One of the things I actively detest is when my dog gets fearful. That she does on occasion, particularly when it comes to the dog run at Bishan Park.
Tag: fearful dog
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.
Considering Donna had a pretty dull time the later part of our visit to III Cafe, we decided to stop by the Bishan Dog Run which was on the way home.
We haven’t been inside for quite some time since Donna had gotten fearful of the place the last couple of times she was chased by dogs there. Subsequently, I did take her to the park so that we practice staying calm while walking past the fenced-in doggy area. She did not appear averse to entering that day, so we thought we’d try bringing her in and hanging around the area where there were less dogs… except that three dogs immediately lopped towards our area to check her out.
While Donna did not jump for joy, she was not as fearful as she was previously as well. What she did was to duck under the park bench when she got uncomfortable with the attention and then make exploratory forays from there. In, out, in, out until she was comfortable with her new friends.
I didn’t start taking any pictures until later when I was assured that she was having fun with the other dogs.
If this brown dog had some spots, he would look like Scooby-doo! :P Looking at this picture, I think I start to get why Ruby’s human thinks that Ruby’s black coat looks too dense in colour. Donna’s black coat does stand out but does not look as nice as the brown dog’s softer tones against the surroundings.
Checking out the white dog who preferred the fence to them. :P
Is that a border collie? I’m not good at identifying breeds. Still that’s a lot of hair!!
We limited her to 15 minutes of play time in the dog run so that we could leave on a very positive note for her. She was so dog-tired, she didn’t even blink an eyelid at the close up shot at home. :P
If you are interested, Dr Sophia Yin has a great poster on Dog Park Etiquette that can be downloaded for free as well as tips how to train a dog to prevent him from being part of any unhappy situation that may escalate in a dog park in the dog park. Southslope.org has a nice Dog Park Etiquette Poster with lots of useful tips for adults and for parents with children on how we can help make the dog park an enjoyable place for all humans and dogs and also what to do, if a fight breaks out.
Saturday morning, the day after the bad storm. It looked like it would be another unsettling day for Donna.
Isn’t it interesting how the clouds can dictate the gap left by the rain in the distance.
We left for a quick loo break downstairs a little too late. It had started pouring so I decided we should go circle around the covered carpark in the basement.
I found a spot where there is a break between the bushes along the perimeter of the carpark. Great spot actually since I could stand still within the shelter while the dog goes outside in the grass. :P I have seen people who let their dogs eliminate against pillars and on the carpark floor. I don’t appreciate that and Donna has learnt months back not to do that.
Two rounds around the carpark and it’s back home. The thunder continued. Coming back from the walk, she was still relaxed although slowly stiffening from the milder, gradual thunder. She nosed her way through the child gate into the kitchen with no hesitation at all.
Remember the post about disrupting the bad behaviour you want the dog to stop even before it starts? Well, out comes the can of tuna from the fridge. I got her to lie down on her tummy and proceeded to hand feed small bits of tuna to her regardless of whether it was thundering or not.
She got so fixated by the rhythm – lick the tuna on the finger, munch munch, lick the tuna on the finger, munch, munch that she didn’t stop – even when the thunder got louder. She was calm the whole time, tummy on the floor although her ears did remain pressed back and flicker when the thunder got a little louder at times. (I guess we were lucky the thunder wasn’t as bad as the day before. )
Monday came and the scenario was similar. We were downstairs waiting for the taxi to come send Mr P to the airport. It was raining and thundering. She decided to sit calmly on the bench, not trembling. But a particularly loud rumble got her on her feet while I was trying to take a picture of her sitting calmly on the bench.
Looking at this picture now, I think I’ve gotten a little too complacent and should have never taken my hand off her leash, especially since any sudden loud thunder could spook a dog. Even if at the point of leaving the leash, she was calm.
Back home, I tried the tuna trick. It worked for a bit but as the thunder got progressively louder, it stopped working at times. Here, she is looking away refusing to leave the kitchen. Somehow, she has associated it to being a safe place even though we don’t let her in it except for her mealtimes.
Donna and I, divided by the threshold to the kitchen.
We probably have to consistently repeat dispensing tuna every time it starts to rain and thunder for the counter conditioning to have any effect. Let me know if you think differently or have other advice that we should consider. Otherwise, not sure how long we need to do this until we can gradually wean her off. Hmmmm…. :/ That is, if there was anyone in the house to do it when it thunders!
P/s: the crate training is going well though :)
The storm today had thunder that made me jump just a little and the dog shivering uncontrollably. Even before it came, Donna was already communicating her nervousness, putting her front paws on my chair as she tried to attain some height.
