Created: Jan 23, 2025 07:59 AM
Spring is an incredibly stimulating, exciting and sometimes confusing time for your pets, says Lucy Richardson. (Photograph from Adobe Stock)
I was driving down the road the other morning, no other cars around, when I saw an intact (hasn’t been neutered) male dog wearing a collar run out of a driveway and start hightailing it down the road at a good pace. He quickly pulled into another driveway and disappeared. We stopped and, on hearing his owner calling out, we shouted back to say he had gone into the bushes over here. She soon came and retrieved him safe and sound with no injuries and we carried on our way.
When we got back to the clinic after our morning appointments, I was told we had an emergency coming down. Two female intact (not been spayed) dogs living in the same home had got into a fight and may need some patching up. Luckily for them, it was all superficial scratches and small puncture wounds; nothing too serious. They soon went home feeling a little less battle-scarred than when they arrived, and they should make a full recovery.
That evening, I was scanning through social media and saw a report of a missing dog that had escaped that same day. This got me thinking that all these events could be related and what was likely happening here was “spring fever”.
Spring fever is a condition sometimes experienced by pets in response to the changing weather from winter to spring. It also coincides with the start of the breeding season for many animals.
The reason dogs and cats are so strongly affected by spring fever is that their senses are much more attuned to changes in smell and temperature than those of humans. This makes spring an incredibly stimulating, exciting and sometimes confusing time for your pets, which may lead to a change in their behaviour.
Both dogs and cats can be expected to become more excitable or agitated and may experience heightened libido. This is certainly true for intact animals as this is the time of year that breeding occurs, but spring fever can also affect spayed and neutered animals to some degree.
Symptoms include increased energy, waking up earlier, increased curiosity and being more territorial. They may also want to spend more time in the sun and can become overheated. These changes are triggered by diurnal rhythms, lengthening days and increasing temperatures, which may be subtly perceived by humans but is more obvious to our animal companions.
My take-home message is this: make sure your pet is properly secured, microchipped, and given plenty of exercise and mental stimulation during this seasonal change, or you may find yourself chasing him down the road.
• Lucy Richardson graduated from Edinburgh University in 2005. She started CedarTree Vets in August 2012 with her husband, Mark. They live at the practice with their two children, Ray and Stella, and their dog, two cats and two guinea pigs. She is also the FEI national head veterinarian for Bermuda
