Need help with guard dog problem

[oldbat]

Good morning. Raining once again in ne OK; dull, ugly, gray day.

Brindlebtch said:

I have even known some that had to be tranquilized to get through them without hurting property or themselves.

Katie is at that point now if the gunsmith keeps on for a lengthy period with his BP guns, or if the thunder is particularly intense. Recently, I was working in the yard and he started a session that lasted over two hours ....and I have to admit, even I was ready to beat him severely about the head and shoulders by the end of it.

Katie was frantic after the first two shots; trembling, dashing off up the driveway, returning only when I got very obnoxious with both my voice and words.....cajoling is not something she will listen to. She stood up on her hind legs, pawed at me, went back to all fours only when I stepped ... hard... on her back feet. (She's been taught better.) Took her in the house and she started clawing at the door to get back out. Brought her back out...on a leash...tied her to a yard fence post to keep her from running off. She started digging under the chain link to get outside the yard. Took her outside the fence and tied her there; started digging under the chain link to get back inside.

My 4 horse stock trailer was sitting in the driveway with the back door open after being hosed out, so took her inside, tied her to a tie loop on the side wall. She sat down, almost all trembling stopped, and she watched me working without testing the leash, even though the gun was still bellowing up the street. She was still upset, but had contained her fear to the extent that she could wait relatively calmly for me to finish.

Mountain Man Jim said:

One thing to consider is it sounds like your dog needs a very secure place to be able to hide.

In Montana, during the nasty cold winters, I turned that horse trailer into a BIG dog house by covering all of the outside except the bottom 2 feet of the back door with a big tarp, and lined the inside walls with straw bales. Both Katie and the outside cats slept there.

That could maybe explain partly why she calmed down inside the trailer.

In the house, her places of refuge are behind my bed, or in the corner behind my recliner. Will see what I can do about making those two places more secure, soundwise. Outside, she spends most of her time under the back entrance. That "porch" needs some repairs anyway, so will see about incorporating a real dog house under there.

It might be able to distract her with a treat when the noise is made which might help her to associate the noise with a good thing.

I've tried that. Her state of panic is so complete that she will not even take a piece of meat from my hand. Ignores it and continues pacing and panting (in the house).

I will get a copy of the McConnell book.

As you probably have noticed, Pyrs are actually very sensitive.

They also give a whole new meaning to the term "bull-headed).

Wolf Kim said:

have a helper go to the back of your property with a .22. Through the use of a radio to keep contact between the shooter and you. Have them fire once, then you ask the dog to sit.

If I was not alone, if Katie was not picking up the sound of a .22 being fired a mile away, if my property was more than 150 yards deep, and if I had a radio setup, I would probably try that. But, old retired bookkeepers don't have the funds to buy radios, and everybody else around this neighborhood either works during the day, or is so stove up that they're on canes or in wheelchairs.

Big C said:

Its quite a change moving into the OK/Texas area.
People hear of this (what you described about the storms) and don't quite understand...

The difference is that storms in Montana can be nasty, but they don't come around all that often....normal precipitation in the southeastern corner for a year is 12 inches, most of the rain in May and June. In OK, thunder/lightning storms can happen daily....sometimes two or three times daily... for weeks at a time....and at almost any time of the year. And measures in the 50+ inches already this year.

()relics said:

.reassure her, expose her,let her react the way she feels she has to, then correct her and show her how you would like her to react.

I'm apparently not making myself clear. She reacts by bolting. When I am able to get my hands on her again, she does not listen....she continues to try to leave. She has shut her brain off. She is completely in the "flight" mode. To this point, my only way of keeping her here in one of those panic attacks is to tie her until the storm quits and she calms down.

She cannot be allowed to continue this way; not only could she be hit and killed if/when she gets on the highway, she could cause an accident that will kill people. Not acceptable.

Now you have moved and she may feel that she is without a job. She sometimes is left alone

If she could be trusted not to "quit the flats" at first excuse, she would have a full time job......when it's a clear night, she is allowed to help Pest with the predator control. In Montana, I worked in town 4 days a week. Now, I'm here every day, leaving only long enough once a week to get feed and groceries.....a round trip that takes about 3 hours total.

