a personal account

She is--and tried to destroy our house in her fear. She tore most of the louvers out of one door. She scratched two others almost to the point of putting holes in them. She apparently was trained not to get on furniture, and she doesn't--except during a storm. Then she digs and scratches to get on the bed. Or she'll go outside (there's a dog door) and dig until her nose is bleeding. Obviously we had to do something.

We picked up a booklet from the Betty Lighton Education Room on "Fear of Thunder and Other Loud Noises." It suggested desensitizing a terrified pet by getting a recording of thunderstorm noises and using it to get the animal accustomed to the noise.

Abby was eleven years old when we adopted her. We weren't sure that we would have time to desensitize her. So we opted for a more immediate solution. We got Abby a crate--not a wire one, but one of those with plastic on three sides and just a wire door. Our theory was that it would seem more like a little house. We keep it in the living room (where the other dogs sleep), with a cushion in it and the door propped open. Some dogs would use the crate as their bed, but Abby doesn't (the other dogs stay out of Abby's crate, too).

When the weather starts getting bad and Abby starts getting nervous, we take her by the collar, put her into the crate, and close the door. We don't call her to get her into the crate--that would only teach her that coming when she's called is going to get her locked up. We don't scold her when we shut her up. We don't want her to think of going in the crate as punishment. Instead, we talk gently and tell her, "Come on, let's get in your safe place. Here's your safe place, Abby."

At first she tried to chew the crate, but she couldn't do it any real damage. Those things are made for shipping animals in the bellies of jet planes--they have to be pretty sturdy. She chews less and less these days. She pretty much settles down and (apparently) goes to sleep. In fact, we saw her almost go into her "safe place" one day all by herself.

We should have gotten her the crate before she did so much damage to our house. A crate is one of the things that people are advised to have for an indoor dog, and training to dog to go to the crate is recommended. Guess there's a reason these things are recommended!

But in the end crate was a simple solution to the problem. I shudder to think that a really great dog might have ended up euthanized just because someone didn't want to bother looking for a solution.

--Nan Lawler