Puppies are adorable additions to the family, but they’re also a big responsibility for the household. While some puppies have the right nature-nurture makeup to adjust to their new environment easily, other puppies may not be as gifted.
These latter batch of pups can face anxiety in their new surroundings. This can cause them to act out in undesirable ways, like crying incessantly, chewing on furniture, wetting the floor, or hiding in dark or hard-to-reach corners around the house.
For homeowners dealing with this situation, it can be head-scratchingly difficult to get their puppy comfortable in their new home. However, there are some ways you can manage their anxiety, and one such way is by providing them with a heartbeat toy.
A heartbeat toy is an oft-overlooked but helpful tool that can give your pup the comfort it needs to manage its anxiety. From relieving stress to providing comfort, this toy comes with a wide host of benefits that make it a great investment in the household.
Ready to learn more? Let’s take a look at the uses of these heartbeat toys in more detail.
What is a Heartbeat Toy
Contrary to popular belief, a heartbeat toy is not shaped like a heart. Its only similarity to a heart is its rhythmic vibrations, mimicking the beating heart of a mother dog.
The battery-operated vibrating toy is wrapped in soft, plush material, making it a cosy and comforting companion for young pups or dogs in unfamiliar environments. It can be a great tool to help provide a sense of calm to young dogs.
7 Benefits of a Heartbeat Toy for Anxious Puppies
Here are some notable benefits of giving your new puppy a heartbeat toy.
- Reduce Stress and Anxiety
The most beneficial factor of heartbeat toys is their inherent calming properties. The soft texture of the toy, alongside its rhythmic pulsations, helps make the puppy feel as if it’s with its litter and mother.
This provides a strong sense of comfort to the pup, which can make it feel at home regardless of whether they’re with their litter or not. This gives them the confidence to step out of their comfort zone and interact with their new unfamiliar surroundings more readily.
For pups brought into new households, this can help them quickly and easily adjust to their new environment. And when this happens, they can be more open to getting to know their family and their home through their senses.
Without a heartbeat toy, these pups may take longer to adjust to their new surroundings and trust their new human carers. While they can adjust in due time, the timeline may be longer and the chances of a successful integration into the household and the world around them are ever-so-slimmer.
A heartbeat toy, on the other hand, provides a much better guarantee for your pup’s proper social development.
- Improve Sleep Quality
Puppies in their early years enter a rapid stage of growth and development, and a healthy level of growth is achieved only if they get over 16 hours of sleep every day. A heartbeat toy helps promote restful sleep that supports the pup’s growing body and mind.
The toy achieves this by providing a soothing, pulsing sensation to give the puppy a feeling that it’s in a safe and comfortable environment. These predictable and gentle movements grant the dog a sense of security—as if it’s sleeping with its pack—helping lull it to sleep.
When the pup achieves restful sleep, it can be energised and set up to develop properly. This, in turn, promotes their health and keeps them happy and well-rested whenever they’re awake.
- Minimises Destructive Behaviour
When a dog is anxious or stressed, they may redirect their uneasiness to their immediate surroundings.
They could, for instance, chew on furniture or destroy random household items. This is not only costly to deal with, but it can also set a bad precedent as your pup may grow to handle its stressors externally if not corrected earlier.
One alternative (and much better) coping mechanism they can turn to is sticking with their heartbeat toy. The toy can give them something comfortable to turn to during times of distress, allowing them to calm themselves down and spend less time breaking random household objects.
Furthermore, the mother-like sensation the toy emits also helps reduce stress in your pup, which essentially solves the root cause of the behaviour. With a calm dog, ensuring that your household is safe becomes more of a breeze.
- Helps Pups Transition to New Home
Adopting a puppy that’s less than three months old can be a drastic life change for them. They’ll essentially be leaving their littermates and mother behind, which can be a huge change of pace and potentially distressing.
To add to that, they’ll also have to reorient themselves to a completely new environment and set of people. You’re essentially overturning their world and putting them somewhere completely unfamiliar and new, which can feel confusing and overwhelming to these tiny dogs.
That’s not to say that’s a bad thing, though! To help them adjust to their new home quickly, a heartbeat toy can be the perfect tool to act as the bridge for them to more smoothly adjust to their new home.
Through its rhythmic motions, this toy can provide them with the support needed to adjust to their new place more quickly. By properly using the toy, they’ll be more at ease and a much better companion for you and your family.
- Provides a Comfort Item
A heartbeat toy has plush-like qualities that add to that sense of comfort in dogs, making it a great toy to have if your dog is easily stressed or anxious.
Browse through your local or online pet retailer’s range of heartbeat toys and you can see a variety of different plush animals designed to give your pup some comfort.
From a sheep to a bone design, there’s a wide variety of designs to choose from that can get your puppy to feel at ease in their new home environment.
The great thing about this item is that it can help provide comfort to your dogs in a wide range of scenarios.
If your dog is uneasy with a visitor around the house, or if they need emotional support because their favourite human is away, they can turn to these toys to reassure them and make them feel calm across most scenarios.
- Durable and Safe for All Dogs
Heartbeat toys are a tad more complex than mass-produced plush toys.
They don’t get released easily to the public market—particularly in Australia—if they’re deemed unsafe or toxic in some capacity.
So by buying a heartbeat toy from an authentic retailer, you can rest easy knowing that the item you’re getting is one that’s gone through a strict quality control process.
The heartbeat toy’s plush is soft and gentle on the mouth, all while still remaining durable and not easily broken. Furthermore, the vibrating mechanism and batteries are enclosed behind a secure hatch that can’t easily be opened. This prevents unwanted access.
That said, be sure to conduct regular inspections on the toy to ensure that it’s still in good condition. By doing this, you can ensure that your pup is safe, secure, and happy with their toy at all times.
- Facilitates Healthy Social Development
A heartbeat toy has a potent long-term use as well, and that’s its role in helping foster a pup’s social skills later in life.
With a heartbeat toy, your pup will feel secure and not so easily afraid amidst stressful and unfamiliar situations. Their smooth and quick adjustment period can reinforce their emotional stability, which can help pave the way for healthy human and dog interactions in the future.
Furthermore, a puppy that’s free from anxiety can also learn to love and enjoy the company of their humans and animal housemates. This can help them become well-adjusted dogs as they progress in life.
