If your dog is restless when it looks like rain, starts to salivate and tremble, has uncontrolled bowel movement during thunderstorms, he or she may have thunderstorm phobia.
Thunder phobia is not something that can be cured overnight. But these steps have helped to keep Donna stable and calm during thunderstorms when we are at home. So I hope it will help your dog too.
1 Day 1 World Project: Donna at 05:00am – 06:00am
One of the reasons why it was so difficult for me to deal with a thunder phobic dog in the first year of adoption is that when I lose it, I really lose it.
When the rainy season comes around, I start losing sleep because the dog makes a racket and a mess of the house when it thunders in the middle of the night. The loss of sleep hours accumulated and eventually the human is pushed past her threshold.
My dog is not aggressive.
But I am, when I get to that point.
Which basically unravels all the good work I put in with desensitisation and dog regresses.
I find myself at that point again today, unfortunately, after a week of extremely poor sleep patterns and long hours. The best I can do for Donna is to distance myself.
This is Donna at about 5:30am sometime in the last week. I was woken by the thud of potted plants toppling due to strong winds and rain. Donna was looking only mildly worried, but happy to find me checking on her.
Welcome, human.
Since it was close to daybreak, there was no point going back to bed.
You know that when she stands pointing towards the study, she wants to go hide in the room. She feels safest there but isn’t as comfortable in there by herself if I’m not in there with her.
Let’s go to my safe place, human
I don’t like the weather outside, human
Now that you’re in your chair, you should start giving me treats, human.
While each dog is an individual, if you are interested to know what helped with Donna’s awful thunder phobia so that nowadays she only shows mild worry around humans – read this:
– Donna finds shelter from Thunder Phobia
I hope one day she would be worry free, even when the humans are not home.
Note: Despite the human’s bad humour today, the good news is Donna has passed the temperament test today at Therapy Dogs Singapore. Hopefully she will be comforting to the people she is suppose to therapise.
For 24 weeks, weliveinaflat will post photos taken for a specific hour in that week.
We will cover 24 hours in 24 weeks.
More about the 1 Day 1 World Project here.
We adopted Donna in January last year so the battle with thunder phobia has been raging for one year five months.
Thunder Phobia
The fear of thunder that descends the dog into terror that looks like this:Ears pinned back, whale eyes, tense mouth, pacing, climbing on furniture and humans, yawning, drooling, violent trembling, peeing and pooping.
We’ve tried some products that are said could help with Donna’s thunder phobia – the Thundershirt, DAP collar and crate training.
I’ve just gotten a copy of the CD Through A Dog’s Ear and waiting for an opportunity to see how that works.
//Edit: Here’s the review of the CD and accompanying book.
The thing working best for us appeared to be counter-conditioning with food so I concentrated on that, using the Thundershirt, her Collar and Crate-training as additional aids.
So what happened was, everytime it rained and thundered, I would put a little dish of food in her crate hoping that would create positive associations to the thunder. She was very comfortable with her crate but only when it wasn’t raining. So for her to be willing to go into the crate to take the food was a good step in getting her to be even more comfortable with the crate. But once she took the food, she came out of it immediately.
Counter conditioning
To “condition” means to teach, and to “counter” means to change. So counterconditioning just means to re-teach the pet to have a pleasant feeling and reaction toward something that he once feared or disliked. We do this by associating the feared thing with something good so that it predicts good things for the animal. As soon as the dog or cat sees the thing, we give him a delicious treat to create a pleasant emotional reaction. Over many repetitions, the animal learns that whenever that thing appears, good things happen! Eventually, the process produces a neutral or positive emotional reaction to the sight of the previously feared or disliked person, animal, event, place or object. – ASPCA
So it became a long, tedious process of scooping out the food, putting it into the crate, taking the dish out again when she’s done and doing that over and over again as long as the thunderstorm lasted. And that could be the whole afternoon or the whole night. So you can see how it would take a toil on the human
The only reason why I persisted was because I could really see a difference. She started anticipating this routine when it rained. And she would bounce to her crate in excitement. Sure she noted the thunder with a frown even while she was lapping at her food, but at least she was no longer trembling violently or drooling or pacing around… for the earlier parts of the storm. She was lying on the floor in the front the kitchen watching me scoop out the food before running to the crate.
Donna with her ThunderShirt which helps to lessen her pacing agitatedly about the flat when it rains.
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The downside to counter conditioning with food was that eventually she would reach the point of diminishing returns and I had to scoop larger portions to get her interest. And finally that would stop working as well. And if it were still thundering then the thunder phobia would make itself evident.
The good news – the more sessions we went through, the more I could lengthen the intervals between each treat, which means she could progressively stay calmer for a longer time. And at one point, she was calm by herself with low rumbles of thunder from the distance without my intervention.
