bad weather

[Guest]

I have a Cairn male that will be 2 in Sept. He is a great pet & most of the time minds well. His problem is that when it thunders & he is inside he will run from window to window barking & trying to eat up the glass to get to the noise. He sounds real agressive & just won't stop. I finnaly have to lock him in 1 room. All my windows go to the floor so he can see out from every room. When he is outside in the fenced yard he will run from one side to the other trying to attack the sound. He is not frightened just real excited. He will not come to me even if it starts to pour down rain. He will just keep running until he is real tired then he will come to the door to get in. Has anyone had this problem with their dog?

[Guest]

My terrier Joey used to display similar behavior. I used some tips from the Dog University show on the Animal Planet channel and it has worked really well. He still will bark somewhat but the desperate running has been significantly reduced.

I use the lightning and thunder storms in Florida as a time to play with my terrier. I use excited and happy tones, call his name and throw his tennis ball around. I never hold him, coddle him or try to settle him down when the storm begins. Instead, we play and I chase him around the house until I end the play session at which point he is basically ignored. If he barks, I ignore him and he pretty much understands that a storm is not such a bad thing afterall.

[Guest]

I have a Cairn male that will be 2 in Sept. He is a great pet & most of the time minds well. His problem is that when it thunders & he is inside he will run from window to window barking & trying to eat up the glass to get to the noise. He sounds real agressive & just won't stop. I finnaly have to lock him in 1 room. All my windows go to the floor so he can see out from every room. When he is outside in the fenced yard he will run from one side to the other trying to attack the sound. He is not frightened just real excited. He will not come to me even if it starts to pour down rain. He will just keep running until he is real tired then he will come to the door to get in. Has anyone had this problem with their dog?

i've had a similar problem with my dog. except this has to do with the heat in the winter. when my heat is coming up, my dog will run from room to room and bark at the radiator because i guess he hears the water going through. i have not found a solution. no matter what i do or if i yell no or to stop, he just can't help himself. he's so damn smart now that when he see's me approaching my thermostat to put the heat on he charges into one of my rooms and straight for the radiator and starts to bark before anything happens. its funny to watch for a few minutes but after a few hours you feel like removing his vocal chords. i thought at first it was something that he wasn't used to hearing but it's been going on for years. and sounds of lawnmowers and lawn equipment drive my dog nuts. when i do the lawn i have to put him in my basement and blast the stereo so it drowns out the sounds. my dog would actually attack the lawnmower if he could. because he's done it to mine. even once when i first moved into my house a number of years ago, i had my cairn in the backyard while i was mowing the front of my house. i have a wooden fence up all around. well i heard him going ballistic and i was just like, hey wear yourself out. but when i was done in the front and went into the back, to my horror, he was trying so hard to get to that lawnmower he cut his paws up and wore his nails down to the blood vessels. there was blood all over the place. it look like someone was murdered. he had bandages on his legs for a number of weeks but it all worked out ok. so i now know what i have to do when i do the lawn.