.teach her to relax instead of run. How?? You she will be able to sense from you if she should be scared/run or if she should lay back down.

Storms do not scare me....I'm about as calm as anybody can be during one of these "events". She doesn't care what anybody else is doing/feeling......she just wants GONE.

As suggested, I will visit with the local small animal vet to see if she has suggestions. She may also know an animal behaviorist who can help.

Thank you all for your input. I do appreciate it. Keep your fingers crossed. Have a good day.

et​

 

[patandchickens]

()relics :

PLEASE...Let's not medicate our pets...Fire a gun around her to involk a reaction???? PLEASE not that....<snip> I have been startled by loud noises...Why can't a dog be startled? After the initial shock of the noise and after I determine that it is not "going to kill me", I proceed with what I was doing before I was startled because i have LEARNED that there are loud things and most of them are not life threatening <snip> Their natural reaction would be to run and hide until they can "figure out what just happened"...teach her to relax instead of run. How?? You she will be able to sense from you if she should be scared/run or if she should lay back down.

The thing is, some few animals just "switch off" entirely, go into a full-tilt blind panic, as soon as the stimulus occurs. There is no *opportunity* for learning; the animal is not in a teachable state of mind and it often does not stick around long enough to have the first clue what if anything *you* are doing. And the problem is, the panic becomes self-reinforcing; the animal apparently associates *the panic* with the stimulus and each time it recurs it becomes more locked-in.

I have dealt with this with a few horses, and it sounds like that's the situation the o.p. is in with her dog.

In principle you "could" start with the stimulus so ratcheted-down, so low in intensity, that the panic reaction does not set in, and then very gradually and steadily move upwards from there. In my experience with horses anyhow, this only sometimes works. When it does not work, it is because the horse suddenly at some point 'remembers' to panic and then you are back to square one without any real progress having been made.

Nobody I know of uses tranquilizers with horses for this type of problem, b/c you do not want a 1000-lb animal acting erratically and sometimes *over*reacting when it is already inclined to panic. However it seems like an intelligent option to try with a dog. The goal would be to put the dog in a less on-edge frame of mind so it is, hopefully, CAPABLE of noticing what happens after the loud noise and learning from it.

To be honest, the horses I've known like this (the ones that went into a total blind-panic run-for-your-life not-thinking-any-more state) seldom ended up really "fixed". The best outcome was when you could use a lot of other training means, and quite a lot of mileage with other situations, to get the horse to deeply trust and rely on you, and then he would stand there and sort of panic mindlessly in place because some part of his brain remembered that it was probably safest/best to stay with his handler. I do not know how this compares to dogs in the same situation though.

Very best of luck in a tough situation,

Pat​

 

[horsejody]

I read an article once about giving dogs melatonin right before a storm. It's what the body naturally produces to help us relax and sleep. It has been very effective for dogs that fear storms. You can buy it in most pharmacies. Also, some people rub their dogs down with fabric softener dryer sheets right before a storm. Some dogs react to the static electricity that they feel in the air. They are much more sensitive to it than humans. The dryer sheets help keep the static off them.

 

[()relics]

My last word ...If your dog does not react to your voice instantly when you speak he is in need of an on-leash obedience course.....PERIOD...No matter what the situation or no matter the surroundings no matter what breed of dog...You speak he listens...or at least acknowledges that he has heard you...period....I am a No-Hit trainer....But my dogs listen without question because they trust me ABSOLUTELY....They may question me at times but they Listen and Do regardless of what They Think...You tell Katie "quiet-down"...Katie needs to Be Quiet and Stay Down....Or back to the leash with the sit down stay heel...whatever...until she DOES what you say without thinking....Again.....JMO....The static electric theory is correct...IMO...thats why animals head for cover before the bad weather hits or begin to get anxious...While we stand around wondering where they are going and why the panic....

 

[Brindlebtch]

Clomicalm is a medication from your vet that might help. It helps control anxiety and is given daily.

