Studies investigating "odd" pet behaviors offer important insights
Back in 2012, a group of researchers in Montreal published a study that changed the way I approached my behavior cases. These wonderful scientists, including a veterinary behaviorist, set about to investigate potential underlying causes for excessive licking in dogs. To do so, they evaluated dogs with a history of licking objects, including floors, furniture, blankets, and metal, as well as a control group with no such history. Each of the dogs was evaluated by a veterinary behaviorist, a veterinary internist, a veterinary neurologist, and, if they had a history of licking themselves, a veterinary dermatologist. All of the dogs had an extensive medical workup which included physical exams, blood tests, stool tests, ultrasounds of their abdomens, as well as endoscopy—a test where a camera is passed through the mouth to view the esophagus, stomach, and upper small intestines. During endoscopy, small biopsies were taken from the stomach and small intestines to evaluate these tissues microscopically, something that’s necessary to diagnose conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease.
The results were pretty remarkable—the majority of the dogs in the licking group had some sort of gastrointestinal abnormality. A few of the dogs in the control group did too (if you do enough testing you might just find an abnormality somewhere) but significantly more of the licking dogs had something amiss in their guts. And thankfully for the dogs, about 75% of them improved or stopped licking altogether when their underlying disease was treated.
What I found interesting when reviewing the backgrounds on these dogs is that many of them had started licking when they were quite young, (~ 2.5 years of age), many had been licking for a long time (~ 3 years), and many licked A LOT (daily, from seconds to hours). Some of these excessive lickers had other signs of gut troubles, such as eating grass, vomiting, soft stool, flatulence, and diarrhea, but over half of them had no other symptoms aside from licking.
This is one of the key lessons from this study for me. Why? Often when seemingly odd behaviors, like licking the furniture for hours, start up and nothing else that appears amiss, these behaviors either get written off as just being a quirk or the animal is assumed to have some sort of behavioral disorder. I suspect that’s why some of the pets in this study weren’t evaluated for years (as was the case for dogs in a follow-up study investigating fly-biting). However, most of these pets in these studies were found to have an identifiable disease when they were evaluated, and most of them responded positively and quickly to treatment—their behavioral “quirks” either resolved completely or got a whole lot better.
These are just more examples to demonstrate that behavior changes, even when the behaviors seem odd or quirky or don’t fit with our ideas of what a certain illness should look like, are frequently a sign of physical illness. When they are assumed to be “behavioral”, the true underlying illness can go untreated for years.
Actionable steps you can take
As a pet parent, if you have a dog that excessively licks objects, you, or themselves, fly-bites, or you have a dog or cat that frequently eats non-food items, get them evaluated by your veterinarian. If standard tests don’t turn up anything and if you have the means to do so, take them to a veterinary internist for a more detailed evaluation. If that’s not an option, talk to your vet about starting a trial of nonspecific treatment to see if that helps alleviate your pet’s symptoms. Five of the dogs in the licking study above didn’t have any abnormalities show up on their test results, and yet 4 of them responded positively to a nonspecific treatment of a prescription diet and antacids.
Also, if you have a dog or cat that shows signs of fear and anxiety regularly, pay close attention to what’s going on with their gut too. How well do they eat? Would you describe them as “picky?” How often do they have soft stool? Do they vomit? If so, how often? Do they burp a lot? Are they gassy? Can you hear their stomach rumbling frequently? All of these may seem like pretty mild symptoms, especially if your pet is otherwise alert, active, and eats enough to maintain their weight, and they can be easy to brush off. But they are all also signs that something is not quite right with your pet’s gut health, something that is probably making them uncomfortable, and could be making them more irritable or anxious. Keep a log of what you observe and when, and then talk to your veterinary team about the best way to address it.
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Thanks also to all subscribers that joined in on the chat last week! I loved seeing the pictures of your pets and getting to know more about you. This week and every week moving forward, I invite you to share something about your pet that made you laugh or sparked a bit of joy over in the chat. I can’t wait to read what you have to share.
Happy Holidays,
Kelly
Studies referred to in this issue:
Bécuwe-Bonnet, V., Bélanger, M.-C., Frank, D., Parent, J.M., Hélie, P., 2012. Gastrointestinal disorders in dogs with excessive licking of surfaces. Journal of Veterinary Behavior: Clinical Applications and Research 7, 194–204. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jveb.2011.07.003
Frank, D., Bélanger, M.-C., Bécuwe-Bonnet, V., Parent, J.M., 2012. Prospective medical evaluation of 7 dogs presented with fly biting. Canadian Veterinary Journal 53, 1279–1284.