What's "thing" Is Your Dog Afraid Of?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

My dog used to be afraid of…
The microwave
Kitchen implements
Floor lamps
Flashlights

She got over the first 3 when I moved and she forgot to be afraid of them (my brother scared here with this stuff when she was a puppy). The flashlight thing she apparently got over just last week when she discovered the fun of chasing a flashlight beam in the snow. I have no idea why she was afraid of it in the first place.

However, she is very very afraid of the Windows Shutdown sound. I have had to disable it on all of my computers. If she hears it at my mom’s, she runs away.

Like justrob’s german shepard, Dolly has something she’s not so much afraid of but extremely angry with. The Goodyear Blimp. We live between Akron and Cleveland, and whenever the blimp is going from its hangar to Cleveland, it goes over our house. Dolly will hear it coming while inside, bark crazily to go outside, then bark her head off at the blimp until she “chases it away.”

22

The laundry basket. I think it reminds him of the crate he was kept in overnight at the shelter. He is fine with a wire crate but hates the plastic airline-type crate.

23

My dog cowers when I try to brush him, too, and sometimes when I try to stroke him near his head. Except for the first six weeks of his life, he’s always lived with me and never, ever been hit anywhere. I guess it’s just an instinctual thing to cower when someone raises their hand and moves it toward the dog’s head?

24

Both of my terriers go berserk the first week in July when all the neighbor hoods in the neighborhood set off their Fourth of July firecrackers. They tremble and shake and don’t want to go outside to do their business.

Likewise, New Years Eve when the local yokels fire their guns in the air.

Yeah. Detroit’s a crazyfun place.

25

Oh, I forgot: Loud noises. Not just thunder or gun shot, but any loud bang. A slammed cupboard, anything.

26

One night the power went out, so the alarm clock was blinking 12:00 when I woke up. My lab saw this, and became convinced it was possessed by demons. Once I reset it so the blinking stopped, he was fine with it.

He saw the sleeve of my sister’s mink coat in the closet and had a similar reaction. I also saw him do this when a man was wearing a sheepskin coat…the kind where the pile only shows at the seams.

Current dog is absolutely terrified as powered nail trimmers (Dremel tool). We finally found a good manual type that she will abide (barely)

27

My cats are deathly afraid of the vacuum cleaner. I just need to pull it out of the closet and they’re dashing for a hidey-hole before I can even plug it in.

One of the cats is also afraid of plastic bags, but only if I’m carrying them. The second I put them down on the ground, it’ll be a matter of seconds before she’s lolling around on them and licking them obsessively. It’s totally a love-hate relationship.

28

My lab (gone 13 years now) would stalk and bark at cats-until the cat turned the tables and tried chasing him-at which point he’d tuck his tail between his legs and run off into the nearest woods yelping like crazy. You see, he first encountered the cat (TC) we had at the time when he was a puppy, and the cat let him sniff him for a bit, until the coldly calculating feline raised one extended claw and just barely nicked the lab on the nose. The lab went running for the closest bed with his tail tucked between his legs, yelping like crazy. He’d also bark (aggressively, not fearfully) at laundry on a line waving in the wind.

29

She doesn’t mind - actually loves - having her head petted. I’ve tried sneaking up on her with the brush, so it isn’t raised. She sits with her ears down looking very dejected while I brush her and will run off just as soon as I will let her. She hates the brush. But I hope I am wrong about her being abused. I guess in the end it no longer matters - she’s with me and is treated very well.

30

My cell phone camera, a papier mâché Jack o’ lantern I made and my cat, PurrAnna. The cat hates the dog and has chased her a few times, the dog will run from her.

31

My mutt is afraid of anything you shake menacingly at him. Be it a cotten ball, empty Coke bottle or a towel, he’ll hide like there’s no tomorrow.

32

Well, our dumb marmalade cat is afraid of the wet Swiffer mop. It makes a hissing sound. By extension, he is also in mortal fear of anything else with a vaguely cylindrical shape, like a broom, or a piece of firewood, or the empty roll from wrapping paper. We had to take him to the vet a few weeks ago, and to capture him we wrapped him in a beach towel. Now he is not only afraid of towels, but of any cloth object carried by a human.

