A very common dog problem that is often overlooked is how your dog reacts to new and stressful noises such as fireworks, thunder or other loud, sudden noises.
The nature of dogs is that they are essentially defensive animals by nature. Even the sweetest, most lovable poodle is at heart a territorial animal. This defensive and territorial instinct that dogs carry is what has allowed them to survive for millions of years. It’s also one of the reasons that humans first domesticated dogs. They provided an element of protection to early humans by alerting them to potential danger long before the humans could perceive it.
During a puppy’s upbringing, much of their time is spent taking in the information the world presents and filing it into three categories in their brain:
- Beneficial Experiences
- Neutral Experiences
- Detrimental Experiences
Those experiences that are beneficial to the puppy will be stored as options that the puppy will want to repeat. For instance, visiting the dog park and having a grand time playing with other dogs becomes a beneficial experience.
Those experiences that are neutral are neither here nor there to the puppy. This is where much of the dog’s life experience is filed.
The experiences that are detrimental to the pup, will be filed in the category that the puppy will not want to experience again. This is a strong protective instinct that takes over. Most dogs will do anything in their power to prevent this type of experience from being repeated.
With this in mind, our goal in housing and raising a dog to be a loving companion is to have a dog that lives in a well adjusted, neutral mind-set most of the time. This is achieved through repetitive experiences that occur in the beneficial category in your dog’s mind. We want to expose them to as many things as we can as they mature emotionally, and make those experiences positive experiences. In a perfect world, we could socialize our puppies to everything we can think of, and they will never be afraid of anything.
In reality, we can’t always do that. Sometimes we’re dealing with adult dogs that have already formed their opinions of things. Sometimes new stimuli can enter into the dog’s life that might intimidate them or scare them. When a dog is frightened or distrustful of something, their instinctive reaction is that of either fight or flight. Most dogs would choose to run away from conflict if given the option. However in some situations dogs are not given that option, and will sometimes turn to aggression to neutralize a perceived threat.
A caveat that does occur with dogs is as they mature into adults on the emotional level, the dogs begin to form opinions based upon their experiences as young dogs. If we as owners and trainers provide as many beneficial experiences as we can to the puppy, they are likely to have a well adjusted attitude in general. If we neglect our dog, or put the into bad situations repeatedly, they are likely to form negative associations with day to day experiences. Once of the biggest challenges we run into with dogs is their tendency to form detrimental associations with experiences they have never seen before. It’s the nature of territorial breeds in particular to be suspicious of new experiences or things. This drive is what makes certain breeds great guard dogs, however if the defensive energy is not channeled in the dog’s mind, behavioural problems can result. Sometimes these problems can come with severe consequences.
A very common situation that occurs is a dog’s lack of familiarity with loud, sharp noises such as fireworks or gun shots. Many working dogs are expected to be calm and focused around these types of noises (as with Police K9s and Hunting Retriever dogs). The owners of these dogs put extra effort into desensitizing their dogs to loud noises when they are young to prevent the dogs from being reactive to them.
In the case of pet dogs, often we see these sounds generate a large amount of stress in the dog. It is not uncommon for dogs in an attempt to alleviate the stress to show destructive behaviours. Often, in an attempt to find security, dogs will chew through walls and doors; destroy furniture or personal belongings of the owner; they can even turn to self-destructive behaviours in an attempt to alleviate the stress.
“Control over a dog’s attention is critical to preventing problems and ultimately fixing them.”
Mitigating a dog that panics or is affected detrimentally by noises such as thunderstorms and fireworks is two-fold:
The first step is to establish neutrality. Obedience training is an absolute necessity. Obedience is a learned habit. It is based on teaching the dog new skills and rewarding them through the process to boost their confidence and establish control. Learned behaviour is controlled by one portion of the dog’s brain, whereas instinctive behaviour operates in a different portion entirely. By applying attention-based obedience to the situation where the dog is reacting instinctively, the owner can help to calm the dog and create new, neutral associations. Some dog owners have achieved neutrality through desensitization. For example, a commonly suggested approach to desensitizing a dog to thunderstorms is to playback a recording of a thunderstorm to the dog at very low volume levels each day. The volume is turned up progressively each day until the volume is quite loud. This is typically done during a time when the owner is present to relax and calm the dog. Either approach can work. By combining the two approaches together
Below is a video I shot on the fourth of July in my neighbourhood. There were fireworks blasting all over the place. I took my two dogs out to practice obedience to take their mind off of the loud noises. The first dog in the video, Trell is a Malinois that is very reactive to loud noises such as fireworks. She becomes quite anxious around them. She will pace, spin, bite her tail, whine, bark and even attack other dogs if nearby. To put it mildly, she’s reactive. You’ll her before I work her pacing and whining. By giving her obedience to concentrate on, it takes her mind off of the triggers. She becomes much more relaxed through it. My second dog Pharaoh is already quite comfortable with fireworks and gun shots. He basically ignores them, however it was a great opportunity to practice his obedience around a greater level of distraction.
The second step is creating positive associations in the dog’s mind. This is done by giving the dog beneficial experiences to think about during the trigger times. It is imperative that the dog be in a neutral mindset for the positive association to have the biggest effect. During the trigger times (i.e. thunderstorm) the owner can play fetch with the dog, give him treats, etc.
Over time, many dogs can learn to accept the presence of loud noises without over-reacting. The worst case scenario should involve the dog learning to tolerate the noise and realize that nothing will hurt him. By establishing neutrality in the dog’s mind, this will prevent the dog from panicking and destroying the house, or hurting themselves.
To view the accompanying video to this post, be sure to visit: http://sitmeanssit.com/ashton/89/help-my-dog-hates-fireworks
July 27th, 2009 | Tags: aggression, dog training, fearful, fireworks, nervous, separation anxiety, thunderstorms | Category: Behavioral Modification, Dog Obedience, Dog Training Las Vegas, Excessive Barking, Fearful Dogs, Police K9 Training | Comments (1)
