18 Jul 2025
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Gut-health
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Ensuring your dog is happy, safe, and healthy is a labour of love that begins on day one. Whether it’s diet, meticulous training, socialising, or desensitising - as dedicated dog owners, we do everything we can to see our dogs grow into well-rounded adults, and show them that the big, wide world isn’t so scary!
Stress and anxiety are extremely common in dogs and can sometimes be a short-term problem, or something that affects your dog as a puppy as well as later in life. Stress and anxiety in dogs can impact their life in many ways, particularly in terms of the symptoms and signs it tends to bring to the surface.
While the root of their issues can often be clear, it can also seem to come from nowhere, or be a struggle to get control of.
Well, did you know that your dog’s gut microbiome and their gut health could be a big contributor to feelings of stress and anxiety? Read on to explore how and why your dog’s gut impacts their mood and behaviour, signs and symptoms of stress and anxiety, and how to go about soothing your dog.
If we take a peek into your dog’s gut, you’ll find that it’s teeming with life! Within your dog’s gut lives their gut microbiome. This is a little ecosystem of bacteria and fungi that play a crucial role in the smooth functioning of many of the main processes within the body, including brain function and behaviour.
Some of the bacteria inside their microbiome, such as Bacteroides and Lactobacillus, help utilise or encourage the production of neurotransmitters. These are ‘carrier pigeons’ in the brain that communicate signals to the rest of the body, telling it what to do or how the host is feeling.
One example of a neurotransmitter is serotonin, which is predominantly produced in the gut. As well as sending signals from your dog’s brain to the rest of their body, it also acts as a hormone which, in the case of serotonin, helps them feel happy, calm and relaxed.
To successfully produce important chemicals like serotonin, your dog’s gut microbiome should be rich and balanced. This is bacteria that is rich, and of varying species, but all in equal proportion to each other. When a certain bacteria is lacking, or has the opportunity to overgrow, this knocks the microbiome’s diversity and balance.
This means the processes the bacteria support, can’t do so, causing adverse effects around your dog’s body, including the disruption of producing these important neurotransmitters.
When the production of your dog’s neurotransmitters is disrupted, they are left with an underproduction of these happy hormones. This only leaves room for more impactful feelings like anxiety and irritability.
On top of this, an unbalanced microbiome, or dysbiosis as it’s referred to, also leads to a number of symptoms around the body that can cause pain and discomfort.
Dogs with hidden pain, like that inside the gut, can become stressed, anxious, and even sometimes aggressive.
This direct link between your dog’s gut and their mood, behaviour, and overall brain function is often referred to as the gut-brain axis. This highlights the communication between the two - and how they constantly impact each other in a somewhat ‘cause and effect’ cycle.
For example, it’s common knowledge that when you first bring your puppy home at 8 weeks, their poops will change. Where they might have been normal and firm whilst they resided with their mother and litter mates, they may suddenly appear runny as soon as they come home with you.
This can be put down to going from their mother’s milk to food, or a change in food altogether. It can also be down to the gut-brain axis.
The change in environment and location, as well as being taken away from familiar surroundings, not only impacts their microbial diversity but often causes stress and anxiety, and vice versa. This then impacts their gut health and the state of their poops.
The easiest way to see whether your dog's gut health and their microbiome have been impacted is through a Gut Health Test.
As dog owners, keeping them happy is our main priority. And since they can’t directly tell us if their gut’s causing them problems - if their microbiome is unbalanced, or even if they’re struggling with feelings of stress and anxiety, we have to look out for the signs. So, what are some common signs of stress and anxiety in dogs?
Whilst dysbiosis is a common contributor to long-term stress and anxiety in dogs, it can be caused or exacerbated by other factors.
Other things that can trigger stress and anxiety in dogs include:
The only way to indicate or rule out dysbiosis in dogs is with a Gut Health Test.
The gut health testing process here at Pooch & Mutt starts by testing a sample of their poo. Testing their poo gives us an insight into what bacteria are living, or what should be living, in the gut.
The analysis is then pulled together into a Gut Health Test Report that outlines the health of their microbiome, their gut. We also provide a completely tailored diet and gut supplement plan, backed by science, to help them get things back on track.
Whilst perfecting and adapting their diet to help get their microbiome back on track is step one after a dysbiosis diagnosis, there are many other things you can do to tackle external causes of stress and anxiety in dogs - to help them feel calmer and confident.
A Gut Health Test for your dog is the first step in truly getting to know more about your dog’s gut health, and helping their overall wellbeing. Find out more about Pooch & Mutt’s Gut Health Test and what exactly it can do for your dog. Any questions, whether about their gut health or how to perfect their diet, reach out to our expert Pooch & Mutt team.
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