Thousands of years of living with dogs have taught us that our furry dogs express their emotions and needs in a way that is very different from ours and that their behavior, although sometimes they seem strange or even annoying, they have a meaning. This is why we should never punish or try to solve a behavioral problem without knowing its origin, since we could end up making the situation worse.
If you have noticed that your dog is more restless than usual, from our site we tell you some of the most frequent reasons why your dog scratches the doorand how to avoid them. Keep reading!
The importance of context
Before initiating any type of intervention or treatment for scratching behavior, it is essential to thoroughly investigate the cause(s) that the could be causing.
To do this, we must carefully observe our dog and find out in which situations the inappropriate behavior appears. Does the dog scratch only one door or does it scratch all of them? Does the behavior occur only in the absence of the guardians? How often does he scratch the door? How long has it been since he started doing it?
Asking ourselves these and other questions will undoubtedly help us get a better idea of what may be going on inside our dog companion's head and what is the best way to help him.
Why is my dog scratching the door?
As it happens with the vast majority of canine behaviors, there is no single reason that can explain why our dog scratches or scratches the door, but in this article we present the most frequent ones:
Organic problems
The first step when working with a behavioral disorder is to rule out that the dog suffers from any type of pain or organic pathology, especially when the problem behavior appears suddenly or without noticeable changes in the animal's environment.
Many he alth problems can cause strange behavior in dogs as a result of the discomfort they cause, so it never hurts to go to the vet if we see that our four-legged friend is more upset than usual. usual.
Separation Anxiety
If you have noticed that your dog scratches the door when you leave, that is, only when he is home alone or when you're not in the same room as your human family, you're more likely to experience separation anxiety.
Separation anxiety (PSA) is a behavioral disorder that appears only when the dog is physically separated from one or more of its guardians. In this context, the dog can reach very high levels of stress and discomfort that it will try to alleviate through behaviors such as scratching the front door of the house (where he knows his guardians have come out), barking or howling continuously, relieving himself in inappropriate places, panting excessively or wandering from one place to another.
All these behaviors are completely involuntary, so we should not punish the dogif, when we return home, we find that he has done some mess. We discuss this disorder in more depth in the article on Separation Anxiety in Dogs.
Learned behavior
Dogs learn mainly by association, which means that if a behavior has been successful in the past, they tend to repeat it more often.
Have you ever opened the door for your furry friend after he hit it or scratched it with his paws? If so, it is possible that the dog has learned to demand your attention or to request access to the street, the garden or a room by scratching the door.
Stress or lack of stimulation
Every dog needs to cover a series of needs on a daily basis and we are not just referring to eating, sleeping and going outside to urinate. Depending on its age, breed, physical condition and temperament, each dog will require a daily amount of physical, mental and social stimulationto release energy and improve her well-being.
If our dog does not have any of its needs properly met or is not frequently offered the possibility of performing behaviors typical of its species, it may feel frustratedand experience peaks of stress that lead to compulsive or stereotyped behaviors, such as scratching or scratching the door insistently. Discover What is a stereotypy in animals in this other article to check if this is the cause that explains why your dog scratches the doors.
How to prevent my dog from scratching the door?
Once any organic pathology has been ruled out, we can begin to work on the problem through behavior modification, although, as is evident, the treatment will be different depending on the cause or causes that we have identified, so Ideally, we should have the help of an ethologist or canine educator to help us out during the process.
In case you suspect that your dog may be suffering from separation anxiety, it is highly recommended to record on video the moments in which he is left alone at home. These recordings provide a lot of information, both for tutors and professionals. On the one hand, it allows us to know if our furry friend has a hard time when he is separated from us and, on the other hand, it helps us to establish a work plan adapted to our specific case.
Also, a problem behavior that arises as a result of a learning process is usually easier to eradicate. In this case, we must stop reinforcing the behavior in order to make it end. That is, if the dog asks us to go outside by scratching the door, we have to ignore this behavior and not open the door at that moment We will wait to do so when the can take a more appropriate action, either of their own volition or at our request (for example, sitting and waiting).
Finally, it is essential to offer our dog enough daily activity to prevent it from suffering stress and releasing stored energy inappropriately. Going out with him to exercise, allowing him to explore new environments calmly during the walk, training skills, encouraging him to socialize with other dogs and people or using products such as refillable toys, puzzles or sniffing mats are ideas that will help our dog to be more relaxed at home and show more balanced behaviors that will undoubtedly improve their quality of life. See our article on Environmental Enrichment in Dogs for more information on this topic.
If you want to save money and make your own toys yourself, don't miss our video where we teach you how to make a sniffing mat:
