Loki and tonight's thunderstorm
Tonight we had a little thunderstorm. It wasn't even that big or long. But Loki was a wreck. He desperately whined and pawed at the baby gate at the top of the stairs. So, I opened it and let him up. I thought maybe he wanted to be near me. He went straight into his crate. I thought it was because he felt safer in his crate. Then he proceeded to empty his entire bladder in his crate. Loki's always been so good about potty training. He's just progressively getting worse with thunderstorms.
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3 comments:
First of all, here is an article for you to read.
http://dogtrainer.quickanddirtytips.com/thunderstorm-phobia.aspx
As the article suggests, there are many factors, not just what we see or hear that could be contributing to the problem. That said, I want to tell you what a friend of mine did with her dog that really seemed to do the trick!
Her dog started having problems with storms between 1 and 2 years old. She said it just seemed to come out of the blue and couldn't think of anything that had happened that would have caused it. She took him to the vet and he said there were two things she could do. One was giving him medicine and the second was trying to desensitize him. Well, apparently he was really bad trying to give pills to, so she decided to go the other route.
She bought a CD that had nothing but thunderstorms sounds on it. She would turn the volume all the way down and then start the CD. She would gradually increase the sound until she noticed that he was starting to react to it. Then she got out some treats and his favorite toys. She would play with him about an hour and give him treats and she would do this every day for a week. By the end of the week, the sounds didn't seem to bother him.
Then she would turn the volume up a little more until she saw him starting to react. Once again, she would get out the treats and toys. After a few months, he really didn't seem to be bothered by the sounds of thunderstorms anymore. Now instead of seeing the storms as something bad or scary, by giving him treats and playing with him, it turned it into something positive.
I hope you can help Loki get over this. They do make medications that help. I don't like the idea of giving my dogs medications that aren't absolutely necessary, but if you can't desensitize him from thunderstorms, then it would probably be for the best that you get him something that will help him get through those times. I wish you luck!
"He's just progressively getting worse with thunderstorms." - I feel for you. Loki, He is one of the cutest puppies I've seen :)
Yet another reaction:
Our shiba came here when he was 8 and didn't react to thunderstorms, but the following summer he became very anxious after the fire crackers around July 4 and then scared of thunderstorms. His self-treatment was to curl up in the basement, in a corner which had a soft case for some equipment. We left the basement door open, and he would come up during the night and go to his crate. Last summer (10), he went to the basement right after supper, noise or no noise. We will see this summer.
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