Anxiety Wraps – TTouch Wraps
Seeing your dog cringing, deathly afraid of fireworks, storms or experiencing separation anxiety is horrible for any owner.
Pet Crew want to help people to assist their pets to reduce the fear and hopefully take a good chunk out of the potential harm a pet can do to itself when it is in a highly aroused state.
We have a foster called Floyd, and he was extreme in his fear of fireworks, not storms or loud noises just fireworks. Which was highlighted by our first experience with fireworks when he lost his bowels on my floor and attempted to jump through a closed window.
I would like to share some of the things we have done to make Floyd and many other clients dogs, and other fosters calm.
We start with using a TTouch Anxiety Wrap
Using a TTouch Anxiety Wrap
Experience has shown that the TTouche releases tension and activates self-healing on a cellular level. The goal of TTouch is an improvement of body awareness balance and well being in the patient.
Gentle pressure is used for humans and dogs alike to give comfort. The technique is a very similar process to swaddling an infant or a person with autism.
We call this technique “Maintained Pressure”.
Placing pressure on specific pressure points around the body help with a sense of calm. Some dogs will instantly feel calmed by the pressure; some take a little longer. I recommend you practice with low-stress situations first as some may require multiple wear sessions to get used to it. Floyd now wears his without a hitch, he likes it and will stand still to put it on and never tries to remove
Applying the Wrap
- Start by placing the middle of an ace bandage (you can get this from any chemist, in Australia its called an elastic bandage). Get one the appreciate size for your pooch, or if your Fido is big you can tie two shorter ones together.
2. Next, bring both ends of the bandage up and cross over your dog’s shoulder blades, then cross the loose ends of the bandage under your dog’s stomach.
3. Lastly tie the loose ends over the top of the lower back away from the spine. You want the aim for
Safety
Please never leave our dog unattended while wearing a wrap as they could accidentally become entangled. If you want something to remain on when not home use a Thundershirt.
Additional Things
For Floyd, we also crate him with the bandage on so that he’s not running around a frantic mess. We also apply the bandage about an hour before needed (providing we know the time of the fireworks).
We also give him some natural remedies for stress. We have used rescue remedy, and now we use Natural Animal Solutions Calm Liquid Drops. It works wonders.
Since we have combined all these things we go smoothly through the fireworks and considering we live directly across from a stadium that has regular fireworks displays is amazing considering we live directly across from a stadium that has regular fireworks displays is amazing!
For a detailed video on how wraps work click here.
