I got to thinking about my dog when I was a kid. He was a pretty nice guy for a dog, but he had two major fears. One was the ironing board. From the first time we took it out he retreated under the nearest table and shook. I mean he would shake like a leaf and tremble. We never could figure out why.
The second big fear he had was our gerbil in one of those balls they walk in. Now the dog saw the gerbil in his cage, he could care less. He’d look at it and see it running in the cage but he was like “this is boring.”
But we had one of those plastic balls, you unscrew the top and put the gerbil in it and they can run around. If we put the gerbil on the floor and the dog was in the room he’d flee in terror. He was so afraid of that gerbil then.
So my question is what fears do your dog and/or cat have that you can’t explain. Obviously if a pan falls on a dog’s head and he’s afraid of pans, that makes sense. Or if he nearly drowns, it would make sense he’s afraid of water. Or if you only put him in the car to go to the vet to get his shot, it’d make sense he’d fear the car.
Nothing else much bothered the dog. He could care less about lightning and thunder or going to the vet.
I was thinking of fears that you can’t figure out.
When I walk my dog, and I try to approach a garbage can, she completely stiffens up and will refuse to get close to it. I have no idea why this is. She will go up to one on her own initiative to sniff it, but if I try to take her towards one, she becomes terrified. She’s not particularly skittish, although she does fear the Roomba.
One of my cats is afraid of my 50" TV when it’s on. He wasn’t afraid of my old 32" TV and would even watch it sometimes ( my other, much stupider cat, has never cared one way or the other about either of them ). But for some reason the bigger HDTV disturbs him.
If he wants to get to the kitchen, he has to go through the living room and he’ll do so at a fast scuttle along the wall, while looking warily over his shoulder at the screen. If he wants attention from me while I’m watching the tube, he’ll scuttle along the wall, circle behind the couch and jump up on my chest from behind and lay facing away from the set. But it is only a minute or two before he commences staring warily at it and inevitable slips back behind the couch again to make his retreat. He will sit directly behind it on the stand if it’s on ( so it isn’t the noise that bugs him ), but since he can be a cord chewer, I discourage that on general principles.
Winter coats. I’d come home, coat on - bark bark bark bark bark bark bark.
Coat off - oh, hey, how’s it going? wag wag wag wag wag wag
It wasn’t just me - it was anyone with a winter coat on. Weird. It was like she didn’t recognize that there were people under the coats and thought we were some sort of coat-shaped monsters.
One of my cats (the stupid one) is afraid of long cylindrical objects, basically anything that vaguely resembles a broomstick. And no, he has never been beaten with a broom. He is also afraid of a flushing toilet, despite never having been put into one.
My dog is afraid of running water – faucets, sprinklers, hoses, etc. Rain is no problem, he likes being in the rain, and I suspect that he’d enjoy swimming, though I’ve never had the chance to find out. But he bucks, dodges, or digs in his claws at any attempt to get him close to spraying water, and he’s hilarious at bath time. He tries to evade capture, then trudges to the tub like a condemned prisoner, jumps into the tub, and stands there shivering, with his tail between his legs and the most miserable look on his face – before he even gets wet!
He hugely enjoys being dried off, however, and is positively manic for several minutes after every bath.
I had a golen retriever - chow mix that was afraid of nothing except the timer bell on the dryer when it was near the end of its cycle. And it wasn’t a particularly loud or annoying bell. It was more of a gentle ding, like an egg timer. But that bell would send her into a frenzy of shivering, running around aimlessly and jumping on people. And it was not pleasant being jumped on by a 105 pound dog.
My stepmother has a cat like that; she freaked out at the sight of a balloon. She’d walk into a room that had one, and come barreling out moments later when she found it lurking in ambush.
My cat is afraid of the noise of those air brakes that are on some buses and trucks. He completely freaks out. The funny thing is that we live in New York City, and there are often loud noises that don’t bother him at all so I don’t know what it is about the air brakes in particular.
My cat, Cocoa, would tell you she isn’t afraid of anything, just cautious. I will tell you that she is getting fairly easy to spook the last few years. Just about anything that comes at her too fast sends her running. The kitten is driving her right round the bend.
Simone, the American Pit Bull Terrier, hates the vacuum cleaner like many dogs do.
She also hates the un-powered carpet sweeper, which makes a completely different noise and looks completely different, but has the same function. She’s apparently able to tell it is a vacuum-cleaner equivalent, and she’s put teeth marks on it.
What she fears is skateboards – very much so – and, when watching TV, the ululations of a Zulu war band.
She’ll ignore war movie noises, screams, bangs, sirens… and cock her head for all sorts of animal noises, but the movie Zulu competely terrified her.
Can opener in action (manual, not electric)
Potato peeler in action
The click on the dishwasher when you close it
The shower in the kids bathroom being turned on (but not in my bathroom).
The postman has been delivering letters here for 13 years of her life. When she hears his footsteps coming up the drive, she scoots upstairs and hides in a cupboard. She’ll stay there for an hour before coming downstairs, just to make sure he’s gone.
When people visit us she’ll disappear for the duration. I have to take her food and litter tray upstairs and leave them outside her bunker. She’ll reappear about an hour after everyone has gone.
If she’s outside on a windy autumn day and a gust disturbs leaves on the ground, she’ll go upstairs and hide in the cupboard, only for a few minutes on such occasions because leaves are, apparently, less dangerous than people. (I actually understand that point of view.) The vacuum cleaner, however, is the most dangerous object in her universe and merits two hours cupboard time.
She’s afraid of anything or anyone big, like us. If we walk towards her she’ll run away. The only way to engage her is to sit or lie down, in which case she’ll come up to us for some fuss.
We got her from a rescue centre when she was 6 months old. I guess something bad happened to her while she was out on the streets before being rescued, and she’s never got over it.
My cat Dolphie, who is not afraid of the vacuum cleaner or anything else, is freaked out by the laser pointer toy that the other cats like to chase. Maybe she’s afraid of snipers.
We think he was actually scared of the fly swatter, and worked out that the presence of a fly = someone getting out the swatter. No one ever hit him with it, but Hoov was scared of a lot of things and a stick that we smacked against random surfaces would fit in with his general terror of the world around him.
He was also scared of the camera. We hardly have any photos of him where he isn’t cowering… Well, until he went blind and couldn’t see us pointing it at him anymore.