I took out the new pack of doggy sausage from the refrigerator and sat in the living room, cutting it into tiny treats ready to disburse to the dog every time the thunder rolled.
But when the thunder hammered across the sky, she was one mass of jiggling nerves. I’m serious. If you had put your arms around her, she would have felt like a violently trembling Osim massage machine.
The rare treat of being on the sofa gave her no comfort, she tried to climb the coffee table. That was too dangerous. I stopped her. She didn’t feel safe with me, she ran off to poke at the child gate barricading the kitchen, seeking safety elsewhere. Needless to say, the doggy sausage went largely unheeded.
Finally I called her to come and put a t-shirt on her, hoping that having something she was not used to on her would distract her enough to calm her down a little. When she finally settled, it was under the coffee table, enduring the irrational doggy voices in her head.
Suzanne Clothier says it is OK to comfort the dog. The challenge is how does one do that when the dog has already tuned you out?
Hugging the dog is not the option here, Donna does not like to be hugged. She could put up with it on occasion, but hugging her when her tail is already tucked in between her legs just seemed to me to be heaping further pressure on her.
She likes to be petted, but on her own terms and only when she comes looking for you.
That’s why in general, I can only take the measure of her fear by offering her treats. She ignores them when she is too absorbed in her fears. If she had the presence of mind to take them when offered, it means she was gotten calmer.
When she took the bit of tuna I offered, I took the T-shirt off her again. She grinned pretty happily like it was a load off her back. But the thunder continued and she stopped taking the food on my hand, focusing on the fear that has gripped her doggy mind. So I put the T-shirt back on her.
Nope, she has not mastered her fears although she is slightly more responsive with the T-shirt back on. She is worried but not so much now. She tail is only slightly tucked inwards rather than totally curled. Still nervous though judging by ow distracted she is, her ears, eyes and panting.
I’m not sure if the T-shirt helped or made it worse, but at least she settled by my feet and the massage-machine level of trembling had disappeared. She was still salivating more than normal because of the heightened excitement.
I kept offering tuna to her nose but it didn’t work. Since she had laid down by my feet, I sat calmly cutting up the rest of the slighted sausage, packing them into a container for use as training treats at a later time. On hindsight, perhaps I should have petted her more?
Eventually I tried stooping down and getting her attention while offering the tuna. It worked. And as the thunder lightened, I switched to the sausage treats. That worked too. Good.
Here it is the container of tiny cut sausage treats, the result of today’s endeavour to slowly lift her reaction to thunder with food. She went into an automatic sit and was trying her hardest to telepathically send feed me messages. Hah! Fine, one last tiny piece for her.
She’s quite adaptable with the t-shirt.
She gave up lobbying for treats after she realised I was not giving anymore since the rain had stopped. She had somehow managed to get her front paws through the collar of the shirt. I thought it made her look like a Japanese geisha with the obi belt. Haha :P
I felt quite drained after the storm. She must feel so too.
After the rain, we prepared to go out for a much needed walk in the cooled evening air. She sputtered with disgust as I squirted ear cleaner liquid into her ears against her will. She hated me. More than she hated the thunder at that moment probably. She poured all her anger into her beloved Dentastix that she chomped on vehemently, a goodwill gesture on my part for inflicting the ear torture on her.
Then we headed out for a simple walk, no training. Just brisk walking to clear both our heads and our souls.
A lady who passed by us asked to pet her. Donna reminded her of her own dog, she said. In the last few months, Donna seemed to have gained confidence with meeting strangers, compared to when she met Uncle Gardener. She did not react to the lady’s hand hovering over her head.
The evening was cool and wet and she got all her paws muddy. But she returned with a healthy appetite for dinner and now lies on her side sleeping without fussing to play like she usually does after her meals.
I’m sorry if today’s post is a little melodramatic. It’s just how the words flowed today. :P
I decided to order a 3 feet-long crate for her. I wasn’t sure if I should get 2.5 feet or 3 feet because I vaguely remembered reading somewhere that the crate should not be too large so the dog would not eliminate in it. A call to the pet store was unfruitful as it could not give me the advice I needed. The pet store owner was too busy trying to explain to me that a dog crate is a plastic box and a dog cage is a metal enclosure but was unable to advise on which size to get.
I spent some time searching and reading before I found the clarification online. In general, the dog should be able to lie comfortably on her side and to sit comfortably without hitting her head, so a three-ft crate will likely be more comfortable for her 15kg frame. A smaller 2.5 feet crate is only necessary for a dog that is not toilet-trained and is in the process of being house-trained.
