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Our Brittany gets more afraid of thunderstorms the older she gets. The vet says not to indulge her fears, so we don't 'oh poor baby' her, but we do feel bad for her.
Has anyone figured out a good strategy? We're not above slipping her a few benedril, but I wonder if there's a way of getting her over it.
Location: Boonies of Georgia ~~~~ nuttier than a squirrel turd !
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Originally Posted by gentlearts
Our Brittany gets more afraid of thunderstorms the older she gets. The vet says not to indulge her fears, so we don't 'oh poor baby' her, but we do feel bad for her.
Has anyone figured out a good strategy? We're not above slipping her a few benedril, but I wonder if there's a way of getting her over it.
If you find out.... please let me know.
My dog kept me up all night last night due to storms.
I am wondering if they can sense the barometric levels similar to reptiles.
My dog gets breathing really heavy, almost like she has heat exhaustion. I kept getting up lowering the a/c, soon to realize that everybody else was feeling like icicles. So it obviously wasn't the heat. I had the a/c down to 60.
Now, this morning...... SHE is sleeping like a baby, and I am dragging my bum . Go figure
My experience has been that dogs either are terrified of storms or they don't even know there is one happening. My current dog is oblivious, the one before her was terrified. Picture a 130 pound dog jammed in behind the toilet......
Do not pay any attention to her while it happens. It will reinforce the behavior and make it worse. I'm of the belief that if they have this fear then they always will..... but you may be able to minimize it some by ignoring it.
My first dog when I was a child would jump into the bath tub in fear and try to squeeze under beds as he cried. It was sad to see him do that but it never stopped.
Luckily my present 2 dogs don't even notice when there's a thunderstorm.
I have wondered if it's the sound of the thunder. All dogs have acute hearing and some are extremely sensitive. They could be totally bombarded with horrible sound long before we would be aware of it. I know how I feel in bad storms. The constant roar just blows my mind.
I guess they expect us to make "it" go away. They certainly don't know it's harmless.
yes they have intense hearing but weak nerves may play a part in it, which has to do with breeding.
My 1st dog was a mutt (watered down from US) vs my current dogs who were breed for strong nerves and imports from great European stock. They were born hearing loud noise like shooting, dropping metal pans on cement etc.... so though they may flinch for a second and think 'wtf was that' but it doesn't bother them.
Yesterday morning at 7:00 a.m., about 6 hot air balloons went over my house very low and the dogs were outside looking up and alerting with a few woofs. The people in the balloons heard them and waved.
Benadryl? Our dog is fine with storms but we used to watch a friend's dog (pitbull/lab mix) who was terrified of them. One Benadryl usually did the trick...works great with kids, too.
Our Brittany gets more afraid of thunderstorms the older she gets. The vet says not to indulge her fears, so we don't 'oh poor baby' her, but we do feel bad for her.
Has anyone figured out a good strategy? We're not above slipping her a few benedril, but I wonder if there's a way of getting her over it.
Well, this is very common with dogs. I don't know of any easy way to deal with it. Your vet is right. You don't want to baby the dog or indulge her fears, pick her up and hug her, or anything like that. You want to act like everything is find and go on with your business. You can try benedril. My dog was terrified of thunder too and more so as she got older. She's lost most of her hearing now, so it's no longer a problem.
I am interested in other's comments on this topic too.
Elvis is not afraid of the storms but they do excite him. He barks at the thunder and when we lived in the mountains, he would run the ridge above the house chasing the lightning! He stands all aquiver and excited at the door watching the storm.
It's very irritating when he barks at it all.
I can fuss at him and make him lie down but the first clap of thunder and he's back at it. but he is in no way frightened.
Our former dog was terrified. We gave him a benny to sleep it off poor guy.
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