There is also an herbal liquid drop that really helps calm dogs down, I know people who have used it but can't remember the name of the product.

 

[oldbat]

Good morning. Still raining; place is basically a swamp....2.5" in 5 days.

patandchickens said:

The thing is, some few animals just "switch off" entirely, go into a full-tilt blind panic, as soon as the stimulus occurs. There is no *opportunity* for learning; the animal is not in a teachable state of mind and it often does not stick around long enough to have the first clue what if anything *you* are doing. And the problem is, the panic becomes self-reinforcing; the animal apparently associates *the panic* with the stimulus and each time it recurs it becomes more locked-in.

All right! You've got it! The lightning storm occurred when she was about 5; she's now 11. My mistake was in thinking that if I just rather ignored the tantrums, returned her home and did not make a big deal out of it......which can work with some horses sometimes.....she would get over it. Instead, it's gradually gotten worse and become a habit....or probably more of a "conditioned reflex"....especially intensifying since we moved to OK, where there are lots of thunderstorms.

Back in the mid 1970's, we owned a horse such as you described. With lots of work,...almost 4 years worth.... he was improving....we thought he was going to be okay. Then, one day for no reason we could tell, he again exploded without warning. When finished, he'd given me a concussion (still have no short term memory), broke my back in three places, and I spent that winter learning how to walk and how to bookkeep again. Four years ago, I had a complete left hip replacement made necessary by that wreck. Animals with mental problems are not to be messed with....they can hurt you bad. Oh.....he ended up going to the killer car after a very good professional trainer couldn't do anything with him either and declared him "dangerous". Beautiful sorrel Arab/QH cross with a wonderful floating gait.

Much later, quite by accident, we learned what had started his mental meltdowns: As a colt, he was owned by people best described as "d***** fools and idiots". The teen-age son would hide in the branches of trees in the pasture, and when the horses grazed along and came under his hiding place, would drop down on their backs. His family thought it was cute and funny. Strange people.

Thank you, horsejody for mentioning melatonin and the use of fabric softener sheets. And, thank you Brindlebtch for listing Clomicalm. I will see how they work with Katie.

And ()relics; FWIW; Katie does respond nicely to commands....when she's calm and coherent. I've only been working with her for about six months....since she moved back here from Tulsa. She's not an easy dog to train.....the GP has been bred to be self-sufficient and to do their own thing without interference from people. Living with sheep, they don't have the luxury of asking for direction from their people....they need to make their own decisions, sometimes on the spur of the moment.....and that's what Katie was doing in MT. Only since moving to OK has she become a "house dog", and then only because it's the only way we have been able to keep track of her.

A GP in full "dig" mode is a mini backhoe. It doesn't take long to get under the fence and gone....and a paniced GP is even faster. At that point, somebody had better be in a position to grab her, because she's stopped listening....as mentioned by Pat in her post.

I realize one of the ways to subdue a dog and get in their head is to flip them on their back. I'm just short of six feet tall and have worked outside all my life so am not fragile or weak. But, there's no way I can flip Katie, at almost 100#, on her back without hurting her, when she's lost it. Yes, I can grab her legs on the opposite side of her body and dump her ....probably very hard since she's going to be fighting me . But hurting her would seem to me to be counterproductive and would certainly destroy any trust she has.

Not everything is black and white in the world of animals; sometimes you just can't do some things with some of them. No fault to them or us. At the point when their "antics" become dangerous to people, something drastic has to be done. If I cannot find something that will calm her down during storms, and keep her from running off in a state of panic, something more drastic will have to be considered. That's just the way it is in the real world.

Thank you all for your contributions. Very much appreciated. Have a good day. et​

 

[Brindlebtch]

Quote:
You are the only other person I have ever heard say that! I have told so many people that dog training is not black and white - it is frequently shades of gray! They just think I'm weird.

 

[KDbeads]

Quote:
Clomicalm can also have the nasty side effect of unprovoked aggression in a small number of dogs, if you decide to try using it be on the look out for it just in case.

