Help your dog fight anxiety with a Storm Defender cape. Image courtesy of StormDefender.com.
It’s that time of year in the Northeast, when owners of dogs with thunderstorm phobia are piling into my clinic at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in search of relief. Some dogs with this condition have only a mild case; they just seek their owner’s company and perhaps tremble a little when the thunder starts to roll. Others become downright frantic—pacing, panting, or hiding from an unseen enemy. If their owners are away, they may destroy property or injure themselves in frantic attempts to escape the living hell.
We don’t know for certain what precisely causes this excessive fear, but likely culprits include the scary sound of thunder, the alarming sight of lightning, darkening skies, heavy downpours, wind noise, and changes in barometric pressure or static electric fields—or a combination of the above. It’s largely ineffective to just try systematically desensitizing a dog to the sound of thunder, you have to address the other components of the story as well. It’s key to give a scared dog a safe room where he can escape the brunt of the storm. The ideal arrangement is a windowless room or basement with bright lights, white noise, jolly company, and various forms of entertainment.
Some dogs also respond to wearing an anti-static cape, called a Storm Defender, or a “swaddling” pressure wrap, such as The Anxiety Wrap or Thunder Shirt.
One dog I knew would go to the place where his Storm Defender cape was hanging and look at it longingly until his owner got the message! For severely affected dogs who don’t respond to any of these measures, medication may be the only option, at least during the thunderstorm season.
Typically, mood-stabilizing medications, like Reconcile (a veterinary form of Prozac), are employed as “background treatment,” along with anti-anxiety medication, such as Valium-type drugs or the human blood-pressure-lowering medication Catapres. Each year we learn more about storm phobia and are able to provide better, more effective, treatment. Let’s hope that we continue to learn this year, because when it comes to treating severe cases, we still haven’t made it through the storm.
From: Linda Beckman | 6/29/10 at 7:14 pm
Over the years, we've had several dogs who freaked out at thunderstorms and fireworks. As a human, I can't even imagine what these sound like to a dog with way more sensitive hearing. Ouch!