1. The dog has Fear
If your dog suddenly starts shaking and panting, there is often something wrong Fear behind it.
If the animal is frightened or otherwise worried about its life or that of its pack, Stress hormones like adrenaline released. Breathing becomes faster and muscles twitch.
At acute anxiety states the dog is triggered by a specific event. This can be, for example, a loud bang or a lot of screaming, but car rides or a threatening-looking animal on the dog walker can also lead to panic attacks.
Other common symptoms of anxiety attacks
- Barking & whining
- Licking the muzzle
- Retracted tail
- Ears stick back
- Dog makes himself smaller than he is
- Aggressive defensive behavior
- Enlarging the pupils, avoiding eye contact.
Many dog owners don't understand their four-legged friends' anxiety attacks because they perceive things that are scary for the dog as harmless. Also medical factors can play a role. dogs that
- Suffer from disorders of the sensory organs (e.g. hearing loss or eye problems).
- pain or
- Neurological diseases such as dementia
animals get scared much more quickly than healthy animals.
The WDR animal guide on the topic of “Help for anxious dogs”. Source: WDR / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln7jGLX2qTU .
2. Too much stress
Related to anxiety stress factors, that cause problems for the four-legged friend. Here too, trembling and panting are common clues. Unlike acute panic, the fear is so anchored in the four-legged friend that it is unrelaxed even without a trigger.
Chronic stress is often influenced by factors that the dog repeatedly encounters. These include, for example, too much hustle and bustle in the apartment, trauma such as separation stress or other pets that cause problems for the four-legged friend.
Stress often causes symptoms very similar to those of acute anxiety. Other signs include restlessness, refusal of food, excessive grooming (which can also lead to hair loss) or self-harming behavior such as nibbling on the paws.
3. Hormonal Disturbances
In a few cases can also hormonal disorders to be responsible. The release is then disrupted, so that the four-legged friend's body reacts uncontrollably and actually inappropriately. An increased breathing rate with panting and muscle cramps, which lead to tremors, are often the result.
These clinical pictures include, for example:
- Cushing's disease, where cortisol levels are permanently elevated
- Thyroid diseases and
- Addison's disease, a chronic hypofunction of the renal adrenal cortex.
If your dog is affected, symptoms will occur over time other symptoms on. In Addison's disease, for example, these include indigestion and excessive thirst. An underactive thyroid often leads to significant weight gain, a great need for sleep and skin or coat problems. Similar signs can be observed in Cushing's syndrome.
4. Symptoms of poisoning
Sudden severe shaking and panting can also be signs of a poisoning be with your four-legged friend.
If you're lucky, it's «only» an ingestion of small toxic amounts, e.g. leaves of harmful plants. However, it is also possible that the dog has consumed life-threatening poisons, such as pest control agents such as rat poison or slug pellets. Insect bites or snake bites also cause such reactions.
More info
Poisoning is always an acute emergency: So you need to go to the vet immediately – even at night! You can also find out more about the topic in our article “Poisoning in dogs”.
Many toxins work within a few minutes, but there are also cases in which the effect only occurs after a few days. Other symptoms that you need to pay attention to include apathetic behavior, severe digestive disorders such as (bloody) vomiting or diarrhea and high fever.
5. Too high Blood pressure
Dogs can also stay there High blood pressure suffer. Unlike in humans, hypertension – as the technical term goes – is only very rarely caused by cardiovascular diseases.
Instead, they mostly are diseases of the metabolic organs, e.g. chronic kidney failure, which causes blood to be pumped through the veins too quickly. Hormonal disorders such as Cushing's syndrome, side effects of medication and acute emergencies such as poisoning are also possible causes.
Spasmodic convulsions combined with shortness of breath and panting are a common symptom associated with high blood pressure. Extreme thirst, apathetic behavior and loss of appetite can also be signs of this insidious, dangerous illness.