That is, until we hit the dry season. Good news for me because it meant I could take a break and sleep well and be more productive in the daytime. But that also meant that whatever progress we made backslide-ed when the rainy season came again. Boo.
For the longest time, we have limited her area of activity to the living room and hoped that with all the actions we have taken, she will slowly find it comfortable in her crate in the living room even with the storm.
It just wasn’t happening.
And when something isn’t working, it would be stupidity to continue so I thought I’ll change the venue and let her be in the study with me when it storms.
I did the same thing that I did in the living room. Treated her every time it thunderstorms. It took a bit of work at the beginning but comparatively quicker. Perhaps the work in the previous season helped get us into the mode of think about food and not about the storm so Donna was maintaining calm a lot easier.
She doesn’t look it but this is better than if she were pacing around, drooling and freaking out in general. You can see she is unhappy still. Her jaws are tensed and clamped shut, her ears are pinned back and her brows are sort of frowning. But she is at least no longer panicky, even without thundershirt.
Never would I imagine the difference being in the study could make. The key difference that really showed that location made a huge impact in her behaviour was that once upon a time, she was happy to see her collar and lead when it stormed and now, she looks worried when she sees it!
She would go to the study by herself and look out again to see if you are going in there with her. I can only conclude that previously the collar and lead made her happier because she thought it meant we would go out and escape from the experience of the storm from inside the flat.
But now she has somehow got the connection that the storm was even scarier outside so she doesn’t want to leave the flat. She has started to anticipate the rain two hours in advance and paces about. Even when it hasn’t started raining yet and I thought to take her out for a short walk before it rains, she got worried and was reluctant to come and get her collar put on.
The living room with its floor-to-ceiling glass balcony doors does little to muffle the buffeting wind, thunder and the lightning flashes. So I have to smack myself in the head because it made so much sense now. That once she familiarises herself with the small study she would be more comfortable in it. She feels safer in it.
The study has become her Thunder Shelter.
From her height, it’s almost den-like. All she sees are cupboard doors, books on shelves and some junk we pile on the floor. No windows. Having the door opened makes her nervous when the thunder is particularly bad and she would pace to the door to peer outside. Closing the door helps her calm down even more.
I didn’t like the smell of canned food in the study, so I switched the treat to slivers of cheese that I cut from a cube and deliver on a finger tip. She liked the cheese. But bringing your arm up and down to feed her little bits of cheese the whole afternoon is again tedious.
I remembered the Peanut Butter series of photographs that I saw on Instagram. Basically these are photographs taken of dogs trying to lick peanut butter off the top of their noses. I smeared the cheese on her nose.
Best thing I’ve ever done.
She didn’t like having cheese smeared on her nose, but it definitely took her mind off the thunder as she focused on trying to lick the cheese off her nose. She took quite a bit of time to clean her nose completely before I need to deliver her next treat to her mouth to make her happier. :P So no, she doesn’t get irritated by cheese on the nose all the time.
She decided that it was more efficient to scrape the cheese off with her paw and then lick the cheese off her paw.
Nowadays, if it’s low rumbling from a distance she can stay on the floor or her bed under the table in the study without pacing or treats as long as there is a human with her. OK, I lie, it is still up and down when it comes to her and her moods so cheese treats are a necessity still.
And definitely when it thunders badly, cheese treats MUST be delivered in more amounts in order to distract her before she goes over threshold. (No wonder she’s gaining weight) Needless to say, we are spending more time in the study with the rainy days we are seeing this couple of weeks.
However, all bets are off if she is home alone when it starts to storm. The other day I ran home in the rain to find her on the dining room chair panicky and slobbering away. Saliver was all over the room. She jumped off when I entered and the lightweight chair slid away from her. It is dangerous for her to prance around like that especially in a fright. She was a mess.
Getting her to not react to thunderstorms when home alone without humans is a longer journey. But at least Donna has found a shelter in the storm to hide in relative peace but only when the humans are home.
Goes out, licks butt, looks left, right… and returns back into the room.
1 Day 1 World Project: Donna at 12:00pm – 1:00pm Tuesday
It’s when the dog goes still that you realise she is worried and nervous. She may look still but, if you touch her you can feel her quavering. In fact, if you look long enough, you’ll realise the trembling is quite visible. The whale eyes say it all. Why are you still taking pictures of me? – the panicky dog.
She doesn’t stay still for long, once she goes beyond threshold she would get up and tentatively wonder about unsure of where to go is the safest. My role is always to try to keep her as comfortable as possible, taking cover under the table without her going beyond threshold.
