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How to remove the fear of your pet when visiting a vet

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Play vets at home

Pets across the world dread visiting the vet. Like us at the dentist, they cower in the waiting room, and can you blame them? Pets don’t understand that heading here is for the greater good. As such, they’ll do whatever necessary to avoid it at all costs!

The trouble is that regular vet visits are fundamental to ongoing pet care. You can, of course, eliminate their regularity with proper care and quality pet food as offered by companies like Barking Heads for ongoing pet health. Sadly, even if your four-legged friend is healthy and happy in every other way, you’ll still need to take them along to the surgery for vaccinations, deworming, and the like fairly often.

If you’re fed up with dragging them unwillingly through, then it’s past time that you addressed this fear with the following vital pointers. 

Play vets at home

Remember when you used to play vets with your teddies? Well, it’s time to do the same with your real-life pet. In many cases, pets develop vet aversions simply because visits involve handling that they aren’t used to. To help, play vets at home, or at least put them on the table and acclimatise them to handling that’s similar to what they experience at the vet. This way, it won’t come as such a shock to the system next time a real visit is necessary. 

Don’t just go to the surgery for treatment

If something terrible happens every time you head to your veterinary surgery, it’s no wonder your pet’s a little reluctant to visit. Avoid this escalation of anxiety by visiting the surgery for a variety of other reasons. It may be that you head in with your pet to book appointments from now on instead of phoning. Or, you may start buying some of the toys or foods on offer in most vet receptions. You could even head in to make use of the scales usually supplied in the waiting area. Either way, get your pet used to coming here for good reasons, and they might forget to feel frightened at their next appointment.

Pair vet visits with something nice

Rewards are also an efficient way to make scary things seem better, and you may find that pairing vet visits with something nice is yet another way to remove the fear. Okay, you can’t exactly bribe your dog with promises of a nice walk if they behave themselves, but repeated behaviours stick. Your dog probably won’t mind their examination as much if they know from experience that their favourite things will follow fast behind. Of course, your pet won’t always be up for exertion after every appointment. If they are, though, be sure to make the most of it.

Nerves and vet visits often go hand in hand, but that needn’t be the case. By addressing the issues in the ways mentioned above, you could soon find that your pet’s the only one looking pleased in the entire waiting room next time around.

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