How can I help my dog who has panic attacks?

Question

So about 5 years ago our dog had what we thought was a fit triggered by our fire alarm going off. We took a video then took her straight to the vet and they said it wasn’t epilepsy it was her just panicking and getting overwhelmed by the fire alarm. (I can’t remember exactly what was said as I was a kid at the time).

Now she still has them every now and again. Not every day or even every week but she still has them. But interestingly her trigger isn’t the fire alarm as it’s gone off since and she’s been fine. It’s whenever she needs to burp or throw up. She becomes all stiff and shaky and unbalanced when she walks sometimes falling over. Panting and drooling. Then she’ll either burp or throw up and then she’s completely fine like it never happened.

We have never shouted at her over anything including throwing up. The only time we have to tell her off is if she growls at our other dog over food and she stops straight away, other than that she’s good as gold. I think she panics at the feeling of feeling sick which i understand completely as I suffer with panic attacks too and feeling sick also makes me feel panicky. But my question is we can’t exactly remove the feeling of needing to burp or throw up, (and we can’t tell her to do box breathing and grounding techniques 😂) so how can we help her?

Posted Apr 3, 2026, 4:56 PM UTC

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