Advice needed… The past couple of weeks, Anubis developed a strange habit at night, and occasionally during the day. She starts licking her paws, or the cushion she's lying on, and making a lot of noise with her mouth (swallowing loud), for 5 to 10 minutes at a time. The noise is different from her usual cleaning, and why in the middle of the night? She doesn't do it much - not enough to justify a vet visit I'd say - but the noise wakes me up once or twice every night, as she sleeps on my bed. I give her a bit of water then, because it almost sounds like she's dehydrated, but she won't drink directly from the bowl, she'll only lick it off my hands.

Any thoughts of what this could be? She's 22 months old and otherwise very healthy and happy.

Kaiser does a licking session which sounds like what Anubis does to me, as it also wakes me up, it sounds like he is slapping himself with a slobbery tongue trying to get the dry skin off, when he does it his skin is not affected by it and as you said not the usual cleaning sound, found he does this when his skin is drier than usual as I find I need to give him fish oil everyday and if I miss it seems to affect his skin very fast. Could it be dry skin or have you changed her bedding or what you wash it with? Always hard to find the reasons they do something but just eliminate what has changed and go from there, Good luck.

Jolanda and Kaiser

Thanks Jolanda! Well here's the thing - we moved from London to LA a couple of months ago so EVERYTHING has changed drastically. This has only started a couple of weeks ago though… Dry skin would make sense; so far I've mostly been wondering if the problem was with her mouth/tongue, but perhaps it is the skin...

Ours all do it to some extent. One will lick a spot until it is raw and in spite of all the bitter apple and topical antiseptics we give him, it could be months before the spot is all healed. Sometimes, it will start out in one place and then move inches before he stops. we have tried everything with our vet.

How odd! I actually noticed last night that most of the licking is actually around her chops…

My guy gets into "lickfest" mode from time to time. I find I can often distract him, or failing that just tell him to quit it. Sometimes I offer my hand and he licks that for awhile. In the fall, I find he is itchy much of the time, which results in more licking, groom biting, and scratching than at other times of the year. If he gets too insistent, I will put an Elizabethan collar on him for a bit, or sometimes just showing him the collar and threatening him with it will get him to cease and desist!