In the blog the other day I referenced the vest like thing Miles had on and that Morgan was half way in the closet (literally). Well the reason will become obvious very quickly.
So here in Tampa the major sports teams are the Buccaneers, Rays and wait for it…..the Lightning. So in the few weeks we’ve been here I did hear a story on the news about the presence of sting ray’s off a couple of the beaches potentially impacting those poor spring breakers. And then this week guess what, that’s right we had thunder and lightning every day so far with yesterday by far being the worst. There were tornado warnings on and off all day long here. The wind was so strong in fact that it blew down a light post in our parking lot.
As you can probably guess where this is leading, our dogs do not like thunder. Not an uncommon thing for dogs, thunder and fireworks are two of the bigger things that freak dogs out. Every dog reacts in their own unique way to this fear. Some hide in the bathroom, some bark and dig (Miles) and some try to curl up as small as they can in a corner somewhere (Morgan).
One of the tricks a dog trainer told us to try that has worked fairly well in the past is to put the leash on the dog and teather them to you while this is going on so they feel safe. Unfortuantely that doesn’t work when you aren’t home so H2 found a cool thing that we are trying out. It’s called the “Thunder Shirt” which is what Miles has on in the picture. The concept is that it makes them feel like they are being hugged (sounds cheesy but hey whatever works).
Miles in the "Thunder Shirt", the toys don't hurt either.
We’ve actually used in on all the dogs for one reason or another and it does seem to help a little. I will say that it seems the more they wear it the greater the calming effect. Here is the link to their website if you are interested. We found ours at a Pet Warehouse down here.
Nothing much new on the home front other than us battling with Chase for most of the week on ticky tack items in the underwriting process. So maybe next week we’ll have actual good news there.
LOVE IS BLIND 
I’m glad to hear all of you are OK. JoAnn asked me this morning if I had heard from you because she heard on the news last night about the storm near Tampa/St. Pete with hurricane force winds, etc. Poor doggers though. Hopefully they’ll get used to it. I imagine you’ll have more thunder there than they were used to in Colorado (kind of like PA).
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By: ann hetrick on April 2, 2011
at 1:18 am
Our Golden had some issues when we first brought him home. If we left the house he would cry and bark. Here is what worked for us. Try giving them a cookie when you are just about to leave so they associate you leaving and them getting a reward. Then leave for a couple of minutes come back and give them attention. Just keep increasing the time away a little each time. While this is not an overnight fix it did work well for us. Took about two week for it to work, but we had great results.
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By: Brian on April 3, 2011
at 2:17 pm