The drops...... Bach's rescue remedy. Does not help for this type of panic/hypersensitivity often enough to use it. Plus you have to know ahead of time that there's going to be a gunshot if you have a dog that bolts.

oldbat..... I have a good idea what you're dealing with, we are going through something similar with our Tesla, though I think you've got it worse at the moment.
Luckily I can catch her moods fast enough to get her inside and secure before she has a chance to dig and bolt. The walls of my laundry room and the floor are evidence to how bad she can get. Holes in the walls from chewing during a mild storm and she's pulled up 6 layers of vinyl flooring during the bad ones. We are looking at sedatives at this point now that we are having frequent storms because she ripped out a nail during the last thunderstorm trying to dig through the foundation.
Right now she is NOT allowed out of that room when we are not home or at night, it's safer for everyone that way.
I have no suggestions just a supportive post, is a bad thing to deal with alone and unless someone has had one of these dogs they really don't know how blind panic looks or how it interferes with a trained brain.

 

[Akane]

While it's preferable to avoid medication I think the difference here is it's a temporary use to aid training. Where as a lot of doctors are just prescribing medication in place of real treatment. Medication like this should be a temporary aid not the treatment itself. I've used medication on horses. I had a mare that suffered some trauma and was beyond severely herd bound. She was an amazing horse that could do about anything and everyone from the very advanced to little kids who had never been on a horse enjoyed riding her. Most of the time she was very level headed and trustworthy. If you forced her to be alone though she would go into complete panic shut down mode and fight you until either you or her ended up injured. 3 people had tried to solve this problem for the past 5years of her life before a friend just gave her to me after warning me of her issue. We tried a few things and finally resorted to a mild sedative. We gave her the sedative and then took her out on a ride with other horses. When we got a little ways from home and she was acting a little sleepy we either sped her up or slowed her down so the others got farther and farther away. Just before she reacted we moved her back toward them. At shows after our classes were done we'd sedate her and then walk her away from the others right to the point she'd try to turn around. Then we'd just stop. Trying to do this without sedatives nearly got us or her killed. With sedatives she stayed calm enough to think and realize that being away from the others wasn't deadly. After 2 months she could be ridden away from the others without any medication and only the usual look around worried and whinny reaction of a horse that prefer not to be alone. If a good rider was on her they could keep her going without trouble. If a kid was on her she'd just jog back and immediately calm down. Far different from the horse that nearly killed itself. Sometimes when the normal desensitizing exercises aren't working you need something extra to keep them stay sane long enough to work through the problem.

One difference between horses and dogs is that treats and rewards work much better on dogs. Most dogs will do whatever you want for a treat, toy, or game they enjoy. If you can come up with what she really enjoys then use it. You may have to do something to get her mind back on you first though which is where some medications can be useful. There are over the counter things like mentioned that would carry less risk and side effects than prescription medication. Another thing with dogs versus horses is don't ignore them when they are upset. With a horse you just keep telling them to do the same thing. With a dog if they really get upset and are at risk of shutting down go make them happy. Get excited. Talk happy. A little different for someone older instead of me at 24 but I bend over and start shoving my akita and get a bit of a wrestling match going when she's starting to tune me out for something. The forceful contact gets her attention and the game makes it a happy situation so she no longer bothers with whatever was upsetting her. Then we move on in an excited way back to whatever work we were doing and I tone things back down again when she's back on task.

It was somewhat mentioned but does she have a job at her new home? Give her something to do. Something to think about. Establish a routine. For example if you have small livestock then practice putting them up until she understands and every time a storm comes take her to help collect the livestock. Her job is to guard livestock. If she thinks storms are dangerous then give her a way to help with that danger. Have her do something that prepares for the storm. It will take her mind off the storm and when the task is done send her somewhere she deems is safe to wait it out. Personally I wouldn't have a dog if it wasn't with me all the time including in the house so mine would come back inside with me, have their designated bed to lay on, and I'd do something calm like read a book until the storm is over. It sets up a routine that when storms come you do this and then everything is ok while you wait for them to end.