Our dog won’t sleep alone...

QOur six-year-old Jack Russell, who we rescued six months ago, has started jumping up at the door where he sleeps at night because he wants to be with us. This has happened since we moved house a month ago. How can we restore his (and our) peaceful nights?

AThe reason for your dog’s current anxiety is understandable, and I suspect many dogs will be having the same issues as their owners get back to a normal routine, leaving the house for work, for example.

Your dog has more reason than most to be anxious, since he’s been rescued.

Just as he had started to adapt to his much-improved lifestyle with you, there was another change and he has reverted to signs of separation anxiety.

Dogs enjoy a set routine, so establishing a new one will be a useful starting point. This involves regular times for walks, one not long before sleep time, and regular feeding times.

Make the kitchen a welcoming place with a new, warm, soft bed.

Don’t respond to his jumping up by trying to calm him, giving in, or telling him off – he’s craving attention and that provides it. Instead, practise leaving him for a few minutes, gradually increasing the duration, and praising him when he displays good behaviour.

You could try a natural dog pheromone such as Adaptil (adaptil.com) to help him feel at ease. And a reader recently wrote to me advocating Bach Flower Rescue Remedy (bachflower.com). Although my own experience of this is lacking, it might be worth a go.

With patience, your peaceful nights should resume, but contact your vet if they don’t.

Q

We have a cockapoo that suffers from allergies. Although he has had injections, he still chews his paws. Someone has recommended putting a few drops of cannabis oil in his food. What do you think?

AI am assuming that the cockapoo has atopic dermatitis (atopy). This type of allergy is common and diagnosis can be quite difficult. It involves ruling out potential triggers that cause a dog to chew its feet, including a hypoallergenic trial for food allergy, which can exactly mimic atopy.

Your dog might have had anti-inflammatory injections or perhaps a vaccine to try to get the allergies under control. Atopy requires lifelong treatment, which means it is likely you’ll be seeing rather a lot of your vet or a specialist veterinary dermatologist.

If the foot chewing is not controlled, I recommend a new appointment with the vet to review the diagnosis and see if anything has changed, and to investigate any flare factors that may have caused deterioration. Yeast and bacterial infections, for example, are very common in allergic conditions in dogs, and if these are present, treating them will bring about an improvement.

I have no experience in the medicinal use of cannabis oil in dogs. There is a lot of interest in its use, particularly in the US, and increasingly here.

There have been no controlled studies of cannabis oil for the treatment of atopy in dogs, and therefore I would not recommend its use without veterinary advice until some future studies prove its effectiveness.