CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Many stores and businesses are beginning to reopen on their own accord. That will cause many people to leave the remote lifestyle behind and return back to the workplace.
Separation anxiety can affect your four-legged friends after working from home for the past year.
For the past year, your furry partner may have seen you more compared to an average year, but now that it’s time to go back to the office, it might be a different story.
“So especially with separation anxiety and we’re seeing a huge uptick of this because over our pandemic a ton of people went and got pets, we have a huge number of increase of pet owners,” said Pet Culebra Creek veterinarian Dr. Mallory Cade.
Dr. Cade says symptoms of separation anxiety include house soiling, tearing up items in the home, aggressive behavior, and constant barking or crying.
Dr. Cade recommends starting off small with crate training, treat toys, and rewarding good behavior.
"So as soon as a pet can calm down, and they sit down, then we can reward them with our love and affections with our pets because that encourages calm behavior,” said Dr. Cade.
Pet owner Christian Palacios says her one-year-old French Bulldog ,Ears, has lots of energy and sometimes anxiety can weigh heavy on the pup.
“For his anxiety, he cries at home so he’ll cry for either myself or my husband, but what I try to do is at least if I leave him home I don’t leave him more than 3 hours,” said Palacios.
Palacios says she takes Ears to the dog park to release energy and to stay active.
“I try to bring him out here for an hour a day. He stays at home a lot because I work a lot too so he’s just very active,” said Palacios.
Dr. Cade says having your pets play outdoors is extremely helpful and keeping all these steps and bits of advice in mind can decrease the number of pet surrenders at area shelters.
“If we can fix these things while they're small it’s super important, so we try to have these conversations with our pet owners when they're brand new and not a year down the road when they're at wit's end and they're scared and they’re so frustrated they don’t know what else to do,” said Dr. Cade.
