Lewis: Something sad and difficult is happening at Clinical Sound Fobia. He is suffering. Three months after onset and diagnosis, he is much better with the help of medication, but we have a long way to go. I would like to share with others who are experiencing this, or in the future, what the recent months have been like for us.
Sudden fear of fireworks
Lewis joined my family in December 2021 and has had many thunderstorms and at least eight noisy holidays over the next few years. I live in the capital, so the fireworks get active and get the show. Lewis showed no fear at these events (with one exception in unusual circumstances). However, he was pleased to accept the food after the noise. Due to my long experience with healthy reactive dogs, I always deliver good snacks to fireworks and thunder. But if Lewis built some good associations from it, they weren’t enough.
On January 1st, 2025, when New Year’s fireworks began, Lewis began panting, trembling, and seeking comfort. He was in extreme pain. I didn’t have any medicine for him. When he took it, we made it difficult with food and he finally fell asleep and tired. I made a plan to look at the vet.
About a week later, the snowstorm began and lasted several days. This is rare here. We hadn’t gone to the vet yet. Lewis has enjoyed the snow in the past. However, at about 7:30pm on the first night we were out in the garden. And a nearby neighbor caused a firecracker. This video shows the results.
In the video, Lewis lifts his legs, trembles, panting, stunningly quietly astonishing noise, showing pupils and extreme tension extending into the muscles of his face.
Not only did Lewis panic at the time, he was also afraid to enter the garden, especially at night. During the snow he never went outside in the evening, so he sometimes didn’t rule out for up to 18 hours at a time. And his sound quickly became generalized.
I called my vet and started taking prescription medication as soon as the street was clear enough. I won’t explain my overall medicine experience, but I know that many people take much longer than they want to get the medications and combinations that work for their dogs. When you get it, it’s precious, Game Changer. But the vet and I are still working on it for Lewis. Writing this in April makes him much better. But he is not his old self.
I also had him thoroughly check the pain (Lopes Fagundes et al., 2018) by two veterinarians. Stay above it. It is worth noting that, according to Dr. Karen’s General (2013, p. 257), he was an age group where genetic sanitation phobia was common.
We continued our bad luck. In February, the city’s Ministry of Water excavated a neighbor’s driveway. First, the Jackahammer. Then scrape off the pavement and throw it away on a truck. And of course, the tracks made a backup beep. A new level of trauma unlocked for Lewis. Work started every morning at 8am and lasted all day. This lasted four days a week, and two more days the following week. Lewis rarely went outside and was very powerful when he did. He associated horrible sounds with being at home, which also poisoned indoors. While inside, he asked to be taken somewhere in the car. He stood next to the cabinet, trying to get into the garage either holding his strings and harness or when I went out. Or, if the door is closed, he will simply ask repeatedly to go to another room. I forgive him, but of course that didn’t help. It will not escape the sound of its amplitude and frequency.
After the workers left, and still before the night of the scary there was a sweet spot around dusk. Sometimes he will make the only exclusion that will be eliminated all day in between. Sometimes I had to take him to another neighborhood and let him go.
Thunderstorms too
Lewis was also terrified the next time a thunderstorm occurred. In me Sound WebinarI will talk from an acoustic perspective about the difficulty/impossibility of preventing dogs from hearing lightning. This was brought back to the house: how desperate we are, as owners, for something, Anythingblocks that sound. But in almost every case you just can’t. It’s ridiculous to think that when Thunderclap can rock your home, an insulated kennel, closet, or earmuff can hear the sound. This is why healthy phobia and other scary dog owners are so easily exploited by companies selling products with false promises. When you want to relieve your suffering friends. We’ll try anything.
We will also talk about the saturation issues when using food for ad hoc counter conditioning. This is a big problem for us. Arkansas has storms that last for hours. We’ve had that day recently. We knew it was coming. I had about 2 cups of chicken in bite-sized pieces. The first lightning came at 5:30pm. I had medication Lewis beforehand and he was still responding. It’s not as harsh as the video above, but it’s still upset and frightening. I gave him over 60 minutes of chicken for all the Thunder Claps, but after that I had to slow down. There was too much food.