We are getting the metal one which allows for greater air flow since our weather is typically hot and humid. Given her penchant for seeking shelter in the galley kitchen and under the coffee table, I think it should work great as a refuge for her (if introduced properly), especially on days when there is nobody home. Fingers crossed!
Another place where Donna gets fearful in is the dog park. The first time we brought her there, she had a little bit of fun inspecting the the grass, sniffing the golden retrievers who were older and not too interested in playing with her. Her terror started when a school-age boy brought in his small dog and the first thing that dog did was to rush towards one of the Golden Retrievers, which in turn ran away from the rushing dog and unfortunately, both headed in the direction of Donna. = =!
Poor Donna tried hiding under the park bench and then jumped onto the bench as the Golden Retriever ran headlong to the park bench and plonked itself by the bench while the small dog played merrily around the two harried dogs. Donna could not be persuaded to leave the bench for a long time afterwards.
At first I felt bad for not having been able to protect Donna from the rushing dogs, but at the same time, I didn’t want to pet and comfort Donna and make her feel she was right for being scared and to reinforce that behaviour. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I sat with Donna on the park bench and watched the other dogs having fun, hoping that by not being tense myself, Donna will stop being nervous and frightened after a while.
image from – http://drsophiayin.com/blog/entry/dog-park-etiquette-rules
The next time we visited the dog park, it was empty, but it seemed Donna’s memories have already ingrained a fear of the place for her and the minute she entered the dog park, her tail tucked between her legs and she made a beeline for the park bench.
Thankfully, a lady with a beagle came along and after a suitable period of assuring herself that the beagle was not an alien, that the beagle was harmless, Donna finally got down the bench to inspect the beagle warily. They even had a game of chase-chase. But that fun was short-lived.
A dog walker came along with big dogs – french bulldog, labradoodle, golden retriver, some hound-type of dog – and they all rushed in = = ! So yes, the same flight to the park bench played out.
Inwardly, I wish dog walkers are dog trainers who are good at making sure dogs don’t rush into dog parks, and that parents have good guidance for kids that help the kid to ensure his dog doesn’t rush into dog parks. But then that will be a perfect world, and we know that’s just not going to happen.
So, the help Donna to get rid of her fears at the dog park training continues. And predictable the opening scene has been and will be
Flight to the Park Bench,
followed by These Dogs are Not Aliens,
followed by Perhaps We can Play Chase-Chase,
followed by I am Inspector Grass,
and then the humans will be tired and the grand finale of our soap opera will come along Let Us Go Home.
After the first bad experience at the dog park, I was interested in what we were doing wrong to have resulted in the bad experience for the dog, so I did some research. To be honest, it made me feel better that maybe the problem was not only me, that I was not able to protect the dog, but that it could also a problem with the other owners.
If you are interested to know more about helping dogs play well and safely in the dog park,
Dr Sophia Yin has a great poster on Dog Park Etiquette that can be downloaded for free as well as tips how to train a dog to prevent him from being part of any unhappy situation that may escalate in a dog park in the dog park.
Southslope.org has a nice Dog Park Etiquette Poster with lots of useful tips for adults and for parents with children on how we can help make the dog park an enjoyable place for all humans and dogs and also what to do, if a fight breaks out. Although, I don’t think I can break up a fight, Donna and I at least can stay along the sidelines and er… inspect the grass. :P
Being new dog owners, we of course have let certain things happen which we on hindsight should not have. Letting a strange child play with Donna outside the vet is one of them.
That was the first time we ever took Donna to the vet, just one or two weeks after we got Donna home. She had got what the doctor later diagnosed as the kennel cough.
As we did not make an appointment beforehand, we had to sit outside and wait until every animal was attended to. That of course gave us the leisure to see other animals with their owners, try to entertain a bored dog, etc etc.
Somewhere amidst all that waiting, a couple came to the vet clinic with their mongrel, a frantic pug and their little boy. We were not that clued in the signs that a dog displays at that point in time, so looking back, I can’t really say for sure if Donna was happy playing with the little boy or she was trying to pacify the little boy to leave her alone. We were also keeping Donna on a tight leash, so she wouldn’t have been able to get up to walk away from the boy even if she wanted to avoid him.
What happened was that Donna patiently sat there while the little boy invaded her space to let her lick him. He was especially amused when her tongue slipped through the gap left by his fallen front teeth into his mouth. We stopped him when he used his hands to try to keep her muzzle close, explaining to him in terms that he could understand, that he wouldn’t want some other kid to do that to him would he. The little boy didn’t mean any harm. He stopped when we told him not to. He told us how he had a fighting fish at home that got eaten by the cat. The cat sounded like a nasty piece of work that bit and scratched the little boy too. But who’s to say it may not be the little boy’s fault sometimes. He seemed to be about lower primary school age and mischievous.
