Nervous Dog

United States
July 1, 2012 8:03am CST
I have a dog who I would call nervous or gun shy to most. She shivers and pants at the sound of thunder or gunshots or any noise that sound like this. Does anyone have a pet like this and how do you calm them down or break this behavior?
4 responses
@beenice2 (2967)
• Sackville, New Brunswick
2 Jul 12
First of all dogs has charp hearing, did your dog had another owner before, was he terrified by something in his life. What do they eat, which size is your dog might have somthing to do with it, We had a small dog when I was a young girl and when she was scared we had to tell our dog that to not worry and that whoever that was visiting us was not going to harm anybody.
@inu1711 (5285)
• Romania
2 Jul 12
Unfortunately there are small chances you can break this behavior. In most of the cases it is something they have inherited from their mothers. I had a dog that was terrified by loud noises. She got lost two times because she escaped during fireworks displays. I tried to help her get rid of the problem by applying desensitization techniques but we couldn't get the result I expected. It is useless to tell that no professional dog trainer wanted to be involved in the training problem. This should tell you much about the chances of success... In the end I had to give up and all I did was to make her more comfortable during fireworks displays or thunderstorms. She used to hide in the bath tube to escape from the loud noises. So I made the bath tube a more comfortable place and I used to play some relaxing music to help her calm down.
• United States
1 Jul 12
There are a couple different theories on this one. Some say tonnurturenthe behavior others want you to break it. First, you must decide which you would like to do with your particular dog and stick with it. If you would like to stop the behavior you must ignore it or discipline for it. I personally prefer ignore. When your dog is whimpering , shaking, ignore, do not make eye or hand contact. This shows the dog you are not accepting of this high tension behavior and will as pack leader, not comfort them in it or strenghten it. When they stop the behavior embrace, pet, and praise. If you want embrace behavior there are things you can do like using calming words, wrapping your dog in your arms or blanket, or putting them in a secure small cave like environment where they will feel safe(their bed and/or kennel works well for this). Hope that helps!
• China
2 Jul 12
i have a dog,he is so little but he is one of my best friends.i like it very much,and i hope everyone can love animals because they are so yabi.