Something sad and difficult happens with Lewis: Clinical sound phobia. He is suffering. Three months from the start and the diagnosis he does much better with the help of medicine, but we have a long way to go. I want to share for others who are going through this or perhaps in the future how in recent months have been for us.
Sudden fireworks phobia
Lewis joined my family in December 2021, and for the next few years we had many thunderstorms and at least eight noisy holidays. I live in a capital so we get shows with thriving fireworks. Lewis did not show fear during these events (with an exception under unusual circumstances). However, he was happy to accept food after sounds. Due to long experience with Alderactive Dogs, I always deliver good snacks for fireworks and thunderstorms. But if Lewis built some good associations from there, they weren’t enough.
On January 1, 2025, when New Year’s fireworks started, Lewis began to breathe and shake and sought comfort. He was in extreme distress. I had no medicine for him. We hard it with food when he wanted to take it and he finally slept, exhausted. I planned to see the vet.
About a week later, a blizzard that lasted a few days started a rarity here. We hadn’t been to the vet yet. Lewis has enjoyed the snow in the past. But around 7 p.m. 19.30 The first night we were out in the yard and a neighbor close to putting some fireworks. This video shows the result.
Video shows that Lewis stands with his paw raised, trembling, breathing, astonishing to quiet sounds, with extended students and extreme excitement in his facial muscles.
Lewis panic not only at the time, but he was afraid of going into the yard, especially at night. During the duration of the snow he would not go out at all in the evening, so sometimes not eliminating for up to 18 hours at a time. And his sound triggers generalized quickly.
I called the vet and we started prescription medicine as soon as the streets were clear enough for me to pick them up. I will not describe the whole medicine experience, but many of you know that it can take much longer than we want to get one with or combination that works for a dog. When you get it, it’s invaluable, a game change. But the vet and I are still working on it for Lewis. When he writes this in April, he is very, much improved. But he is not his old self.
I also got him thoroughly checked for pain (Lopes Fagundes et al., 2018) by two veterinarians. I keep on top of it. It is worth noting that he was in the age group, where genetic sound phobia typically kicks in, according to Dr. Karen collected (2013, p. 257).
We continued to have mishaps. In February, the city’s water department excavated the next doors Neighbor’s driveway. First a jackhammer. Then an excavator scrapes up the pavement and dumps it, blooms, in a truck. And of course, the truck made backup beeps. A new level of trauma that is unlocked for Lewis. Work started every morning at. 8 and lasted all day. This went for four days a week, then two more the next week. Lewis would rarely go outside and was hypervigilant when he did. Indoors were also poisoned as he connected the scary sounds of being home. When he was inside, he would ask to be taken somewhere by car. He would stand next to the cabinet where I hold his string and harness or tried to get into the garage as I went out. Or he would simply ask repeatedly to walk in another room if doors were closed. I let him, but of course it did not help, as there are no escaping sounds of the amplitude and frequency.
There was a sweet place around the dusk after the workers were back and before the still scary night. Sometimes he would do his only elimination all day over the time. Sometimes I had to take him to another quarter to make him go.
Thunderstorms too
Lewis was also afraid of the next time we had a thunderstorm and from then off. In my sound webinars, I speak from an acoustic point of view about the difficulty/impossibility of preventing dogs from hearing thunder. This has been brought home to me again: How desperate we get, as owners, for something, somethingto block that sound. But in almost all cases you just can’t. When a Thunderclap can shake your house, it is ridiculous to think that an isolated dog house, a closet or even ear muffler can give it sound inaudible. This is why owners of sound phobic and other frightened dogs are so easily exploited by companies that sell products with fake promises. When we want to relieve our suffering friends; We will try whatever.
I’m also talking about the problems of saturation when using food for ad hoc fashion conditioning. This is a big problem for us. In Arkansas we have storms that go for hours. We recently had such a day. We knew it was coming. I had about two cups of chicken ready in pieces of bite size. The first thunder came at. 17.30. I had medicated Lewis in advance, but he still responded. Not as serious as in the video above, but still disturbed and scared. I gave him a piece of chicken for each thunderstorm for more than 60 minutes, but after that I had to slow down. It was just too much food.
