I came across this interesting article by Karolina Westlund: https://illis.se/en/dog-owners-to-pet-or-not-to-pet-during-thunderstorms-or-fireworks/ In summary, petting can soothe a dog when fearful, but there are also three mechanisms where the petting could make things worse. 1. If the animal is too aroused for the petting to work, this might trigger an extinction burst of behaviours (eg pawing at you) as they desperately seek the comfort they expect. This, in turn, could raise the arousal level, making the dog more fearful. 2. Through the multimodal effects of sensitisation (where other senses become sensitised as well as the obvious one), rather than touch soothing your dog, your dog may become sensitised to the touch itself - learning to fear being petted. 3. When you can't control the trigger, you can end up with the petting becoming a predictor of the noise. Where you have Noise > Petting, the good thing (petting) may help to calm the dog, but if it is followed by another noise (Noise > Petting > Noise) and the fear of the noise is greater than the calming effect of the petting, then your dog can learn that petting is a predictor of something bad. A similar thing happened with Willow where she learned to fear a soothing tone of voice during a particularly windy storm. So the answer to whether you should try to comfort your dog seems to be: it depends on the dog and the particular situation. Know your dog. Look at your dog in the moment. Giving her somewhere to hide where you can remove some of the aversive stimulus (by blocking the sight, smell or noise of it) should be your first port of call and then consider whether petting is appropriate based on what you know of your dog and what behaviour you see her demonstrating.
I think it can help if you have already taught the dog a calm touch marker as part of a calming sytem generally
Well, according to the above, it would still depend on a) how aroused the dog is, b) how scary the thing is in the particular moment, and c) your timing. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge proponent of trying to offer support to your dog when they are afraid, but these are all very useful things to keep in mind. I think it's good to have a more complete picture of "it depends on..." rather than a simple "yes" or "no".
I agree I was only offering a option on training for the event, not every event. It shows the power of understanding your dog. Not all people understand or read their dog and a situation. My dog is becoming less reactive now as I can understand her a lot more and can support her in an appropriate manner. I will never get 100%
That's a different thing though. Rewarding calmness isn't addressing the fear. You can't alter how afraid a dog is of their trigger by rewarding them when they're not afraid. Rewards (reinforcers) are part of the operant conditioning cycle where you're working on changing behaviours, it's nothing to do with emotional responses. Classical conditioning is where you're pairing a stimulus with a good thing, to try to change the dog's emotional response to a trigger, and that has nothing to do with rewards. If you have the capacity to control the trigger, you can of course use classical counter conditioning in order to keep the dog under the arousal threshold where fear occurs and pair the trigger with a positive outcome, but this is still not a reward in this context because we're working on emotional responses, not controlled behaviours. Rewards are a consequence of an action, not related to an emotional response to something. In the contexts we're talking about - where the trigger is not controllable and the dog has already gone above their threshold where they are feeling afraid - they are not calm, so there is no calmness to reward. They may appear calm, but a scared dog will usually not take food rewards and, as discussed above and in the article, petting may (or may not) worsen the problem. What you could potentially do is (outside of the environment) train a calming behaviour so that you can cue it and get them into a feedback loop of: calming behaviour => calms the dog > dog finds lowered fear reinforcing > dog is calmed by reinforcement... but the problem is that if your dog is already scared, the chances of them being able to perform a behaviour on cue is pretty marginal, and being asked to do so could also increase their stress. I tried this by teaching Willow a play bow. It didn't work at all. I tried again with her standing up against me and had considerably more success with this because it was very similar to a self-soothing mechanism she already used - leaping at my face. Karolina says it better than me, I think!
Depends on the dog. I had a very independent German Shorthaired Pointer who went shooting, but she was terrified of thunder and the only time she sought any comfort from me was in a storm when she would come on my knee and hide her head. Another dog of mine who was afraid, was taught that every time it thundered, something exciting happened, a special treat, a throw of a rabbit skin dummy.
Huh. Trying to decide whether this article has anything in it, or is just some random rubbish on the the internet....favouring the second, to be honest....
I think it depends entirely on you knowing your dog as several of you have said. I know when Harley is scared by something like a loud bang, soothing her or even trying to calm her down doesn’t work as she is too far over the threshold to respond. Other times I am able to soothe her, but it depends on what is was that scared her.
I'm just glad there's a debate at all on this now. I was always taught to completely ignore Brogan when he had a noise-related melt down as if I petted/coddled him while he was having a panic attack it would reinforce his behaviour. So years and years of me struggling to 'ignore' him and act as unemotional as possible when he went into melt down mode. I hated forcing myself to do that. Now, knowing Brogan as I did, I honestly don't think that any soothing or petting him when he was in melt down would have helped HIM. I used to say that you could see his brains dribble out his ears if he heard gunshot/fireworks. He simply lost all reason and then my job would be to get him safely back home where he would sleep it off and be better the next day. But certainly feeling like I could comfort him would have helped ME and I'm much happier with the new school of thought that at least in some situations, soothing your dog when he/she is in panic mode is appropriate and helpful.
