Daily rain. Monsoon month. Rain reigns.
Category: Dog Care Page 13 of 20
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.
Strange as it may sound, there is a need to introduce anything new to the dog slowly. Our dog is not adventurous. New things are often viewed with an unhealthy dose of suspicion . So here’s Donna inspecting the Thundershirt.
Mikki isn’t comfortable with Donna and Donna can be a bit of a rascal at times in trying to get the golden retriever to play. Thankfully our mongrel knows better than to encroach too much into Mikki’s space. You can see the gap she leaves for Mikki in this picture.
I’m just fake rushing at you — is that what she could be thinking?
She made an about turn there and raced away again.
This is part one of a series of posts documenting our trip to Changi Beach and meeting the dogs Chloe, Ally and Mikki. This is the first time we brought Donna out to socialise with a visitor of our blog!
Is she a good dog sitting by the roadside? Well actually, this is Donna sitting her ground during a walk at night and refusing to go home. She shows this kind of behaviour sometimes, and she will literally lie down and stick to the ground when she really, really doesn’t want to budge. That’s our Donna :P
Three weeks ago…
Last night…
Time, has not made a difference to her persistence in the mission :P
“Go to your bed” or crate/kennel cues are so useful in this case :P
It hadn’t occurred to me until now but it is dangerous for any animal to hang around the door frame, especially in our case since we live on high floors with crazy winds that sometimes slam doors really hard. In this case, we had the bedroom balcony door closed which shuts off the wind. Normally we do keep the door securely hooked to the wall, and not ajar.
Ears back, climbing, seeking attention, yawning.
Yes, I know. Thank you for telling me.
I know she is nervous, but sometimes I wonder if I coddle her too much. Mr P ignores her and she seems calmer with him. But when she sees me, she gets really pushy like above. And if you study her eyes, no dilation. She’s nervous, under some stress but still managing.
She wants something with that automatic sit.
Soon she figures we’re both taking it easy, even with the approaching rain and seems calmer. I talked to her a little and she gets excited. Oh-oh, I probably should never talk to her again. Ever!
The thunderstorm got really loud. And then she starts to circle her sleeping towel in the study determinedly. (- – !!!) I reactively screamed, “NO!” And she did. Thank GOD!
Urgently got her into the toilet. There she goes. For the record, because Mr P did once let her do it on the carpet because he thought she was circling to go to sleep. This is what it looks like.
She circled deliberately on the spot more than 10 times.
I probably should have taken a video but it seemed voyeuristic to me. Don’t ask me why I think an animated gif is any better. – –
She is toilet_trained, but when she gets over-excited, common sense/trained behaviour always flies out the window and any mat/rug-like texture becomes fair game for elimaination. That is why when we leave her alone in the house, she has no access to any towels, rugs, mats, only the pee pad in the toilet. And when we are at home and these things lie around, we need to really keep an eye on her to shepherd her to the right spot to do it during stormy weather conditions.
Since she seemed to calm down better when I am out of the room, I went to sleep the rest of the day away. I wasn’t feeling well anyway.
Later in the night as we sat in the living room, she went and slept in her crate. Good.
We had a power failure today. Did a little bit of crate training today with her, while the electrician presented himself as the distraction working on the power unit. I was able to close the crate door with her inside for minutes, yay!
P/S It was difficult to get any electrician on a the phone on a weekend it seems. We waited more than 2 hours before the original electrician we called came along after his praying session at his temple. During that time, we tried Town Council-listed numbers, companies that advertised themselves as 24hr emergency services, etc and they all never picked up the phone! D: Good idea to keep a reliable emergency contact for such services handy.
I will want to remember August as the month where it stormed at night. Nights in the last two weeks stand out, and not in a good way. Apparently the clouds thought to do the late shift and suddenly the wind and thunder visited in the dead of the night.
The dog that had gotten used to sleeping by herself in the living room, rotating between her many beds, was suddenly restive. One wakes in the middle of the night, sometimes to the thunder, sometimes to her whining and her jumping up and scratching at the bedroom door.
The first night it happened, I was patient. Sat with the poor trembling animal, got out the tuna treats. I eventually managed to get her to fall asleep inside her crate. By then it was nearly time for the sun to rise, no point going back to bed.
But the same cycle repeated night after night… 2am, 4am, 5am… no matter the time. No matter that it’s just the howling wind, no rain or thunder. Suddenly, Donna seemed to excite easily. One could hear her outside alternating between her running click up and down the corridor and scratching at the door as her agitation grew. And yet, when you open the door, she was excited, not fearful and she calmed down very fast if the human just sat there and ignored her.
The lack of sleep made me a perfect zombie in the day. I was never one that could go without sleep for long. It slowly became easier to just lie awake and wonder, should I just leave her be outside? Will she stop it once she learns that we will not respond to her?
But it is not easy to ignore your dog, who might not just be over-excited, who might be really fearful. It is also not easy to ignore a persistent dog. Within 3-4 such nights, she had perfected the persistence of trying until she could open the bedroom door by herself.
It’s going to rain. It’s going to rain.
Do you hear me? It’s going to rain. Yes, I hear you, my dear. You make it impossible for me to ignore the weather.
Thankfully, out of the last two weeks, there were only 2-3 days where she was truly fearful and went over threshold. I’ve realised it’s not a good idea to let her stay still and focus on her own fearful doggie thoughts. Getting her off the sofa and moving, seemed to help calm her down somewhat, not a lot though but at least to rid her of the trembles.
And when she settled down, it was in a tighter curl (right) versus the more relaxed lounging pose (left).
I’ve started to take her out for long walks before bedtime – 1hour, 1.5hours – in the hope that she will wear out and sleep better through the night.
Have to say one has got to salute the parents of newborns. They’ve got to get it worse than this!
Eileen has a good article on how does one define calmness, gets one thinking!
