Anxious dogs are being medicated at a rate that keeps climbing. Prescriptions for canine anxiety medication have increased over 300% in the past decade.

But before we talk about what's driving that number, let's talk about what anxiety has actually taken from your dog, and from you.

The dog who used to greet you at the door instead of hiding from it. Who could sit through a thunderstorm instead of shaking under the bed. Who didn't need you to plan every outing around whether they'd cope.

Anxiety took that dog. And for most owners, the answer has been a prescription that trades the barking for a dog who barely responds to anything anymore.

Here's what most owners never get told:

Standard anxiety medication doesn't fix the alarm system, it overrides the entire nervous system around it. The barking stops. So does the personality.

And here's the deeper problem:

Most calming chews use ingredients in concentrations too small to do anything meaningful in a 60-pound dog. They might contain "calming" ingredients, but not at a dose that reaches the brain's alarm center.

So a chew that "didn't work" wasn't proof nothing could help...

...it was proof the dose never had a chance to reach where it needed to go.