07/29/2026
“The rise in anxiety among American humans has been exhaustively documented,” Rose Horowitch wrote in 2024. “With much less fanfare, we also seem to have entered the age of the anxious canine.” https://theatln.tc/7OklVWaz
Many of America’s 85 veterinary behaviorists are booked months in advance. Several whom Horowitch spoke with said that the number of people seeking pet mental-health care has exploded in the past few years. But there is no consensus as to why. One theory is that dogs today are more anxious. More Americans are choosing to adopt pets, which saves lives but can leave traumatized pets with inexperienced owners. We’ve also altered the way pets live in ways that may make them anxious or aggressive toward people and other dogs. But it could also be that anxious adults are projecting their own issues onto their furry companions. What people classify as a behavioral issue reflects human expectations as much as a dog’s nature, according to a bioethicist.
“So is the dog-anxiety crisis real, or is it a product of owners’ anxiety-riddled psyches? Dogs can’t tell us how they’re feeling, so we’ll probably never know,” Horowitch continues. “But both explanations are depressing. Either humans are stressing dogs out so much that they truly need prescription meds, or owners are putting their dogs on unnecessary psychoactive drugs to address annoying but normal dog habits. It might be time, in other words, to reevaluate the way we approach dog ownership.
“Many Americans don’t have the time, energy, or green space their pets need to thrive,” Horowitch continues. “If the choice is to medicate our dogs or to make them, and ourselves, miserable, pet ownership starts to seem ethically murky.”
🎨: Paul Spella / The Atlantic. Source: Getty.
