Helping your dog cope with loud noises

Using behavioural techniques to help your fearful dog

Thunderstorms, fireworks and other loud noises

These fears are all too common in dogs.  Sometimes its just in their breeding, sometimes its through an experience, they may be rescue dogs with a chequered or unknown history, or dogs who haven’t had careful, systematic socialisation.

However they get there, these dogs tend to use avoidance to try to hide from the loud noise – they will either run off (if they are outside and off lead), or may hide, pace, become restless, pant and dig. It is very distressing for us to watch.

Is there any hope?

Yes!

Desensitisation and counterconditioning

Improving their behaviour requires getting at the underlying uncomfortable, scared emotional state of the dog.  This requires a particular methodology of training to systematically ‘reprogramme’ their emotional state.  This is known as Desensitisation and Counterconditioning (D&C).

Desensitization refers to the careful manipulation of the fear-evoking thing – be that a dog, a person, a loud noise etc – so that it doesn’t generate a fear response.  Think of it as breaking the association between the scary thing and the emotional response of your dog.  No matter what the dog is afraid of, there is a version of it – smaller, quieter, much further away and very carefully controlled that wont trigger the fear.

The basic steps are that after this much less intense version of the scary thing is presented, a pleasant thing is presented (the counterconditioning) to build a new and more pleasant association.  This could be a game or some really fantastic treat (like tuna).

Handler role

You have a role to play too – if you think about what your dog is reactive to, the chances are when you see it you feel a rise in emotion – such as fear or anxiety.  This then inadvertently is communicated to the dog in the way we move and speak.  All too often we try to comfort the dog – speaking in a soothing voice, stroking them and cuddling them.  This all actually makes their fear worse!  Your job is to use a false silly, jolly voice when you speak to the dog in these moments – you can also try humming or singing (as these help to keep your adrenaline down).

Establishing threshold

Look on the internet for a sound clip of a storm (or firework or gun shot etc). You are going to play it very, very quietly in the same room as your dog.

You are going to watch your dog REALLY carefully to judge how loudly you have to play the sound to see that the dog has registered the sound (looking at the source of the sound, ears initially pricked), but not loud enough to provoke a fear reaction (panting, ears swung back and pined to their head, cringing, pacing, hiding etc). The sound level at which the dog hears the sound, but without a reaction is known as a sub threshold stimulus.

You are basically going to use counterconditioning to teach your dog that the arrival of the stimulus heralds a tuna feast – therefore the appearance of the sub threshold stimulus can only be a good thing. This is what is then known as a Conditioned Emotional Response (CER). Once CER is evident, you can start very gradually increasing the intensity of the stimulus and continue your counterconditioning.

If at any time in the process, your dog starts to react (pacing, panting etc) – you have gone ‘super threshold’ and the dog is feeling afraid.  You must then immediately reduce the intensity of the sound until your dog copes.  If you go super threshold, you will slow progress sown and may cause regressions in your dogs behaviour.

Now I know this all sounds terribly technical, but it is essentially teaching a new association to your emotional dog.  Your dog does this all the time – its how they know words like ‘shall we go for a walk’ and display happy and excited behaviour. Its how they know when you put your dog walking shoes on that this means they are going out. Its how my cat thinks that opening a can must mean its tuna for him.  Its making an association between an event/word and the outcome.

The amazing thing about this type of work is that it is almost magical in how it works when done correctly.  Your previously fearful dog is now happy when they hear a storm or other loud noise.  This method is known as Classical Conditioning.

Classical conditioning

Unlike our more usual method of teaching where the dog learns the connection between their own behaviour and its consequences, classical conditioning teaches dogs about the relationships between events and how to predict them. It is vitally important to remember that this method is about teaching a new association to a scared dog not teaching your dog that if they come back to you, then they get a treat (good recall = reward).

There are some rules to consider and keep in mind in order to make this successful:

•  Where the dog is when they hear the noise (in different rooms, or in the garden, or on a dog walk etc etc)
• Where you are when they hear the noise
•  How loud the noise is

It is important to realise that changing one of these parameters means that the others must remain the same or become relaxed. You can only then go on to the next step when the CER is evident and reliable.

Remember to use an amazing never used treat for this, as well as your happy, silly voice! A longer duration session is better than a few minutes.

·         Gradually increase the volume of the noise – always looking for a level that the dog is coping at – lower the volume if your dog begins to get anxious

·         Then go back to low volume and try a different room, and gradually increase the volume again

·         Try the same thing outside – again start with the sound played low and gradually increase

·         Try being in a different room to the dog – again start with low volume and gradually increase

This is the process of generalising and it is important that it is not rushed! You must not increase the volume until the dog relaxes.  You can often tell as the dog will shake, sniff the ground, lick their mouth, look away or begin to blink. This is then frequently followed by a learnt behaviour like getting eye contact from you or offering something like sit.

Super-threshold

Sometimes, when you cannot control the environment and a bird scarer goes off, or your neighbours are letting off fireworks, your dog will have a freak-out fit. Whilst not ideal, its life – you need to continue with your jolly, silly voice and continue to rain tuna down.  This techniques looks incredible since we then think we are rewarding the dog for poor behaviour! However, this is all about preserving predictability in your classical conditioning.  Your dog must know that the tuna reliably appears when the stimulus appears. You must disregard your dogs behaviour. That is muddying the water with the other method of teaching which is dealing with learnt behaviour.