We’ve actually made pretty good progress. She hasn’t had an episode of fear peeing this year yet. However, there is still this dependency on the human being there, which isn’t good. Still, progress is progress.
For 24 weeks, weliveinaflat will post photos taken for a specific hour in that week.
We will cover 24 hours in 24 weeks. (I’ve no idea how we will do the sleeping hours, lol!)
More about the 1 Day 1 World Project here.
It’s been a few months since we touched on the topic of Donna’s Thunder Phobia. In the last year, we’ve tried the Thundershirt which I felt has some good effect and I’ve written about it quite a bit. And later on, we bought the Adaptil DAP Collar for her so this post is really quite long over due.
Just like the rain that we experienced in the past week after a dry spell.
The Adaptil DAP (dog appeasing pheromone) Collar is as you can see in the picture above, is the nondescript, flat, grey, strip of plastic wound around Donna’s neck. The collar stays on for a month for maximum effect. Retailing at SGD$59 at our local pet supplies store, this collar that lasts only a month is not that affordable an answer for thunder phobia. For that price, it asserts that it will release pheromones that will calm the reactive dog.
Nope, doesn’t look calm, does she?
So it’s back to the ThunderShirt and her collar over the DAP collar, the whole works. I call this her Thunder Battle Armour.
Tense, but not quaking at least.
To be fair, our dog does go majorly over-threshold when it thunders heavily – the pee and poo anywhere, the drool, the running around and climbing to escape which leads to things in the flat being disturbed and displaced, when left unsupervised. So perhaps that collar may work with dogs with a less severe fear of thunderstorms. I said may because I wouldn’t know. But a look at the reviews on Amazon – Adaptil, D.A.P (Dog Appeasing Pheromone) Collar for Medium to Large Dogs – 27.6″
Outside of the storms, she is a very calm dog so we have no need of the collar to work any magic. We did not see a difference in Donna’s behaviour for the month that she was wearing the DAP collar. So that logically concluded for us that the collar did not have any discernible effect on Donna, and we weren’t inclined to continue with the collar into the second month.
This is Donna in the last two weeks, she seemed to find comfort under the study table. I have to say, this is also the more enclosed room so maybe she felt safer in here. Unfortunately, it didn’t even thunder very badly on that day. This dog has an overactive reaction to the slightest thunder after a couple of months without exposure to it. So the counter-conditioning with food restarts. And on days when I am too tired/impatient to do that the whole day when it storms, she stays quietly tense under the table (after she goes to toilet, which is always her first instinctive behaviour).
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Read: How to introduce the Thundershirt or any shirt to a dog
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The world was ending yet again today. At least, you would think so looking at the panting dog in front of you.
The thunder this afternoon was louder than the mild grumbles of yesterday. Time to re-enact another session of please pee/poop on the new blue pee tray Donna and yay, let’s eat the yummy food when it thunders!
Back and forth, we danced from kitchen to crate, and sometimes the loo. Dog ate up a half can of wet food from yesterday and almost another can of Herbed Duck confit for today. Almost… because by 4.30, she refused another tablespoon of the mushy stuff and just lay on the floor like a stone statue.
Sort of like this stone statue from some time back.
She probably was too tired to walk back and forth any more after 2 hours of standing and walking around in agitated from the thunderstorm. I know my feet hurt! And maybe, she just had food right up to here. *gestures at the top of the throat*
Who knew the thunder-phobic dog had the amazing ability to recover and come by punctually at 8pm seeking dinner?
Dinner… human, it’s time for dinner… … old picture from Drool-worthy
I’m sorry, darling, but you had your fair share of food for the day. So, no dinner for you. :P
This was dinner on a better day.
Trick
So this is the human’s minimal effort at dressing up Donna for Halloween. I’ve been walking her with that silly bow on her head for the whole week and she’s quite used to it now ;) Of course, the first day was really fun for the human who kept laughing at how silly Donna looks with a bow on her head while sniffing, peeing and pooping. But Donna got used to it after a while and so did the human. So it stopped being so funny. Haha.
Donna has thunder phobia and one of the tools that we thought we would try with her was the ThunderShirt to manage her thunder phobia. I wrote to ThunderShirt, who so kindly arranged with their local distributor Hound Habitat to send me a sample of the shirt for trial.
Back to the storm brewing over our island over the last few weeks…
Note: Thundershirt kindly arranged with their local partner, Hound Habitat, to send to me a sample of the Thundershirt for trial after I wrote to them about Donna’s thunderstorm phobia.
Donna’s thunderstorm phobia seemed to have decreased in the last update.
But it wasn’t going to last.
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weliveinaflat health articles get the added insight from our vet partner, the lovely Dr Jo from Creature Clinic, so you may be sure what we say is credible. ;)
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