My aunt and uncle adopted a dog who had been abused. My uncle originally got her, Carol, and their other dog, Chet, because he wanted hunting dogs. (They’re Brittany Spaniels).
Well, the first time he took them hunting, the minute she heard the guns go off, Carol flew back to the truck, hid under it, and wouldn’t come out. They had to fix her a place in the bed and let her stay there, coming to check on her occassionally.
She’s also become super attached to my aunt, to the point that when said aunt had the flu, and stayed in bed for a week, Carol would NOT move from the bed for any reason-and lost about five pounds.
I don’t automatically assume that because an animal is afraid of something he/she was necessarily abused…it may be the case, but even non-abused animals can have fears of things.
Example: My cat Izzy was a barn cat. I know where she was born and I am certain that she never was abused by a vacuum cleaner - however, she is terrified of them. My other cats don’t like the vacuum either, but none are so terrified as Izzy is. Unfortunately, not vacuuming is not an option for me, so Izzy hides during those times.
I hate animal abusers too, but I realize that sometimes animals are just afraid of certain things. It doesn’t always mean abuse.
I just don’t understand why people who would abuse an animal would go out and get one in the first place. While these stories are sad, it’s good to know that your pets managed to end up with caring people who wouldn’t harm them.
This is true. If my dog ever managed to get lost, I wouldn’t be surprised if the people who found him thought he’d been abused. I’ve had him since he was a puppy, and bought 100% into the popular training techiques that call for using positive reinforcement, never hitting the pet, and introducing the pet to a variety of situations early on in order to desensitize it. He’s afraid of vacuums even though he’s seen people vacuuming every day since he got here. Fortunately, we’ve gotten him to the point where he’ll just calmly leave the room now when we vacuum, instead of running and cowering. He’s got seperation anxiety even though we’ve kept comings and goings low key from the beginning. Certain loud noises, and objects moving near him send him running for cover. These last two things are most likely due to a baby-gate falling on him and scarring him for life though.
This is also similar to people who assume that because their dog is wary of a certain race of people, that someone from that race must have harmed the dog. In a lot of cases it’s just that the dog never got a chance to see any of these people during the critical 16 week window when puppies are figuring out what’s normal and what’s not.
Rusty isn’t scared of the sound, it’s something to do with the air pressure. The New, Improved ™ Rusty gets all shaky and scared for maybe ten or fifteen minutes when a front is going through, rain or no rain, and then is pretty much okay. Previous Rusty would freak out for hours. New Orleans’ climate really, really didn’t agree with him. I know what you mean about worrying about quality of life, I’d started wondering that myself, and it was not a fun thought.
Poor Bean! I wish I had some advice, but I can’t think of anything besides what we do with our pup. Rusty’s on a doggy antidepressant/anxiety med; have you tried that, or do you just have sedatives for Bean? It certainly sounds to me like he needs something long-term. For emergencies (the very rare anymore extreme freakouts) we have some knockout pills on hand, but I think he’s only had to get those once or twice.
I don’t blame any previous owners for causing his problems; Rusty is a poster pup for Why Puppy Mills Are A Bad Thing. But he’s here now and we love him like crazy. I could very easy see how he could have run away in a storm.
And I hereby offer scritches, or treats, or whatever they like to everybody’s pets in this thread. I love them all.
I have some good friends back east who just lost their Spaniel to Ehrlichiosis. It’s a tick-borne virus like Lyme Disease and Rocky Mountain Spotted fever, and it is curable in the initial stages. The husband is the one who initially adopted the dog when he found him hungry & scared in the forest while he was camping one weekend. Apparently what happens is hunters acquire these dogs just for hunting season and afterwards abandon them, especially if they don’t turn out to be good hunting dogs. What assholes. The vet thinks he probably got the disease when he was living in the woods. If the disease had been diagnosed when it first presented, it could have been cured. Instead it was already in a subclinical phase when the dog was found, and never got diagnosed.
He was a great dog though, very gentle and loving. He did have a relatively good, fairly long life, except for a traumatic youth.
We’ve tried a variety of different medications and what we’ve found is that we have to go whole-hog and tranquilize her when these situations arise. Unfortunately, the dose has to be pretty high to be enough to calm her and she ends up lying on the floor, staring vacantly into space. her lower eyelids sag and she doesn’t trust her legs when she’s taking them. It’s really sad to see because I can tell she dislikes the disorientation it causes, but there’s nothing else that works.
And when I say she freaks, I really mean it. We once didn’t sleep for two nights because of a rain storm.