In extreme situations (fight or flight) these are driven by biological responses at neurotransmitter level. I agree, that when dogs are sadly in the middle of this response cascade, there is nothing they can do unless the response is "normal" .... meaning in simplistic terms "see Bear, run away" Blimey, if we encountered a grizzly, then I would be on par with Bolts 100m record! Sorry, Benson..but I really ain't going to play ball right now! The best that can happen, in my opinion, is to remove the dog from the situation. When this response cascade is driven by fairly frequent events that we can't avoid, thunderstorms, for example, I do wonder how easy is it for the dog to pair up petting with the actual event? If petting at that level of arousal/fear doesn't have any effect, then in my mind I would rather focus on plan B, remove dog/remove trigger/keep dog safe... I do consider myself fortunate. as although Casper can meltdown instantly, I can manage these scenarios, they are not driven by fear, he also has albeit not the most appropriate self-management systems in place, however, they do work, the triggers are literally less than a few minutes. A thunderstorm lasting longer must be a truly harrowing experience for both a scared dog and owner...
@Emily_BabbelHund said - They pick up so much of what we are feeling too and if we are worried (for them) they will pick it up, I would imagine - but they wouldn’t know the source of our worry. I saw a great programme on lead stroking the other day. It really seemed to work - maybe by changing the mood of the handler as much as anything?
Gosh, this is deep. In "scary situations" like a thunderstorm, I try for a "horns of the buffalo" strategy: Two separate tactics which hope to encircle and defeat the negative situation (or encircle the situation with loving arms, depending how you want to look at it ). 1. Responding immediately to a request for comfort, but encouraging the dog to come to me to collect the comfort. 2. Not showing any fear or reaction myself to the stimulous - setting an example. Of course there must be a risk that there's a clap of thunder immediately the dog arrives in my lap, but I'm not sure that can be avoided. For me, I think the benefits of the above strategy outweigh the risk. As a side note, I think at least some "worried behaviour traits " are learned from owners, and most of those learning events go totally unoticed by the owner.
I think this is true. I have a friend who is very scared of thunder storms, and all her dogs (one after the other) have been reported as being terrified too.
When Homer was in a complete state of fear heavy panting, scratching and digging at everything and anything petting was not an option for him at all. Eventually we’ve been able to give him long body strokes if the fear wasn’t so intense or as he’s come out of his panic state. Last weekend there was a loud rumble of thunder and he came straight to us shaking dreadfully but not scratching or panicking, he rolled on his side asking for comfort and responded to calming long body strokes. If I,ve learnt anything about having a fearful dog it is - one size doesn’t fit all! Trial (and error) and finding out what works for your dog and be prepared to change tactics.
So very true , what helps one will not necessarily help another , glad that your dear boy came to ask for help and got it x
Only one of my dogs gets upsets during thunder storms. The others just look at her as if she's gone nuts. She will respond favourably to cuddles to strokes and cuddles so that's what she gets. However, I did have a dog that would go completely berserk during a storm, snapping at the air and howling. The only thing that would help her was to shut her in a dark, quiet area and sit outside it until she calmed down and then go in and sit with her. They are all different and have different needs, I think as long we realise that and respond accordingly we are on the right track.
My girl didn't like thunder storms. I think it was the lightening rather than the noise which upset her. She would pace, inconsolably, during a night time storm. The flashes set her off. Same with firework flashes, She never bothered in the day time. She lived through so few night time storms that I was never able to find a way to help her - we don;t get many at all here. We had one really bad night, OH was away, and the storm raged for about 5 hours during the night. She paced and panted, each flash sparking her off again. Feeling a bit sad now, remembering it.
I doubt petting does anything either way for a very scared dog - why would it? It's pretty useless as a reinforcement in happier times....(that's not to say happy social interaction is useless, but just petting without the happiness is a bit of a dead duck....). The reference to Patricia McConnell in the article is to reference a point that petting/comforting probably does nothing, either way. That is, there is nothing wrong with petting/comforting a dog that might want to be petted/comforted during a thunderstorm (or whatever). I just find it a massive stretch to string together bits of learning theory and reach the conclusions of the article. It's extremely far fetched. The bottom line seems to be: if your dog seems to be comforted by petting and attention, that's ok. If that seems to be making it worse, or unwelcome, stop. Ok....who on earth would pet a scared dog and not give it any choice in that anyway?
@JulieT said - This also depends very much on the dog. Of my six pups only one was unmotivated by food or play. What motivated him? Petting, praise and fuss! That was Bruce - and he’s now a working Guide Dog making us all proud. Fear will have stages and levels of intensity at which different things work, I would imagine. But, just like people, every dog is different. The more dogs I care for the more true I realise this is. New (kind) ideas are always worth a try, you never know which may hit on the solution. I am trying hard to learn German. I’m a very quick thinker and a very s. l. o. w. learner (a difficult combination!). My teacher keeps trying new ideas to help me learn. I tend to think ‘no way that will work!’ and, as a teacher myself, I think I know what works - but I’m often surprised by the methods that do help me. So now I try to ‘suck it and see’ rather than dismiss different ways of working out of hand.
