Why Your Pet’s Behavior Suddenly Changed | Pet Parent Power-Up

What Changed Before the Behavior Changed?

If your pet has suddenly started acting differently, your first question shouldn't be, how do I make this stop? The first question should really be, what's changed? In this quick pet parent power-up, I'm gonna walk you through the things to check before you decide your pet's just being difficult. You've reached the pet parent hotline, your lifeline to practical solutions for your toughest pet parenting challenges. I'm your host, Amy Castro, and I'm here to help you cut through the noise and turn expert advice into step-by-step strategies so you can stop chasing your tail and start enjoying life with pets again. Welcome to the Pet Parent Hotline. I'm Amy Castro, and this is your monthly Pet Parent Power Up, a quick fix to help you make one small but useful shift in how you live with your pets. So today's shift is this. If your pet's behavior has changed, ask yourself what else has changed, because behavior changes don't always come out of nowhere. Sometimes your pet is reacting to a shift in the house, a shift in schedules, new noise, your stress level, or even something happening inside their own bodies. And this one is very, very real for me right now because as I am recording this, I'm preparing for a major move halfway across the country. And I thought I had six weeks, but we just changed our closing date, and now I've got three. And that means boxes, packing, sorting, furniture being moved around, and routines definitely getting interrupted around here. And from my point of view, it all makes sense. This is what happens when you move. And I understand why routines have changed and why schedules have changed and why everybody's acting a little bit strange. But my pets don't know any of that. They just know the house feels really, really different. And when a pet's world

Rule Out Medical Issues First

starts to feel really different, their behavior can start to look really different too. But before you jump straight to correcting your pets, let's pause and I want you to do a couple of things. Number one, make sure you're ruling out any kind of medical causes. That should be the first check when a pet's behavior changes, because that could be a signal that your pet is in pain, is ill, is having some type of discomfort, urinary tract infection, whatever it might be. And when you've got behavior changes like your pet having accidents or maybe changes in appetite or drinking more water, or more obvious things like limping or panting excessively, things like that. Don't just write that behavior off to it's, you know, it's chaotic. Make sure you get that medical check done first. And once you've gotten the medical side checked out, the second thing you want to look

Look at What Changed Around Your Pet

at is what has happened in our environment or our routine. You know, using my own situation, we're still a good long ways. Well, I thought we were a good long ways, but still three weeks off from moving. But in the past several months, we have gotten rid of furniture. So places where my cats normally would sleep have disappeared suddenly. Cat towers have been donated or thrown away. Again, places for cats to hide and hang out. So right now, they're all hanging out on my bed, which is not their normal place, especially not being together. And so that can trigger changes in behavior like signs of anxiety. My cat Pennypin Head is over-grooming his belly right now, which is what he does when he's stressed. So he normally has a nice fluffy belly, and now his belly is sort of bald. And it also can trigger this very strange cat thing that seems like I love you, I'm licking you, and now I'm gonna beat you up. And that happens on my bed on a regular basis right now. And for my blind cat, when the normal walking paths are blocked or furniture moves around, that's not just inconvenient. That really changes how she navigates the entire house. So those are the kind of things that it's like, hey, you know, there's a lot going on around here, their world is changed, and maybe they're not responding as well to it as I thought that they would. Same thing goes with my dogs. Dogs have been a little bit more clingy, bothering at the at my bedroom door when I have the door closed to record podcast episodes, or maybe not getting along as well. And we understand as humans the reason, but they just see a disruption in their world that is causing them stress, and that stress has to go someplace, and oftentimes it's gonna go outward in behavior, or sometimes it can go inward and actually trigger illness and things like that. So again, medical check first, then look at what's changed. And once you've eliminated a medical cause and you kind of figured out, well, it really is the change around here. Maybe you're working longer at work and your pet schedules are off. Something as simple as several days of a schedule disruption can cause pets to act in a way that's not normal for them. So what do you do about it, right? Now, obviously, if it's a severe change in behavior, that's something you're gonna want to talk to your veterinarian

