I have a Choc lab / dob/ pit mix named Chevy who we believe is nine years old. When we got her 4 years ago she had over 50 ticks on her. For the first couple of days she was afraid of my little dog and my cat. We came home one day to find that the cat had trapped her in the bathroom by standing in the hallway, blocking her way out. She has this one strange fear we could never figure out. If you blow on the top of a bottle and it makes that noise, she will run as fast as she can out of the room. My dad was a dog handler and had never seen anything like this. Anyone know what could have triggered this?

I take it Doby was with another family prior to when you got her? Judging by her condition, she must not have been well-cared for. It is even possible that the family preyed upon her fears just to torment her. My dog had a previous family as well. They lost her when she was just three months old. She was found wandering the streets, dodging cars, terrified out of her mind, and taken to the shelter, where we met. My dog came with a lot of fear issues, which we have been slowly and patiently working out. One of them is fear of loud/unfamiliar sounds, particularly gunshots (she is a field-bred, ESS). Like I said, we've been working with her. She will lay down at our heels while we shoot now, instead of hiding in the truck. She was also afraid of crowds. One day we unwisely took a walk at the end of a 10K race. It was all I could do to coax her home. Now, I can take her to a crowded park, and little kids will come up and love on her, no problem. Doby will just need a lot of TLC.

Adopted dogs often have little triggers like that. My best guess would be that something in her past life made that sound which caused her a great deal of stress

I've heard all kinds of storeis about dogs being afraid of random things, even dogs that have never been abused. Sometimes all it takes is one bad scare and the dog will remember the trigger. My dog HATES people in red jackets....we've just accepted it and try to avoid that color, haha.

[wishbone]

It's normal for dogs to hate or scared random things. If she's reacting with simple things around, you can train her to ignore them. Have happy events around like playing tricks with some treats, then slowly let her some noises while she's not aware of them. She also heed socializing, visit parks and places where dogs play with their owners so she's able to see how was it.

my guess would be limited socialization and when it was payed attention to, it was prolly shoved out of the way and just not taken much notice of. It thinks everything is a threat, leading me to believe before you got it, it was treated badly or abused.

well that is also our problem we have a pitbull and mini pincher, our pitbull is afraid with the mini pin..that's weird but we are working on it..

I don't know if anybody could tell you what exactly triggered it, but surely we could try to help you fix it. My dog is also sensitive to certain noises. He especially used to have fits before dinner time, with the constant clanging pans and slamming cupboard doors. It proved to be pretty easy to fix. I just had to show him what the sound was coming from and that it was not an indication of danger. So I made him watch as I repeatedly closed a cupboard door, starting very quietly, and gradually louder and louder. He certainly exhibited some nervous reaction as I was doing it, but I did not allow him to run into a hideaway to quiver in fear. If he jumped, I took hold of him, sat him down, waited a moment for him to regain himself, and continued. A few minutes doing this, and he was relatively comfortable being near the noise, meaning he would turn his head away, but at least wouldn't flee for his life. I did this every now and then, and, eventually, the problem diminished to normalcy. Give it a shot with the bottle flute and let me know how it goes.

Hi Texasranger,

Our dog was frightened of thunder as some dogs are and we had a trainer tellus to record the sound. Then play it very quietly in the background whyilst playing with the dog and giving it heaps of treats. Once your dog gets used the the noise playing quitely start turning it up whilst still rewarding the dog. That way they associate the sound the with something good i.e. treats, play or attention.

It worked for our dog and we had a storm last night and I don't think she even noticed.

FForster01