fear

[brodyboy]

Hi everyone,

I am so glad to have found this site. Thank you for creating it. OK here's my issue...I have a beautiful male merle who will be two in November. We have had him since he was 4 months. He has recently been introduced to a gas forced air furnace..we had a wood stove before. Everytime time the furnace kicks in my poor baby start to tremble and pace and even tried to hide UNDER the couch!:'( What am I to do? This could be a long winter for both of us...;8

[anne]

RE: fear

Welcome to DOL!

My advice is to ignore his fear behaviors. If you feed into them or even just acknowledge them, you will enforce them in giving the behaviors your attention. If you act like everything is normal, your dane should get that there's nothing to fear. YOU are the alpha and if there's danger, you are supposed to be the one to suss it out.

[Carol]

RE: fear

I would ignore him. If you make over him when the furnace comes on it will inforce the fact that it is a bad noise. Just go on about your business and ignore the fact that he is scared. Pet him and love him when he is acting normal.

[brodyboy]

RE: fear

Thank you for the advice...I will ignore that behaviour. Its like having a frightened child though..your instinct is to comfort, know what I mean?

[Ellen]

RE: fear

Yup I definately know what you mean. It does work though. Part of how I socialized my boy was to bring him to the ball park. One day they were mowing with one of those huge monster mowers and he just wanted to run away. I sat in the grass and ignored the mower and him. I then (over the course of about a 1/2 hour) got up and moved closer and closer to where the mower was. Each time he wanted to run at first but calmed quicker and quicker with each move. He's not afraid of any outdoor noises now at all now. Good luck.

[Carolyn]

RE: fear

The same thing happened to one of my danes when we installed a forced air furnace (mounted over head) in our kennel. Every time it turned on, she would stare at it, shake and try like heck to get out of the doggy door, sure that if she didnt that loud, angry machine would eat her up. Then once outside she would bark, thinking that she was scarying "it" as much as it was scarying her <G>.
I felt bad that she was so worried over this necessity but knew that she would eventually get used to it and she did. What you could do to take his mind off of it is feed him, play with him or do something fun to distract him when it turns on. Eventually he will ignore it.
Carolyn
Divine Acres Great Danes