Hello All. I am not brand new to the page, but this is my first post. I am in the Academy, and I have not quite got to the fear and aggression modules quite yet Debbie Jacobs will know exactly what I am getting at! :) Alright down to business. The picture I have attached is that of my beautiful girl Jenna. She is a 6 yr old altered female that I acquired about a year and a half ago. I got her from a desperate family looking for trainer a few towns over from me. They originally adopted (for a lovely 500$ with no spay or vaccs) from a Security K9 kennel in Edmonton, Canada. She was originally being `sold` for the reason that Jenna was ``not fit` for training.. The family had Jenna for a year, and by that time were on the brink of euthanizing. They had said that Jenna was very fearful, to the point of continually pacing the backyard all day, averting from the family in mad dashes, until the sun goes down. As soon as the sun was to set, Jenna would end the pacing and immediately dart to their door, frantically scratching to get in. When I took her home, she would do exactly that!! She, like clockwork, will literally go to my door when the sun has fully set. (which is an improvement from when I first took her home, as she would bolt to my door when the sun would start its setting about 45 min before it was fully dark) There is a lot more to this girl, and I will try to stick to my main points, but there is something else, that I believe to somehow be related. She is afraid of artificial lights or natural occurring flashes of lights.So not the actual sun, but shiny objects that the sun would create a flash off of. (headlights, flashlights, lighting, reflections......etc) for example, there was a doggy pool on my deck. When it hit around 1 oclock the sun created reflections. Jenna had noticed this, and immediately started to pace my entire deck. Even towards the actual reflections. And she will not stop unless you remove her from the area. By the way, my BBQ also creates reflections, so she will stare at the wall. So, your answer, remove all shiny objects... I have. :( She is now afraid of the shiny windows, as well as the faint reflection given off of my door. She has zero motivation when or after she encounters reflections. What I am questioning here, is in the case of using classical conditioning, which can be successful with the artificial lights that I am able to control, how on earth, can I control when the sun goes down, or when reflections bounce off the water? How do I completely fix this, if this is fixable? Or if anybody has encountered this type of severity with lights? I am at the point of speaking with my veterinarian about different medications that may help. When we are not in a residential or highly populated area, Jenna is a wonderful dog. Camping, hiking, swimming, shes happy and there and very responsive, interactive and playful and most certainly take R+. Until the sun goes down... We call her the I am Legend dog, as with her gift of get in the house! zombies are coming! She will certainly outlive us all if that movie were ever relevant. :) If anyone has some info for me, Jenna and I would greatly appreciate anything you have at all!!! Thank you so much for reading my very long message.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 22:04:27 +0000
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