If you have studied Pavlovsk conditioning, you know that it is important to establish a 1: 1 context between the conditioned stimulus (in this case thunder) and the unconditional stimulus (food). The clearer the association is, the better the transfer of the answer you get to the originally scary thing. But you can’t clean it with thunder. There are some terrible challenges related to saturation. First, which thunderous clads “count”? You start treating for each one as we know we should do. Then you realize that if you continue to do so and include the quieter, you will feed directly. So you try to make an acoustic threshold in your mind ear and just treat for “the talls.” But this breaks the mating. And is there really a magic line for the dog between scary and “ok, I’m not quite panicked” thunder? Even if there is, how do we find it?
The second problem is the duration itself. I mentioned in my example that the thunder started at. 17.30. From 1 p.m. 01:30 the next morning, eight hours later, there had not been a period of even 10 minutes when there was no audible thunder. Then we had two days of thunderstorms.
It could help if I could start asking for a behavior and give him something to do instead of waiting for inconsistent paired food. After hours and days of storms, I gave “Consolation Chicken” as all the hope of a consistent mating was down in the drain. But moving to a behavior must happen later; He’s too upset.
Exercise and breeding became more difficult
I mentioned that Lewis’ trigger’s generalized quickly. A door sludge, a twig that falls on the roof, a man who gets hiccup (really!), The unexpected clink of some metal pieces in a box, the excavation, cars turn – all scares him badly. There are still a few days without triggers. In the video above you can see how sensitive he is; He moves at least twice in response to background sounds.
Lewis is already a challenge with handling and breeding. I still trim his nails by giving him frozen peanut butter on a lickimat and cutting as fast as I can. This is where we are with nail coverings after three years, although I have taught cooperative foot management successfully for five other dogs. Last fall, Marge Rogers began to coach me to get him relaxed and be handled. It came together nicely until the sound phobia kicked in.
Handling practices are on Hiatus as he is too sensitive to a lot of training. But he also gets upset if I make his nails in the old way, while he was not interested in handling before, but did not seem to mind the actual haircut.
A similar thing happened to Clara, though she was such a lighter dog than Lewis. She relaxed through Drelling at three years old, but then she got Rocky Mountain spotted fever. She was in pain. I made the mistake of cropping her nails during this period and it was very hard for her. Although she was always cooperative, we never got our relaxed nail pruning back again throughout her life.
Looking back and looking forward
Every dog teaches me new things. I wish, for Lewis’ sake, he didn’t have to teach me about this.
Lewis’ condition is like Zani, being convinced that if he could leave the house (out front, not the back), he could escape the triggers. I wish it was so! And both of them have/had a more serious response to their trigger sounds than the summer that was afraid of thunder, but probably not phobic. Ad hoc fashion conditioning helped summer huge. After Zani was stabilized on medication, structured desensitization and counter -conditioning helped her to a fantastic improvement. But her triggers had acoustic aspects that made them much more accessible to successful DS/CC.
Lewis has the toughest situation with clinical phobia for thunder and fireworks, which are quickly generalized to many other sudden sounds and even objects associated with them. For example, because we once settled some metal pieces in a box on the coffee table and made a “clink”, we need to be careful with cardboard boxes now.
Medications (continuous and situational) and ad hoc fashion conditioning have both helped. Lewis also deserves from physical and verbal comfort. His first answer when a sound scares him is to crawl over to me or my partner. He often bury the head between my knees. He has access to places to hide but is not interested. After his first answer, he wants to stay in sight of his people, but usually not cosed tightly. I can tell how upset he is observing what place he chooses in the cave.
I use sound masking to control the acoustic environment. It can make such a big difference and especially helped during the excavation of the neighborhood. Because of this, I figured out a trick for masking that can help some of you. I publish it in a separate post. [Masking post is available now.]
Here is an antidote to all the sad photos. We still manage to have fun in this adjustment and recovery period. I’ll keep you updated.
Related posts and resources
References
Lopes Fagundes, Al, Hewison, L., McPeake, KJ, Zulch, H., & Mills, DS (2018). Noise sensitivity in dogs: An exploration of signs in dogs with and without musculoskeletal pain using qualitative content analysis. Frontiers in veterinary scienceAt 517.
Overall K. (2013). Manual to Clinical Behavior Medicine for Dogs and Cats. Elsevier Health Sciences.
Copyright 2025 Eileen Anderson