illness that can in itself cause depression anxiety and all kinds of problems in us so if that's something that interests you or if you just want to know how to help your dog or your cat have a healthier happier life be sure to head over to my channel thanks again to Chris for inviting me to come and speak to you and until next time take care all right thank you so much Dr. Alex for coming over here to do this guest video and like honestly I learned a lot from watching his video like I'm kind of a new pet owner I've had Maya for a little over a year I've now I've never really owned pets but I just kind of wanted a little kitty so this this video is very helpful to me and knowing what my my cat's triggers are as well as some solutions for it is very helpful and as a pet owner it helps calm me down quite a bit now I'll be honest and I know you're going to watch this Alex so I forgot that I needed to do a video for your channel so this is an IOU and I promise you that I will have it up over on his channel very soon so if you're a pet owner here's another plug make sure you go over to Dr. Alex's channel our pets health again it will be linked up there and down there and I'll also put in the info card make sure that you go subscribe to his channel because really soon I'm going to be doing a guest video about how to deal with the stress the depression and the emotions of taking care of a sick pet all right so make sure you go subscribe to his channel okay but anyways if you liked this video make sure you give it a thumbs up and please go ahead and leave comments down below let me know about your little critters and how you help calm them down when they're feeling stressed or anxious make sure you leave some comments okay but anyways as always if you are new here make sure you hit the subscribe button on my channel because I'm always making videos to help you out with your mental and emotional well-being and as promised you check it out right there there is a link to Dr. Alex's channel go over there show him some love hit that subscribe button he has a ton a ton of videos about how to take care of your pets better all right but you're all amazing thanks for watching and I'll see you next time