If my daughter’s husband wears black, one of their cats will go and hide under the sofa. No one knows why.

33

Everything. Every damned thing in the world.

Some things Captain is afraid of:

The mailman
The UPS man
The sound a keg makes in the garage when somebody pumps it
Thunderstorms (a LOT)
Rain (even more than thunderstorms, actually)
Fireworks
The washing machine
The dryer
Daddy shouting
Mommy shouting
The sound a garbage bag makes when you flick it open
Toilets flushing
The vacuum, of course

34

The burliest of my cats–a former stray who once terrorized the neighborhood-- fears little, but we have to make sure he’s nowhere around when we get out a new garbage bag. The sound of us shaking it open makes him run for the hills. Also he makes of good show of not being afraid of the vacuum cleaner, but I have caught him peeing on it when it was turned off. :stuck_out_tongue:

35

My now-departed doberman/pointer cross wasn’t afraid of anything. She was a rescue who was almost starved to death when the humane society got her, and I knew knew anything about her former life. I could beat the floor right next to her with my riding crop and she’d just look at me and wag her tail. Until the one time I got a tape measure out. I wanted to measure to see how high to install the dog door. She was terrified! The only time I ever saw her afraid was when the tape measure was out.

StG

36

Our dog gets absolutely terrified when the power goes out. It mostly involves shaking violently and very badly wanting someone to hold her. Turning off the lights? No problem. Flicking them on and off rapidly? Nope. We got her from the pound when she was about a year old and we think she was discarded from a puppy mill. Don’t know if there’s any connection there.

It absolutely freaks her out when someone touches her belly and she can’t see their hand. She jumps up real fast and has to leave the room for a while.

37

Oh, yeah, add “tape measure” to the list. It infuriated my dear late dog, though - he wasn’t afraid of it, he wanted to kill the shit out of it.

38

My dog does this too. It has been so long since we have had a power outage that I completely forgot about it. But when we lived in an area that was prone to outages (the one thing I do not miss about Guam!) it would happen about once a month and poor puppy (remember he is 114 lbs) would try to literally jump into my arms.

We also noticed that he would start getting scared and shaking a few seconds before the power would go out. He was an excellent predictor of it. It made me wonder if there was some sort of energy surge that he could feel.

39

My dog is a trained, working police narcotics K9 - 80+ pounds of German Shepherd. Sounds like he’d be rough and tough, right? Not when faced with any of the following:

Sharp, loud noises (firecrackers, breaking tree limbs, gunfire, acorns falling on top of my van, etc.)

The vacuum cleaner

My voice, if I’m reprimanding him. (Odd: He works with my husband, trains with him, etc., and seems far less intimidated by Mr. Matata than by me. I guess because I don’t reprimand often, so Mojo knows that if I raise my voice or use the dreaded “leave it alone” sound, I really mean it! And how do you transliterate that universal sound, anyway? It’s kind of like the word “ant,” but much harsher. Works on dogs, kids, cats…)

He also worries himself silly about his people when we go into a bathroom. If the door isn’t latched properly, he’ll nudge it open to make sure that Dad/Mom/one of the kids hasn’t disappeared/fallen in. If the door is latched, he waits outside, whining to let us know that he’s really, really concerned.

But mostly, Mojo is completely, totally terrified of/intimidated by the laminate flooring in the kitchen. When he enters the house by way of the kitchen door, he cringes and hesitates before tackling the long walk across that floor, and then leaps in, threading his way under and around the table and chairs rather than walk across the unobstructed path. And if he walks through the kitchen to get to his food and water, he backs all the way back out to the safety of the carpet.
(He does something similar at the sheriff’s office, but it’s even goofier. The floor in the squad room and that in the hallway are made of exactly the same tile. Mo will walk along just fine in the squadroom, but will back down hall. He’s a total birdbrain, but we love him!)

40

Gordie the Jack Russel mix fears light bulbs, vacuums, and small ceramic figures.