Helping a dog with OCD

Dogs with OCD behaviour can pose very challenging problem for both themselves and their humans.

Dogs can present a wide range fo OCD behaviour such as :

• Excessive licking
• Excessive barking
• Digging
• Self mutilation
• Shadow and/or light chasing
• Pacing
• Spinning
• Tail chasing
• Flank sucking
• Paw licking

Odin and his people came out for a consultation towards the end of 2023 and then enrolled him in Family K9 Dog Training’s Board and Train Program. 

What was evident to me from our consult is that Odin was a joyful, engaging dog who wanted to connect with me (or anyone really!) and had a lot of drive. This is typical of many OCD dog’s. Drive.  It is a living organism and unless you’ve lived with a highly driven dog you just can’t imagine how powerful it is.  

Odin had a serious problem chasing light, reflections of light and shadows.

This all started when his owners would play with him as a youngster with a laser pointer.

What started as a fun pastime quickly turned into an obsession and spiralled out of control.

Behavioural strategy for a dog with OCD

The strategy for many OCD dogs is actually very simple.

Replace the unhealthy with the healthy.

It’s a fool errand to get caught up in trying to simply stop a dog from doing something it is obsessed with. This is exactly like playing whack-a-mole with your dog 24/7.

Does my dog need to be medicated

In some instances medication can be helpful, but in my experience, it is largely overprescribed, overused, and done so before we have exhausted, behavioural intervention options.

The first action we should take is to evaluate the dogs behavior, assess the level (if any) of training and create a plan of action for such a dog that includes training, a healthy outlet for the dogs drive, and lots of mental and physical stimulation to give all that energy, a healthy direction to flow into.

for ore information on OCD check out the AKC website