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This is a very common phobia in the dog, one which every small animal vet has to deal with now and again. At the first sign of thunder, the affected dog suddenly runs for cover, hides in some place such as under the bed and is wide eyed, trembling and panting. Since there is no real danger while I am reluctant to stick human labels to dog conditions I suppose you should classify this as a phobia.The problem is that this anxiety can last for many hours after the stimuli has passed and it is a very uncomfortable and frightening situation for your dog.
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You can handle this in a number of ways, a good starting point is making sure your dog is comfortable and reassured during storms and playing the radio as a source of white noise. Beyond that you can also get CDs with the noise of thunder on them as well as other sounds that might cause a dog anxiety. The trick is to play then constantly each day but at a very low level and gradually raise the volume over a period of weeks or so this may eventually condition your dog into accept that such sounds are normal and harmless. This approach needs patience on the part of the owner but I have known it work very well.
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If reassuring and conditioning your dog to these stimuli does not work then such cases can be dealt with by using the likes of Prozac or Valium which your vet may prescribe. These are never meant for long term usage but as a means of making your dog comfortable in the phobia situation and then gradually withdrawing them. Of course this approach can also be used with the anxiety noises CD and general reassurance.
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Sometimes though the dogs can exhibit the above behaviour and there is no obvious cause which the owner can see, in these cases consider the following :
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1.The first step would be to have your dog checked over by your vet just in case there is some disease situation going on. While it would be very rare some neurological conditions for example can bring about sudden onset personality change.
2. Then consider what might be going on in the local area. One such case I dealt with was spooked by guns firing at a nearby military range. While the owner could not hear the guns the dog certainly could as their sense of hearing is very acute compared to a person. I diagnosed this one by comparing a timetable of the gun fire to the dog’s behaviour. Of course your trigger event could be something very different but this is an approach to consider. The remedy here was to keep the dog in the house with low background music during the test firing.
3. If the above are ruled out you could be dealing with a true phobia, when I have diagnosed this before there has often been no obvious cause for the behaviour. Again such cases can be dealt with by using the likes of Prozac or Valium which your vet may prescribe.
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