D Strickland Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Hi all, A friend of mine has a good working dog that is afraid of thunder and lightning. Is this a genetic problem ? Should he not be used as stud ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy Coyote Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Hi all, A friend of mine has a good working dog that is afraid of thunder and lightning. Is this a genetic problem ? Should he not be used as stud ? I have had several dogs with thunderphobia. And after years of putting up with it I have come to the conclusion that it must be genetic. And I have nothing scientific to base this on. It just seemed to me that the young dogs were all right. The phobia didn't really show up for several years. One of my dogs died in a thunderstorm - so it can be life threatening. Other dogs manage to really hurt themselves trying to get away from the noise. Its a serious problem. And it is awful to live with one of these dogs if you live in a storm area. One explanation I saw said that herding breeds are bred to be very reactive to stimuli and that is what causes the problem. But I have lots of dogs of other breeds that I take care of that are thunderphobic. Some are labs. Some are shepherd crosses. I personally would not breed a severly thunder phobic dog. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Billadeau Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 It can have a genetic link. As to whether or not the dog should be used as a stud depends on if the working traits that could be passed on by this particular dog out weight the possibility of passing on the thunderphobia. As someone who has dealt with a severely thunderphobic dog (the trait was in his lines) I can tell you we would never get a pup from a thunderphobic dog or from lines that are known to have this trait. Mark Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D Strickland Posted March 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Thanks Mark and Tommy ... My friend does not plan on breeding to this dog. I was just curious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy Coyote Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Thanks Mark and Tommy ... My friend does not plan on breeding to this dog. I was just curious. If you have never tried to live with a dog with this stuff you have no idea just how bad it can get. People think it sounds funny. But it is really not fun. You have to be constantly aware of the weather. And I was constantly worried about whether I could make it home in time to beat the storm. But we have bad stoms here in Missouri so its worse here than say Seattle. Xanax really helped my dogs. Bandit was just terrible but acted pretty normal on Xanax - well, as normal as Bandit every acted. He just didn't care about the storm any more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
D Strickland Posted March 24, 2009 Author Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 If you have never tried to live with a dog w We're outside Oklahoma and I've heard the stories. My friend's dog is on some kind of medication to keep him calm during storms. When they travel out of town and can't bring him they have to pay for boarding at the vet. His kennel could probably hold an elephant. My 12 year old dog doesn't like storms but he won't jump thru a window to try and run away from it ... thankfully!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stockdogranch Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Talk to Melanie about this--this is her area of research! A Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tommy Coyote Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 We're outside Oklahoma and I've heard the stories. My friend's dog is on some kind of medication to keep him calm during storms. When they travel out of town and can't bring him they have to pay for boarding at the vet. His kennel could probably hold an elephant. My 12 year old dog doesn't like storms but he won't jump thru a window to try and run away from it ... thankfully!! I always put my dogs in their crates and cover them up with a blanket so they have a small, dark safe place to hunker down. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2 Devils Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 Tempe is thunderphobic. I started treating her with xanax before storms and now even without drugs she has improved a lot. I still keep a close eye on her though. Storm season should start up soon so we shall see how she reacts this year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoloRiver Posted March 24, 2009 Report Share Posted March 24, 2009 There are pretty good indications that noise phobia (usually involving thunder, gunshots, and fireworks, or what I call the Big Three) has a hereditary component and it seems to "run" in lines. That said, it is incredibly common in Border Collies, although exactly how common it is, we don't know as no one has done an epidemiological study. Many dogs who are noise phobic have relatively mild symptoms (although what one considers "mild" may vary from owner to owner) and there are a number of reasons why noise phobia may be so common in Border Collies. It has probably never been selected against, because many noise phobic dogs are still useful workers. In fact, my noise phobic dog will continue working during a storm, gunshots, or fireworks, although this is not true of all noise phobic dogs, and he does not work as well as he does when there is no noise. When he is not working and there are problem noises, he is a quivering, drooling mass of panic and tries to dig holes through the floor (until he gets his Xanax). Also, many working dogs live in kennels, so their owners may not observe the worst of their phobic behavior and may be unaware of the magnitude of the problem. In the UK, they don't have the kinds of severe storms and folks running around shooting off guns like we do here in the States. Finally, there is a possibility (and this is mostly speculation) that selecting for acute hearing, as we have in Border Collies, may involve inadvertent selection for traits like noise phobia. This is an area that my former lab is currently actively following up on. In the research Anna refers to, my colleagues and I have been looking at the genetic background of noise phobia in Border Collies. As of now, we have identified a number of candidate genes that may be related to noise phobia, and some of them are also involved in hearing. It is doubtful that only one gene governs noise phobia. The graduate student working on the project, Jennifer Yokoyama, is currently narrowing down the areas of interest and following up on these findings. We can always use more dogs, so if you are interested (requires a blood sample and for you to fill out a questionnaire for each participating dog) check out the link for the Canine Behavioral Genetics Project in my .sig. Personally, I prefer for my dogs to not have noise phobia, but I can live with mild noise phobia. I would be willing to buy a pup off great working dogs who were mildly noise phobic. After my experiences with Solo, I would for sure avoid buying pups from dogs with severe noise phobia no matter how awesome they were as working dogs. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Liz P Posted April 9, 2009 Report Share Posted April 9, 2009 I heard there might have been an article recently about noise sensitivity. How is the research going? Will the ultimate outcome of the project be a genetic test available to the public? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.