For a lot of dogs, being in their “den” has a calming effect in general, and helps with all sorts of situations where they’re getting overly-excited. The more self-aware ones will go to their “den” on their own when they need it.
And dogs might not regard us as other dogs, but they do regard us as part of the pack. They just don’t have any expectation that a pack must be composed exclusively of dogs. After all, most humans with pets regard them as being part of the family, despite knowing perfectly well that they’re not human.
At the point where I asked about this my best friend Blackjack was probably 13. He’s passed away since and currently residing here are Duke who is just one year old, and Max who is 12. If Max makes it to 13 I’ll see if he wants to join. But I suspect he’s just going to post pictures of himself looking cute.
FWIW, my mother used to calm a thunderstorm-nervous dog by lying down on the couch and pretending to take a nap (or actually doing so.)
She said that when the dog saw my mother relaxed enough during the storm to fall asleep, the dog relaxed also.
I can’t remember whether that was the dog who didn’t start off afraid of storms, but became so when the house we lived in was struck by lightning – the house itself wasn’t damaged, and nobody was hurt, but everything electrical that was plugged in at the time* got burnt out, and there were IIRC sudden broken lightbulbs all over the place and humans running around freaked out and dealing with broken glass.
I expect it depends a great deal on the dog, though. I’ve never had one who was afraid of storms in the first place.
*this was in the 1950’s or 60’s, so we had a lot less stuff plugged in than a modern household would have.
My dog doesn’t understand why I don’t get excited by the fact that the dog next door is barking - I love my dog, but I don’t think they have much concept of the inner thought-life of other dogs, or humans.
Two of my dogs become quivering blobs of jello when the smoke alarm “low battery” beeps (Not the much louder actual alarm). In fact they are much more terrified of that than thunder. Anybody else notice this?
That used to bother Blackjack. There’s an episode of Modern Family where they can’t find a smoke detector that beeps throughout the episode. That drove Blackjack nuts.
I don’t know for sure what the dogs are reacting to. I do know that the particular sound that my alarms make for ‘low battery’ hits a frequency that drives me straight up the wall – it doesn’t frighten me, but for me it’s a really unpleasant sort of noise. Dogs hear frequencies humans don’t even hear, and I wonder whether some of yours are having a similar and perhaps even stronger reaction. Sensitivity to the particular sound might vary from dog to dog, just as such things do from one human to another – I think most humans find that beep only mildly annoying.
You might be able to leverage your dog’s fear of thunder to get it to do something, as with Thurber’s Airedale, Muggs.
“Muggs was afraid of only one thing, an electrical storm. Thunder and lightning frightened him out of his senses (I think he thought a storm had broken the day the mantelpiece fell). He would rush into the house and hide under a bed or in a clothes closet. So we fixed up a thunder machine out of a long narrow piece of sheet iron with a wooden handle on one end. Mother would shake this vigorously when she wanted to get Muggs into the house. It made an excellent imitation of thunder, but I suppose it was the most roundabout system for running a household that was ever devised. It took a lot out of mother.”
I suppose the noise is deliberately made to annoy humans so you will change the freaking battery already! But I wonder whether the problem for dogs doesn’t also have something to do with the intermittent nature of the sound. Here’s another data point: the same two dogs are also terrified of distant gunfire/fireworks. It’s not even loud, just little pop pop pops every now and then. The pups head straight for the bathtub.
Ha, some F16s flew really low and loud over my house last night, and my dog barked at them and then got really agitated.
Have to say, I didn’t much like it either, as I was talking on the phone at the time. Forget that conversation.
I think they were doing a flyover for the Denver Bonkers game, but Pongo thought it was the end of the world, worse than fireworks and worse than somebody’s car alarm going off. Which also happened about that time, oddly enough.
Because to the dog the thunder causes PAIN, and to you it does not.
Dogs have hearing that required about 15 times less sound energy to be heard.
So you have a noise that is loud enough to be painful, and utterly random in timing. Of course this unnerves the dogs.
(also most other animals, including human children initially!!)
Try this: Make a recording of a thunderstorm.
Now put it on your headphones, set to play at random times. With volume set to 11
I bet YOU will also be flinching with each thunder strike.
The same argument works for fireworks, vacuum cleaners, and lawnmowers.
Slashdog doesn’t care about claps of thunder; unless it is really really close, he doesn’t react at all. Fireworks in the distance aren’t of concern either, and neither are trash trucks, train locomotive whistles, cars backfiring, or even two cars colliding in front of the house.
The beep my phone makes when I receive a text message drives him bonkers.
Her opinion – Pat Miller is a very well-known behaviorist, and she’s female. I’ve met her. But said opinion is grounded in science, as that website makes clear. Dr. Sophia Yin also was an authority on this. Both of them point out that the poor science behind dominance theory is actually much closer to “opinion” than science. You’re going to have to accept that whether or not you want it to be true, people who know much more about this than you do have debunked dominance theory.
Perhaps the issue is we are not communicating effectively.
Interesting. Our own experience was with Sadie, a normally brave hound/pit mix, who feared only thunder and loud noises. Sadie came by it honestly – one hip and her tail showed shotgun pellets on the vet’s X-ray. We never knew the story, as it happened long before we adopted her. But she became a nervous huddled mess whenever there was thunder, fireworks or gunfire.
So I applied my pop-culture understanding of dogs and reasoned that the pack leader never offers to play when things are deadly serious – only when the situation is safe. I began to offer her toys and tried to play tug with her whenever there were loud noises.
After only a few repetitions, Sadie learned to fetch a toy and run to me whenever the sky was angry. She played with earnest but apparently happy silliness and forgot her fear. For the rest of her life every thunderstorm began with Sadie bringing me a toy.
Was I communicating “all is well, the pack is not under threat, we can even play because no danger is near?” I don’t know, but Sadie’s life was noticeably improved, and I will try this the next time one of our four-legged friends has anxiety.
Their better hearing might well be part of it; but it’s unlikely to be the whole issue, at least unless some dogs have much better hearing than others (which is possible), because there are a whole lot of dogs who aren’t afraid of thunderstorms; or, for that matter, of fireworks. It’s very common for dogs not to be bothered by either.
Hah! I think my mother used your technique on me. When a bad thunderstorm knocked the power out, she made a game of cooking hot dog slices on a toy cast iron stove I had, using IIRC wooden matches as fuel. I’ve kind of enjoyed both thunderstorms and power outages ever since.
The best thing I’ve found for dogs that are moderately afraid of thunder is to play with them during the storm. Apparently in the doggie mind, if we’re playing, things can’t be that bad.
For dogs in abject terror, there’s no point in even trying.