We allowed him to interact with Donna (the parents ignored him the whole time), assuming that Donna was happy to have a little boy to keep her entertained, but now I really can’t say for sure what she felt then. One thing for sure, Donna patiently endured the whole encounter and we ignorantly were thankful that our dog is child-friendly.
But in an alternate reality, Donna may have snapped at the child for badgering him, for getting in her face. And we would have been at fault for not recognising her signs of unease and asking for help.
So we were lucky that night, and we were lucky that we adopted a patient not-so-little dog named Donna.
These two posts on smartdog.typepad.com are a great resource that shows you through analysis of video the minute signals of distress a dog may be sending out that new dog owners would find hard to catch:
– Dog body language: How to tell if a dog is happy, frustrated, scared, annoyed Part 1
– Dog body language: How to tell if a dog is happy, frustrated, scared, annoyed Part 2
We met Uncle Gardener again this morning on our walk. Donna seem to recognised him from the previous two times we bumped into him. Her tail was wagging and friendly. She sniffed around his legs, probably checking out the cat scent, but was having too much fun on her own to “sit” or “paw”. Things seem to be going well until Uncle Gardener reached out his hand to pet her on the head. She jumped and her head hung low to avoid his hand. Everything about her screamed nervous.
For all she is friendly and playful, this dog does have random episodes where she reacts fearfully. Early on, Florence had pointed out to us how Donna is so ideal in the home environment, we had thrown a toy which landed near a bunch of big boxes stacked together, that dog was almost tiptoe-ing around the boxes as she carefully grasp the toy in her teeth before cautiously returning back to us with the toy.
Donna is a very cautious dog. Sometimes we wondered if it was because she was abused in her previous family.
Sometimes, we understood that her cautiousness was with good reason. When we got a new dog in her house, friends and family who liked animals would want to visit and play with the dog. These friends and family unfortunately are strangers to Donna and when the strangers’ focus are trained on her and they make a beeline for her once they enter the house, she starts to get nervous and she will siam. Yup, at these times, she becomes the master at avoidance tactics.
It didn’t help that some family members are rough and think that they need to show the dog who is the boss first, even if at the end of the day they just want to shower affection on the dog. It also did not help that people naturally want to help the poor scared dog, and end up cornering her to pet her.
When pursued by “strangers”, the nervous Donna will usually bunch up in her bed after she gives up avoiding them. But in this picture, she just wanted to be left alone because it is her bedtime.
These situations could have ended up badly, if Donna was not the type of dog to downstress and just freeze on the spot versus becoming fearful aggressive instead. I read that a dog that downstresses may also react violently when pushed past a threshold. With Donna, we have never reached the aggression threshold yet.
Much later, I met a guy from the Save Our Street Dogs organisation at a new grooming place I was trying out, and he told me that this contradictory behaviour of being fearful and yet calm (frozen in one spot rather than kicking and screaming and showing teeth) at the same time was a behaviour that our local street dogs are genetically predisposed to show.
Interesting, so Donna is genetically programmed to go from fearful avoidance and then to fearful acceptance, without the aggression?
I’m not so sure about that. What I do know is that Donna is not incapable of aggression. She has a “mortal enemy” at the shelter called Grace, a dog whom she would with certain predictability lunged at, only to be stopped by the leash and even then, the handler needs great strength to hold her back as she tears at the air.
But we have not seen this aggression away from the shelter. Not once.
Meanwhile, we’ve tried with limited success to help family members and friends learn how to not approach Donna in order to make the introduction to her a success. (Sometimes, older folks have their own opinions and think we are spoiling the dog. My goodness, they have NOT seen a spoiled dog, I tell you!)
We have also been making Donna go to her bed and lie down in a relaxed position so that she may slowly learn to find calm there, especially when she may potentially feel fear. It’s sort of like crate training, but without the crate since we don’t have one yet.
I try to get the inquisitive little girl to go to her bed and to lie there before opening the door when the doorbell rings. She may not always stay since she is the very soul of a busybody, but she does at least stand around 2m behind me, near her bed as I answer the door, which leaves space between her and the people at the door who may need to come in.
It’s working pretty well, whether it is the dog supplies delivery man, the carpet cleaning salesman, etc. We complete our transactions while Donna stands and watches on. Sometimes, she is amenable to come closer to sniff at an offered hand, especially when she sees the nice man is delivering her food.
But yes, we do have a bit of a way to go when it comes to socialisation and helping her feel more confidence.
Yup, she also gets nervous when the weekend cleaning lady starts to vacuum the floor.
