Home Page › Blog › How Dogs Can Calm Anxiety
How Dogs Can Calm Anxiety

A person suffering from anxiety attacks experience many risks, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s prudent to consider having a service dog or emotional support animal as a companion. The animal can keep the environment safer for the individual and below are some of the ways a dogs can calm anxiety:
1) Dogs can predict panic attacks
Because of their acute senses, dogs can recognize that a person is about to experience a panic or anxiety attack. If a service dog is well-trained, it can intervene in the situation before any untoward incident happens. The pet will nudge or bark at his handler or owner even before the attacks happen, and they will not stop unless the handler listens.
2) Dogs have a calming and relaxing presence.
Even the ones that aren’t trained to be service dogs draw the same calming effect. A study has determined that a dog’s presence has some sort of healing effect. A person’s heart rate and blood pressure lowers whenever they are around dogs to either touch or keep the company.
Another study revealed that dogs can unleash happy hormones in a person, thus reducing stress levels that could trigger anxiety.
3) Dogs ground you during an anxiety attack.
A person experiencing bouts of anxiety attacks could temporary lose focus as panic sets in, but a service dog will keep him grounded, so that he can get a grip of his situation. Some service dogs are trained to facilitate deep pressure therapy, where the dogs can settle their body on the person’s chest to help him calm him down. Certain panic attacks can put the person at risk of hurting himself or damaging property, when this can be avoided or reduced with the dog’s presence.
4) Dogs alert your loved-one or other humans.
If a person is having an attack, a well-trained service dog can let another human know so that the matter can immediately be given attention. They can look for that person for help, or they can also be relied upon to find their master’s phone so that he can call for help.
Latest Posts

How to Register Your Dog as a Psychiatric Service Dog
Do you have psychological or emotional disorder that make it difficult to live a normal life? If so, you may qualify for a Psychiatric Service Dog. To learn how to register your dog as a Psychiatric Service Dog, keep reading. A Psychiatric Service Dog is a type of Service Dog trained to do specific tasks […]


Can a Small Dog Be a Service Dog?
Blame it on famous small dogs like Bruiser Woods from “Legally Blonde” or Toto from “Wizard of Oz,” but small dogs have the unfortunate reputation for being pretty and portable, but not very useful. They’re known as excellent lap dogs and fit snugly into a purse. And small dogs are the supermodels of the canine […]


How to Train a Psychiatric Service Dog
Do psychiatric service dogs need training? Yes, they do. But because psychiatric service dogs (PSD) often are confused with emotional animal support animals (ESA), people sometimes assume that PSD’s aren’t trained. While psychiatric service dogs help people with mental or emotional disorders, just like ESAs, they receive extensive training to learn vital skills that will […]
