You might want to compare this post with “Dog Facial Expressions: Can You See the Stress?” That post from 2022 features Lewis, who is showing stress in a different way.

From 2013.

Poor Clara had her yearly vet visit this past week. She is my feral dog, and although I have two socialization sessions with her every week and she is making great progress, I have not worked with her at the vet. Going to the vet is graduate school, and she’s just to 7th grade or so.

So what do you do when you have to put your dog in a situation for which they are not ready to be comfortable? What I did was take lots of food for distractions and get through it as fast as possible.

For Clara, getting shots or other procedures that cause a bit of pain is not the problem. Being in a building with other people and dogs in close proximity, and being handled and restrained by strangers is. This is by far the most frightened she has ever been at the vet’s, probably because Continue reading “Dog Facial Expressions: Stress”