Dog Afraid of Noise
We have a Wire haired Dachshund that, since birth, (he's almost 7 years old now) has been afraid of thunder. During a thunder storm he goes berserk and tries to hide under, behind, whatever and shake...
Forum Discussion
robsouth wrote:
and pay a lot of attention to him.
Not that a dog would act frightened just for attention - but I find it's best to simply act like it's no big deal? If something startles one of my dogs - I say "Was that scary? Oh - you're OK" and then proceed with whatever... in my (unprofessional) opinion, more attention than that sort of justifies their fear?
When Ben was a pup, I'd pick him up for a brief moment (after a startle) - hug him, tell him "It's OK" then put him back down.
Also - if I see one of the dogs being "brave" - like walking up to something like the vacuum cleaner in a display of "I ain't skeered of that" - I take the time to praise them!
But some dogs are capable of "adding 2 + 2 = 4". My late Aussie was startled one day, when Ed pulled a hose off our large compressor with the resulting loud hiss. Scared the daylights out of Ike (and me!). From that day forward, Ike was scared of air compressors; which then fanned out into "anything driven by air" like nail guns, etc.... and finally got to the point of being terrified to simply see a tire pressure gauge. And weirdly enough - it was his love of camping that got him over that: when we started taking the Class C to the drag races and the dogs got to come (which they LOVED) - the one thing Ike had to continually encounter was racers adjusting the air in their tires. I think it was the constant exposure while he was doing something he loved, that made him learn to ignore it (albeit with a really sour face and ears pinned down...LOL!)