When studying Pavlov’s conditioning, we know that it is important to establish a 1:1 association between conditioned stimuli (in this case lightning) and unconditioned stimuli (food). The more clear the association is, the better the forwarding of responses to those originally Scully. But you can’t clean it with lightning. There are some horrible challenges associated with satiety. First of all, which lightning “counts”? You begin each treatment, as you know what we should. Then, if you continue doing it and include something quiet, you will find yourself feeding non-stop. So you try to create some acoustic thresholds in your heart’s ears and just deal with the “big things.” But this breaks the pairing. And is there really a magic line for dogs between the scary dogs and “OK, I’m not panicking” thunder? Even if it is, how do you find it?
The second problem is the duration itself. In my example, the Thunder said it started at 5:30pm. Eight hours later, at 1:30am the next morning, there was no 10 minutes of hearing lightning. Then there was another thunderstorm for two more days.
It would be helpful if you could start asking for action and give him something to do rather than wait for an inconsistent pair of food. After hours and days of storms, I was giving him a “comfort chicken.” However, the transition to action must occur later. He’s too upset.
Training and raising it became more difficult
Lewis’ trigger fasted the generalized trigger. The slums at the door, the twigs falling on the roof, the man who gets the hiccups (really!), the unexpected circles of metal pieces in the box, the excavations, the cars all frighten him badly. There are still a few days without triggers. In the video above, you can see how sensitized he is. He climaxes at least twice depending on the noise in the background.
Lewis is already trying to handle and livestock farming. I still give him his nails the frozen peanut butter to lick and clip as soon as possible. I’m currently using nail trim three years later, despite teaching my other five dogs how to handle paws in a cooperative way. Last fall, Marge Rogers began coaching me about being treated with ease. It came well until the sound horror began.
He is too sensitive to many training and is on break from handling practice. But he gets upset when I do his nails the old way, but in the past he didn’t care about handling, but doesn’t seem to mind the actual clipping.
The same thing happened with Clara, but she was a much easier dog than Lewis. She was relaxed through the dremeling at the age of three, but then she got a spotted fever of Rocky Mountain. She was feeling the pain. I made the mistake of trimming her nails during this period, which was extremely difficult for her. She was always supportive, but we never regained her relaxed nails again throughout her life.
Looking back, I look forward to it
Each dog teaches me something new. I hope he didn’t need to tell me about this for Lewis.
Lewis’s condition is like Zani, and I’m sure if he can leave the house (from the front, not the back) he will be able to escape the trigger. I wish that was the case! And both have a more serious response to the sound of the trigger than in the summer when they were afraid of lightning but not fearful. Ad hoc counter conditioning helped me a lot the summer. After Zani was stable with MED, structured desensitization and counter conditioning helped her to rejuvenate incredible recovery. However, her trigger had an acoustic aspect, making it much more acceptable for successful DS/CC.
Lewis has the most severe situation, with fear of clinical phobia and fireworks being rapidly generalized to many other sudden sounds and related things. For example, a piece of metal settled down on a coffee table box at once and “tinked” it, so now you need to be careful of cardboard boxes.
Both medications (ongoing and situations) and ad hoc counter conditioning are helpful. Lewis also benefits from physical and verbal comfort. His first reaction when the sound scares him is to sneak up on me and my partner. He often buries his head between my knees. He has access to places to hide, but is not interested. After his initial reaction, he wants to take his human eyes off, but it’s not usually cute. Observing the location he has chosen in the burrow will help you see how upset he is.
It uses acoustic masking to manage the acoustic environment. It could make such a huge difference, and was especially aided during the excavation of the neighborhood. So I’ve found a masking trick that might help some of you. I’ll publish it in another post.
This is the antidote to all sad pictures. During this adjustment and recovery period, we still have some fun. I will continue to post you.
Related Posts and Resources
reference
Lopes Fagundes, Al, Hewison, L., McPeake, K.J., Zulch, H. , and Mills, D. S. (2018). Dog noise sensitivity: Exploring dog signs with or without musculoskeletal pain using qualitative content analysis. Veterinary Science Frontier, 517.
Overall, K. (2013). Dog and Cat Clinical Behavioral Medicine Manual. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Copyright 2025 Irene Anderson
