Dog Suddenly Very Fearful

[Seguinite]

That almost sounds like what we experienced with an aging dog that was going blind.

[terracore]

I was raising a hunting dog, obviously it was critical that loud noises not startle her. Whenever there were gunshots, fireworks, or lightning/thunder she got a lot of positive reinforcement and had no problems whatsoever with them. She was actually the calmest dog we've ever had around loud noises or weather.

Then one day we went to take out the trash and the coconut palm next to us was hit by lightning. I don't know how electricity like that travels but it knocked me out for a second and it took a few seconds to come back to my senses. My dog was further away than me but she has never been the same. The next time we had weather she hunkered down in a bathtub and was shivering in terror. Gunshots, fireworks, earthquakes, thunder, high winds, etc all cause a similar reaction.

You mentioned thunder in your OP as something that precipitated this behavior. Maybe to a dog there is more to an electrical storm than just the noise it makes. As somebody who was standing too close to that coconut palm, I 100% agree.

[Parnassia]

Originally Posted by terracore

Then one day we went to take out the trash and the coconut palm next to us was hit by lightning. I don't know how electricity like that travels but it knocked me out for a second and it took a few seconds to come back to my senses.

Here's an explanation:

https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-struck

Imagine what it was like for your dog who had more ground contact.

FWIW, I was standing in a mobile home/office trailer talking on a land line phone when lightning hit a tree somewhere next to it. As the storm bore down on us, I was trying to explain to the person on the other end of the conversation why I needed to end the call. Just as I pulled the receiver away from my ear the bolt struck. Felt as if someone hit me in the chest hard enough I lost my balance. The force knocked the receiver out of my hand, and I lost a few seconds. A co-worker standing about 6' away saw some sort of arc flash through the room. It fried the switchboard panel, cooked a computer, fax and printer, and started a smoldering electrical fire in the adjacent workshop.

Lightning is a funny thing. It's a common enough hazard on the Jersey Shore in summer, but after that I seemed to be a target. Several near misses over the next few months; a tree was hit by lightning as I drove my car past it, my house got sideswiped by a strike as I walked in the door (knocked out the GFCIs and torched a toaster), and another bolt hit an old telephone pole on the beach as I walked by.

I moved back out west later that year. My darling co-workers gave me a commemorative propane-torched phone for a going-away present . Ended up moving to CO and buying a house in the Front Range at 9200 ft elevation...another of the top lightning strike hazard areas of the US .

[terracore]

Originally Posted by Parnassia

Imagine what it was like for your dog who had more ground contact.

All four feet directly on the ground as opposed to me wearing insulated work boots.

Thanks for posting that link. We lost some livestock to an electrical storm once. They were found dead in seemingly random places and none of them had any visible signs of being directly hit. Ground current makes sense. Maybe the deceased were laying down at the time or for whatever reason had more ground contact.

Here's my experience pasted from a previous post on CD (with a brief expansion about the rats)

"One second I was taking the rubbish out under clear blue skies (though I could hear thunder from miles away), the next second, my world went completely black and I briefly lost consciousness. I remember hearing the loudest explosion of my life and all I saw was stars against a black backdrop. Not like night stars but more like sparklers. I felt something burning hitting my face and neck as my vision came back online. Though still confused I realized the thunder and what I was experiencing was probably related, so I looked for my wife which I knew was about 50 feet away in the donkey paddock and asked her where it (lightning) hit. She was crouched down on the ground like we were under attack and shouted back that she didn't know. By that time several seconds had passed and my brain had rebooted enough that I realized the burning on my face and neck were embers falling from the palm that was burning like a gigantic torch. It was then that I noticed the flaming rats dropping all around me. Rats were living in the coconut palm and after the lightning hit they started falling down around me like something out of Revelations. Some were smoldering and some were on fire. Some were DOA, others crawled a distance before dying. A few were running away like they were on fire... because they were. I was near the hose so I turned it on and tried to spray the fire in the palm, but it was too far up for the hose to reach so I focused on keeping the falling embers and rats from spreading the blaze"

The wife called the fire department and they arrived within a few minutes. By then the storm had moved in and was directly above us. One of the firemen yelled from the truck that they saw lightning hit near our house as they pulled up so they weren't getting out of the truck until it was safe to do so, and recommended that we go inside. Lighting kept hitting around us for several minutes and then the rain started a heavy downpour that was extinguishing the palm. Then the storm moved off and they hit the flames with some foam before they left, though it probably would have been okay if we had never called them, but there wasn't any rain on the horizon so there was no way to know.

So looking back, from the dog's perspective there was the lightning strike which scared the crap out of her. Then fire and a meteor shower of rats, then a big loud truck shows up, then a lot more lightning strikes, and then the truck blasts foam 40 feet through the air.

I think that she began to make some progress towards a type of recovery from her canine PTSD, but then we had the Leilani eruption. It was 10 miles away but that isn't very far when considering what a huge geological event that is. It was really loud and the ground shook all the time, especially at the beginning. Whenever we let her outside she immediately would run around the yard barking at the volcano until she used the bathroom and then she immediately wanted to come back in (normally she prefers to be outside). After that there was never any improvement, in fact most of the time when we let her out she still runs around the yard barking in the direction the eruption was for the first 15-20 seconds, then she seems to realize that isn't happening anymore.

[BCC_1]

Originally Posted by terracore

All four feet directly on the ground as opposed to me wearing insulated work boots.

When I was in high school we would go on an annual 14 day hike. We were in the Snowy Mountains in late November (Australia so November = late spring) mostly above the tree line and a savage thunderstorm came out the blue before we could get to lower elevation. I remember our instructor had us all separate out over a large area and squat on the balls of our feet so that we had as little contact with the ground and were sufficiently spread out that if one of us was hit by lightning half the class wouldn't get taken out through ground current. Squating on the side of a mountain waiting to find out if God was going to call you up was not the way this then 15 year old wanted to spend his time. I remember being pretty scared as was everyone else.

[pinetreelover]

All of this is good advice - especially the part about starting with a vet visit to make sure there isn't any new medical problem that you aren't aware of.

I would also suggest making walks fun again! Take treats and reward her along the way! If the reward is enticing enough, it might override whatever is making her anxious.