Coke - new anxiety!

I wish I had some really good, knowledgeable advice.  I am watching this thread because we have the same issue with Charlie but it is during football.  DH gets excited watching the Lion's lose their shirts every week.  Never violent, never anything like that just a lot of shouting and screaming at the TV.  Charlie melts down.  Like Coke, he starts panting and shaking - no pacing but he will try to find me if I am home and try to crawl into my skin.  If I'm not home he goes into a corner and shakes and pants.

I have tried to ignore - that doesn't work

I have tried giving him food - that doesn't work

The only thing that works/calms him is taking him out of the house away from the excitement.  I do pet him and try to soothe him because frankly I am afraid he's going to have a heart attack.  DH tries to not to shout, etc. but its the Lion's  - they suck real bad.

Like I said, I wish I had better advice.  Sorry

What does he find most rewarding when he's come through a major training stressor?

One of the dog adoption groups I'm part of swear by thundershirts for this type of thing. We get a lot of dogs come in to foster that have anxiety over thundestorms, fireworks, etc. The consensus is that the dog that would previously pace and stress pant during these events would be calmly curling up under a table or something similar when they had the thundershirt on.

The thundershirt uses the same principle as swaddling a baby. Its very important to get the fit right or it won't work. It needs to be snug.

I have used the same idea with abbie in the car. She will visibally shake with anxiety and fear in the car at times (if the car stereo is on, if we go over rumble strips, or if she just feels vulnerable. I have a full body jacket that I put on her (snugly) when she goes in to those modes. With the jacket on she will curl up in a ball and go to sleep. I wouldn't believe it if I haven't seen it myself, trust me!

There is also a calming remedy you can get but I can't think of the name off the top of my head. Ideally, I would do both, the calming remedy and the thundershirt / snug jacket.

For the real extreme times I will give her a xanax (prescribed from the vet). Dogs process xanax differently than humans do. For them the xanax is very fast acting and has a very short life, quicker and shorter than how it works on us (according to my vet). Obviously you'd have to talk to your vet on this and I wouldn't recommend it as a first step. Only if the other options don't work.

P.s. Lisa, the lions comments made me lol!

One other thing you can try is doing mat work with a relaxation protocol. With abbies anxiety, I have found mat work to really help. You do the mat work when the stressor is not there to build a base / positive association. Then when the stressor is there you bring the mat out and do the relaxation work you have been working on. The mat (I call it blanket) is always the same is never left out. It only comes out when you are doing the exercises or when the dog is stressed. It needs to be a "special mat" not one that would be in a crate or used when you do other training. This mat is only for relaxation.

For abbie, I bring the blanket out when nothing is going in. She lays on it and I lay on the ground next to her giving her a body massage, especially hitting her sweet spots (chest and upper leg muscles) and give her treats at random. I reward for relaxed eyes, ears and mouth. Dogs are great mimics so I will focus on relaxing my eyes and facial expression while she is watching me. There's other steps to the relaxation techniques which you can find on youtube. The bottom line is that it has built a hugely positive association with her special blanket so that I can bring the blanket with us to new places - which is one of her anxiety triggers. For your situation you would bring the blanket out during fireworks and work on your relaxation techniques until he calms down.

Like I said, one of abbies triggers is new places. She will whine, bark, stress pant and so forth. However, her association with the blanket is so strong that when I bring it out and we go through our relaxation steps, she will calm down instantly to the point of going to sleep.

Lexi has a fireworks anxiety.  Or things like backfiring or shots fired from a gun.

Sends her into hide and shutdown mode for several hours.  I usually let her work it out herself or go get her and sit with her, holding her tightly.  She will stop shaking eventually.

I don't have any advice to help him through this though, but I'm thinking of the sweet guy!

Jewlieee

I have a full body jacket that I put on her (snugly) when she goes in to those modes.

Is it a particular dog jacket?  Something you have a linky to?

 Has anyone tried the Thundershirt? I've thought about if for Piper who has developed a phobia of thunder, fireworks, and gunshots out of the blue. After we had her fixed, she started trying to hide whenever there was a loud noise. Panting, pacing, trying to hide in my lap or dig her way into her crate. I tried distracting her with cookie parties and training sessions, but it isn't proving effective enough. Weird that a 6+ year old dog suddenly has problems with something that's never even phased her.

  I've heard mixed things about Thundershirts. Some people swear by them and other people say they don't seem to make much, if any difference. DAP are another option.

 Coke is right about the normal age of onset for noise and storm phobias to set in. Very often dogs don't have those issues until they are at least 3-5 years old.

A friend made it for me. It was originally designed to be a winter jacket because with sar my dogs spend a lot of time in the car in the winter. Its lined with fleece. However, when I put it on abbie I noticed it had a calming effect so now I use it for that. She loves it and wore it the entire training camp weekend when she was in the dorm with 10 other people + twice that many dogs. she freaks out in these situations and abbies behaviorist warned me to not stay in the dorm but to find another alternative instead, like a hotel. I took a chance though and abbie was amazingly calm in her crate with the jacket on all weekend.

