Kris­tel-Marie Ram­nath

“Zoomies” have been a part of the lives of dog own­ers far longer than Zoom meet­ings! The ex­act ori­gin of the term is un­cer­tain, but the first part of the word is like­ly a straight­for­ward use of the verb “zoom” which means to move or trav­el very quick­ly. Zoomies be­came a slang term used by pet own­ers to de­scribe sud­den, short-lived spurts of ac­tiv­i­ty by their dogs.

The of­fi­cial sci­en­tif­ic term for zoomies is “Fre­net­ic Ran­dom Ac­tiv­i­ty Pe­ri­ods” or FRAPs. These pe­ri­ods usu­al­ly dis­play as bursts or ex­plo­sions of en­er­gy where your dog may race around in cir­cles do­ing laps of the house or gar­den, usu­al­ly with his back end tucked in. Some dogs spin around, chas­ing their tails or run­ning fig­ure-eights. Oth­ers make sharp turns or sud­den changes in di­rec­tion and dogs usu­al­ly get a wild, ex­cit­ed look in their eyes when they’re in the zoomie zone.

No need to wor­ry. Your dog is not go­ing crazy! Dog zoomies are a nat­ur­al ca­nine be­hav­iour, in fact they are one of the most charm­ing and en­ter­tain­ing be­hav­iours per­formed by dogs. While there is no known spe­cif­ic cause of FRAPs in dogs, they ap­pear to be a way to re­lease pent-up en­er­gy. A dog who has been home alone all day with noth­ing to do may feel the need to zoom around the house or gar­den to ex­pend some of the en­er­gy that has been build­ing up all day, and get some men­tal re­lief from hours of un­der-stim­u­la­tion.

Zoomies are al­so thought to be a way for an­i­mals to re­lieve stress and anx­i­ety af­ter ex­pe­ri­enc­ing an event that may cause them to build up ten­sion, such as be­ing re­strained to be bathed or groomed or af­ter get­ting home from a vis­it to the vet.

A lot of dogs zoom around when they can­not con­trol their ex­cite­ment, such as when their own­ers re­turn home from work or pe­ri­od of ab­sence. This is one way of ex­press­ing their hap­pi­ness that their own­ers are back. Food-ori­ent­ed dogs may do zoomies around feed­ing time or af­ter eat­ing. Dogs that love wa­ter will al­so zoom around af­ter the adren­a­line rush cre­at­ed by a bath, and this has the added ad­van­tage of dry­ing them off.

It may be com­mon for some dogs to get zoomies at spe­cif­ic pe­ri­ods dur­ing the day, usu­al­ly in the morn­ings or late at night. This may be re­lat­ed to the built-in bi­o­log­i­cal rhythm of that par­tic­u­lar dog, the same way some hu­mans ob­serve that they feel more en­er­getic around the same time every day. If your dog reg­u­lar­ly does zoomies right be­fore bed, he may be blow­ing off some steam be­fore set­tling down for a longer rest.

Zoomies are most com­mon in pup­pies and young dogs, but many dogs con­tin­ue to get the zoomies lat­er on in life as well. Some own­ers are able to in­sti­gate an at­tack of the zoomies by play­ing a cer­tain way with the dog or mak­ing a par­tic­u­lar sound that sets the dog off. When dogs re­alise that zoom­ing around like crazy makes their own­ers laugh and show­er them with af­fec­tion, they may learn to do this be­hav­iour to get at­ten­tion from their own­ers.

While zoomies them­selves are not harm­ful and typ­i­cal­ly last on­ly a few min­utes, a dog rac­ing around the house or yard may be in dan­ger of run­ning in­to sharp ob­jects and in­jur­ing them­selves or of knock­ing some­thing over, so try to en­sure that the en­vi­ron­ment in which the dog is zoom­ing is safe.

If your dog does zoomies fre­quent­ly or at un­usu­al times, he may be telling you that he needs more ex­er­cise and men­tal stim­u­la­tion.

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