Helping your dog during thunderstorms
Living the Country Life Radio Program with Betsy Freese
Radio interview source: Dr. Kari Wallentine, veterinarian, Kansas State University
Why do some dogs fear thunderstorms? Nobody's quite sure. It could be the flash of lightening, the loud noise, or even sensitivity to changes in air pressure. In extreme cases, dogs have been known to jump through glass windows during storms. Others will hide, throw-up or mess all over the floor.
When I was a kid, we had a Chesapeake Bay retriever named Johnny who would hide under our station wagon whenever a storm rolled through. One night Mom went out to take us kids to our grandparents' during some rough weather, and she backed over Johnny, breaking his jaw. Fortunately, the vet was able to pin it back together, and Johnny lived for several more years.
Veterinarian Dr. Kari Wallentine at Kansas State University is working on a Master's degree in animal behavior. Her dog, a greyhound named Anna, hides in the closet during storms and she lets her stay there.
"The best thing for owners to do is try and ignore the fearful behavior even though at times depending on what the dog is doing, that can be really difficult," Wallentine says. "But we know that punishing a dog's fearful behavior or even reinforcing it by reassuring the dog can both lead to increased fear so those are two things we want to try not to do."
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Our 11yr old Chow/Shepard mix is afraid of thunderstorms. His sensitivity has worked as a weather warning system, because he is so attuned to the storms that he will show up at the deck door without a cloud in the sky and sure enough, if we check the radar, there will be a thunderstorm somewhere within about 200 miles. Since we live in Western TN, when "Bubbie" shows up at the door, we laugh and say, "it must be thundering in Arkansas".
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