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.
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!
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!
There’s a rainbow in the sky! Out came the iPhones and it was not just mine.
There is always something very compelling about the sky that makes me fill up the majority of the shot with it. The sky is the sky and yet it is so changeable. At times mild, at times dangerous. The sky is all wild nature, albeit sometimes tainted by man-made smog.
The strange thing about nature phoneography, at least for me, is how I am so tempted to make nature to be so much more than what it really is in real life.
The rainbow doesn’t look obvious enough. Let’s use the vibrant filter in camera+, let’s up the contrast in Snapseed, etc etc. And yet, I wanted the clouds to retain their soft colours and fluffy nature. So yes, I did continue to edit using Photoshop so that the editing was more specific to certain areas of the image only when it came to the clouds.
Quite some time back, I was awestruck by how the cross-winds sent the raindrops aflutter at more than twenty storeys high. Usually one sees the rain streak down in obvious pinstripes according to the direction of the prevailing wind. But that day, the rain drops flew like confetti in the air in all sorts of directions. Their frenzied activity caught in the light and I was mesmerised. What happen in nature in motion does not translate very well when one is using one’s phone to point and shoot.
That light-hearted flutter of tiny drops in the light gets lost. And so I try to achieve a sharper image with the clarity filter in Camera+, up the contrast, applied a gentle emo filter so that the tiny droplets show up against the darkened colours. It is of course a futile exercise.
What one ends up with… kind of like a stylised, sharp image of a moody scene peppered by dandruff for rain. I like it though. It looks like a town where Batman may visit :P
And then I wonder, what if I had taken my camera camera, not my handphone camera, and set it to achieve a longer exposure. Would that have captured the flying rain? Do I even know what I am talking about? :P
But still at least one image within this entry I would like, to be simple, basic, unedited and still interesting. And so, this is the one I have for you. The anvil-shaped cumulo nimbus in its gentle luminescent glory.
Which appeals to you more? Nature untouched or Nature made hyper-real?
Phoneography Monday: Nature
App used: Gorillacam, Camera+, Snapseed
She doesn’t usually do this because she understands the meaning of a barrier. But when it starts to thunder loudly and the wind howls, she just wants to be near you, in the same space. She pushes into the kitchen without a thought.
For the first time, she launches herself upwards so that her front paws land on the counter top supporting her upright posture. After she is satisfied, she drops down and moves to the small yard where again she was never allowed. She peers into the gloom of the store room but decides against entering. She peers into the drum of the washing machine. The space is too small for her. There is no safe place to hide.
She finally stops by the side of the kitchen cabinet and stares out to the living room, where the thunder blares right outside. Her tail is tucked between trembling legs. You call her but she does not respond, already immersed in her own world of doggy apocalyptic thoughts.
Physically, you tap her gently on the rump to get her attention, ‘sit’, you say. She does, slowly. Does it give her some measure of comfort?
“Help me,” she seemed to be saying with her eyes perhaps. But my dear girl, no one can keep the thunder away.
You walk in and out living life as normal. There is nothing to be scared of, its just a storm, you tell her. You hold the gate for her, in case she wants to follow you to the living room. But her bottom is rooted to the spot. “Do you want a treat?” you ask, knowing full well her little head of horrors is drowning you out. You left the small piece of jerky by her anyway, and tie the gate open with industrial strength velcro.
After she realises that you are not going back to the kitchen, she makes her way to the living room and stood there in the centre for quite a while. At length, she realises nothing is happening to her. And as the thunder dies, she lies down on her own and relaxes into sleep.
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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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