I recently asked my friend to make me another one that is not so warm so we can use it like a thundershirt in the summer months. The thundershirt is $35 or so. Anyway, I will try to get some pics with abbie wearing it. Its nothing special really, just covers all of her back, chest and most of her belly. it has a velcro band so I can adjust the fit.

Just clicked on the thundershirt link above and it looks like they re-designed it. Abbies jacket looks just like that (same color too!) but it covers her back all the way to her tail. Before, the thundershirt was basically a stretchy shirt which sometimes made it hard to fit (so I heard). This new design looks a lot better.

I recently got a thundershirt for Twister.  I'd been wanting to try it and a recent thread made me finally do it.  So far I haven't used it.  The few storms we've had happened when I wasn't around or else I was asleep and unaware. :(  I did try it on him so I would be somewhat familiar with how to put it on before the real thing.   It's pretty adjustable and not hard to get on except maybe on squirmy dogs.  I'm anxious to see if it helps him.  He normally hides in his crate or in the hallway during storms or fireworks.  I'll update any results.

I ignore Twister when he's frightened. If I do interact with him, I do it in a normal manner. I don't want to make a big deal over it.  When I act concerned, he picks up on that and that can't be helping his state of mind.  Not saying you make a big deal over Coke, just saying how I handle Twister's noise phobia.

I feel your pain, Kirby gets all anxious during fireworks.  He will tremble, pant, and pace a bit though usually he will find a corner to sit/cower in.  For a bit it did seem like after his first 4th of July down here (In South FL you are looking at a 5-6 straight of loud nonstop fireworks not to mention fireworks being set off several days before and after the actual day) his fear started to spread to say things like thunderstorms.  I ignored the behavior however and it sort of dwindled back to only a reaction to fireworks. 

To cure the problem I think your best bet would be desensitization.  It is actually a great thing he reacts to the TV/computer.  This means you can get a tape with loud noises and he will be tricked by it so the work you do with him will probably carry over to real life noises.  Some dogs won't fall for say hearing a firework on a TV versus a real life one making it hard to desensitize them.  The object is to get a tap and start playing it at its lowest setting (you may not even be able to hear it at first) and slowly raising the volume till you see a reaction.  If he starts to stress take it down.  You want him to obviously be aware of it and sort of on alert, but not so bothered he starts to full on panic/pace/pant.  You can even up the anti by turning it on these lower settings for feeding times to help reshape the noise with good things.  Since he can be tricked it may be worth the effort of trying to rewire his thought process then simply cover up the problem after the fact.

 Edit-  If you plan to use sedatives for big events, keep in mind it you are going to need to test around with them to get the right dosage so don't wait till the last moment.  I asked my Aunt, who is a vet if she would suggest meds for Kirby for the 4th of July and she told me if it was her dog she wouldn't so I choose not to go through the hassle/risks of meds for a once a year event.

For those who are reading and are interested in the *comforting* fear myth, I do recommend folks read this link in order to learn more about operant vs. classical conditioning, and why it is that you really can't *reinforce fear*.
http://www.fearfuldogs.com/fearstudy.html

I say that because I choose not to ignore the behaviour when my dogs are afraid. Based on my readings in fear in animals, and from my educational background, I think that when an animal feels afraid, the last thing the animal is expecting is that their owner will ignore their neediest time. An animal does not *want* to feel afraid, and most animals actually are more calm when their owners can acknowledge that they are feeling afraid rather than ignoring them. That doesn't mean coddling them and making baby noises in a frantic manner, but massage, rubbing, talking in a soothing tone, will not *make your dog more afraid*. You can't reinforce an emotion. At its best, it will have a comforting effect, at its worst it will not do anything. It's really not going to harm your dog or *make it more nervous next time*. Now, if you too are nervous of the same thing, that can affect your dog because you dog will pick up on your own pheromones and stress scent. But if you are not nervous, then it's not going to hurt your dog to comfort it.

Before jumping to get the Thundershirt (although I too have heard good things about it!), you might want to look into TTouch's Body Wrap:
http://www.crvetcenter.com/bodywrap.htm
It's inexpensive to buy a wrap and it is supposed to work well for anxieties as well.

You could try melatonin, if I recall I think you have used it before for some purpose? Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not, but at least there wouldnt' be any harm in trying. The same goes for Rescue Remedy, it might help a little bit, although you are facing the problem of not really predicting at this point what is actually going to trigger it. It still might help with the calming.

I totally agree with the fear thing kim posted. That has been my experience working with fearful / anxious dogs. You have to learn how to calm the dog down. If you pet / massage too fast, talk to fast etc then you feed in to it but if you make yourself super calm and transfer that to your dog through your voice and touch, the dog will calm down