How To Help Stop Your Animal Feel Over-Excited With Natural Therapies

As an animal owner or keeper, you'll see a variety of behaviours. Whether it's your horse, pet, or other animal. And their behaviour will include some level of excitability.

Excitability can be for a range of reasons. For horses, going to a show, or somewhere different can be very exciting. This can be despite our best our best efforts and training.

What Can You Do To Stop Your Pet Feeling Over-Excited

Firstly identify the reason or situation.

Knowing why your animal is feeling excited is the first step. It's ideal if you can take action to reduce the likelihood of excitability in advance.

If you know your animal is likely to face an excitable situation. Then using complementary therapies in advance can be invaluable. For instance use:

• Herbs - Popular herbs for 'calming' include Valerian, Chamomile and Vervain
• Homeopathy - Scutellaria is a popular homeopathic remedy to help with excitability
• Bach Flower Remedies - There are 38 of these remedies. And many will be useful to help your animal at some point during his or her life. Helping with all types of emotional states, including excitability. The best remedy will depend on your individual animal. Also Vervain as mentioned above is not only a herb but part of the Bach system.
• Massage - There are specialist canine, equine and feline massage therapists. But other animals can find massage useful too! Massage can be soothing and relieve tension and stress. Helping your animal to feel more relaxed generally can be helpful.
• Natural supplements such as magnesium can also be useful. Find out more here in this Natural Pet Health blog post

If you're faced with an unexpected event, that means your animal is over-excited. What do you do?

• Bach Flower Remedies are again useful. A combination remedy called "Rescue Remedy" is helpful for "crisis situations".
• Homeopathy - by using an increased dosage, then scutellaria can be helpful.
• Tellington Ttouch involves a variety of techniques which help wellbeing. And including in stressful situations. E.g. Using stroking of your horse or pet's ears can be useful to reduce anxiety.

Other ideas to help your animals' excitability

If your animal is prone to excitability then consider what feed and care you're giving.

For example using "Five Element Theory"*. Neutral or cooling foods can be better than having warm foods. Warming foods can enflame an excitable situation. As an example if your dog or cat have chicken or lamb normally and they're a "fire personality". Then these can exacerbate their heat and excitability or other behaviour. Instead duck, rabbit or pork can be better.

*You can find more information on Five Element Theory here. This is the basis of many traditional chinese veterinary medicine techniques.

Remember.. There can be many reasons for your animal to be showing excitable behaviour. If you're in any doubt as to the reason. Or your animal is showing signs of distress, then always speak to your veterinary surgeon without delay.

It's possible your animal could harm him or herself. Or there maybe an underlying health reason that needs diagnosis and treatment.

Lastly… Do you know someone who'd find this helpful? Please share, the more we can spread awareness of the benefits of natural therapies the better! :)

Find out more about other natural animal therapies here at Taranet. Or read other articles in this Natural Pet Health Blog. Take a look at the sitemap here to explore!

About the Author

Suzanne Harris is founder of this Taranet website at www.taranet.co.uk, and also provides business coaching to horse and dog care and veterinary professionals.