Create Predictability During Chaos

about for sure while you're there getting that medical thing checked out. And maybe your pet needs some type of medical intervention or medication. But the other thing that you can definitely do is within the chaos maybe that you're living in, try to at least create some predictability for your pets. Pets definitely do better when they can count on a few basic things being the same or predictable, especially when the rest of life is shifting. So, for example, their feeding. That's something where we can probably take pretty good control over the situation. So keeping to their regular feeding schedule, same times of day. I know that I noticed that my pets were having a little bit of a problem with me. I'm feeding the same time of day, but maybe one day there's boxes in the way where I normally put your food bowl down and it got shifted to another room. And so I realized that was causing an impact in their behavior. So I've tried to pick a spot and keep that just the pet feeding station and not allow any of the moving activity to impact that for this transitional time here. Same thing, especially with litter boxes for cats, you know, and especially if you are, let's say you're doing a bathroom remodel, and that's normally where you keep your cat box. So now you've moved it to the laundry room, but then you realize, oh, it's in the way when you're taking your laundry out, and now you've moved it to another room. That can definitely impact pets. So really thinking about finding one place and keeping it in that one place. And predictability could just be something as simple too as picking a time of day that you're gonna walk your dogs and trying to stick with that, or taking some time if your house is in flux to go back to your bedroom with your cats and play with them and give them attention at a certain time every single day. So predictability doesn't mean your life has to revolve around your pets, but it definitely means carving out specific time to make sure that their needs are getting met, not only physical, but their emotional needs. And then the fourth thing I would suggest you do is, and I kind of alluded to that right at the tail end of the third thing, which is make sure that your pets have calm spaces that they can go to. So whether that is a bedroom that you would put

Give Pets a Calm Space

your cats in with their litter box and their food while you are moving boxes in and out of the house or while you're having that kitchen renovation, not only does that protect your cats from disappearing out an open door, but it also gives them a quiet place to stay out of the chaos. I know for me this coming weekend, I have a friend that's going to come help me pack up my prints and pictures that are on the wall. She owns a frame shop. And so I've already made a plan to put my dogs out in another building on our property. That way they're not overly excited because she's here, getting in our way, getting out of doors, we're packing things out, things like that. So having that extra space to put them in where they're familiar with it and they can just kind of settle down and not necessarily be underfoot or right in the midst of all of the chaos. And I think that's definitely something that we can try to do. And this, you know, this could apply whether you're going through a big change or you just maybe you have visitors. You know, when you have visitors come in from out of town, that's a change that can impact your pets and having a place where they can go to get out of the fray is definitely important. And last but not least, one of the things I'd remind you is when you are going through times of change and it's impacting you and your pets, really, I hate to say lower your standards because that sounds bad, but I think sometimes lowering our expectations. We have this expectation that everything is going to be just perfect, and it's okay to say for now, 80% is good enough. There's nothing wrong with that. Today's pet parent power-up is simple. When your pet's behavior changes, pause before you blame and ask, what else has changed too? Start with the medical side, then look at your environment, add predictability wherever you can, and give your pet a calmer space where they can hang out when life gets chaotic. And if you're in a transition season right now like I am, and you're not sure whether your

Recap, Consults, and Next Episode

pet's behavior is stress, health, routine disruption, or something else, this is exactly the kind of thing we can sort through in a pet parent hotline consultation. You can book one at petparenthotline.com forward slash consult. And before you go, make sure you come back for Sunday's episode on kitten season. We're talking about what really happens when people find very young kittens and assume a shelter or rescue is automatically the safest place for them. The instinct comes from a good place, but the reality is much more complicated than people realize. That's it for this month's Pet Parent Power Up. We'll see you next time. Thanks for listening to the Pet Parent Hotline. If you enjoyed the show, don't keep it to yourself. Text a friend right now with a link and tell them I've got a show that you need to hear. And ask them to let you know what they think. And remember, your pet's best life starts with you living yours. So be sure to take good care of yourself this week and your pets.