Dog Obedience Training Info

Posts Tagged ‘instincts’

We have a 10 month old golden and we’re dealing with a noise sensitivity issue and wondering if anyone can help. (not to be ungrateful to those wishing to provide input, but please only people who’ve experienced this problem or people with extensive dog knowledge respond)

For the vast majority of noises she’s perfectly fine - there’s nothing in our house or yard that can scare her - even dropping a pan will startle her, but not send her running. She’ll just come and investigate.

However on several occasions, she’s gone into flight reponse, caused by really loud noises outdoors: Some examples: 1. a really loud car break screech. 2. nailguns on construction sites. (there are a bunch of new homes or additions being in our neighbourhood) One nail doesn’t appear to be an issue, but repeated nailing has been on a couple of occasions. 3. fireworks at a block party on our street a few weeks ago. 4. a very loud alarm at a local business that went off early one morning as we were walking nearby

We let our dog run off-leash in the park and occasionally on walking trails. She’s a purebred and her retrieving instincts are solid so she’d be miserable if we didn’t do off-leash stuff with her. Her recalls are very good - we work on them constantly - but my concern is that her recalls will not work one of these times where a noise frightens her into flight response.

Here’s how we’ve trained her: we live in big city, but with lots of green space nearby. We’ve frequently walked her on busy roads with lots of pedestrians. She has no problems with this. We subjected her to pretty much every household object, from vacuum cleaners to lawnmowers. No problem. We’ve taken her near heavy equipment and garbage trucks in operation. No problem. Loud music, fire engines, etc - no problem. She’s been subjected to all of it, and no problems.

Also, when she does show some sensitivity, we don’t coddle. Rather we distract her and try and get her mind focused on something she likes, e.g obedience for treats, or greeting other people or dogs. Usually this works, but not when the flight response is more intense - she shuts down to food and many obedience commands (though you can see her mind processing them). The episodes I described above were the more intense variety. However, we clearly didn’t do as much as we should have with really loud dramatic sounds.

Anyway, we’ve downloaded a bunch of sounds from the ‘net e.g. loud thunder, gunshots, fireworks, etc and have started playing them over the stereo in an effort to desensitize. I’ve read it’s good to do it when they’re eating and then gradually increase the sound.

I should note that while she’s generally submissive in nature, she’s really good with car travel, water, busy streets, meeting people, and new experiences in general - other than the noise issue, nothing really makes her cower, and no real separation anxiety.

So… has anyone else gone through this and how did you deal? Did your dog get better as it got older? (our is still just 10 months, but I know thats old enough for the problem to be potentially be permanent)

Thanks in advance for your help!!
Sorry, should mention the whole idea here is to add some safety for off-leash situations while in the park or on nature paths. She’s on- leash all other times, but this is not a dog to keep on-leash in all situations - she needs to run.