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Animal Phobia

By Laraine Rose

Do animals have phobias? Or just humans?

Are the fears of an animal conditioned or is it just in their nature to be afraid of things?

Yes, an animal can have a phobia. “A phobia is an abnormal, persistent fear of situations, objects, activities, of persons. The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive, unreasonable desire to avoid the feared subject.” If an animal, shows the main symptom of a phobia, we could say that the animal has developed or has a phobia.

Are these fears due to conditioning? Depending on the feared object. If the main symptom of a phobia is present in an animal since its birth, it’s an instinctive behavior but if the behavior appears later on in life, it’s a learned fear. Using the terminology created by Ivan Pavlov, an instinctive behavior is: an unconditional reflex and the behavior result from a learning process is a conditional reflex.

Most human fears are conditional reflexes, we learn to be afraid of things and, the same process happens with animals. Example: I clap my hands (neutral stimuli) next to my dog and immediately after I scream loudly,(this will scare my dog.) After a few times, my dog will be afraid of the sound of the clapping hands, my dog is showing a phobic behaviour. Why? Because she associates the unconditional response with a neutral stimuli.

Classic conditioning was discover by Ivan Pavlov who created the principles of behaviourism.

Source(s):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phobia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditionin…

Do you believe that animals can develop a phobia?

Let me tell you a little story. (It is true.)

Minnie, our minature Sheltie puppy, was afraid of noone and nothing! She was the boss-lady over our older, larger, German Shepherd dog and our daughter's large dog. Nor was Minnie afraid of the cat who was much larger than she.

From the day we broungt her home, Minnie was a saucy little puppy! If we scolded her for something she had done, she would bark, bark and then run under the dresser and bark, bark at us from there all the while snapping her little white teeth.

Minnie didn't seem to be afraid of anything! She seemed to think that snakes, mice and ground squirrels were toys for her to play with. And she jumped up as if to scare hawks and and eagles. She didn't seem to have a cautious bone in her body. It was always full steam ahead for her.

In the Okanagan, around the beginning of July, we get some very loud summer storms accompanied by a lot of rain.

One beautiful summer day my hubby and I left the dogs outside while we went to town. We have a large fenced property and have another fenced-in area for our dogs. We were gone longer than we anticipated and the weather turned nasty while we were away. Rain was accompanied by huge bolts of lightning and loud thunder. We weren't worried about the dogs though, as there was a place that they could get in out of the rain and keep dry. We were sure that CoCo, our German Shepherd, would look after the puppy, Minnie. What we didn't know was, that Minnie was afraid of thunder. Why? We did not know.

When we got home CoCo was sleeping in the dog house. We thought that we had puppy-proofed the dog run but Minnie was nowhere to be found. First we checked around our acreage walking over the fields and forest around our home whistling and calling for her. We called our neighbors to see if they had seen her. Nobody had, so we started walking further and further treking into the many orchards around us.

It was now getting dark and we were really getting worried that she was lost from us forever. You see, we live where the coyotes roam in packs at night, cougars have been sighted on occasion and many black bear come down to the lakes for water. We had heard that some of our neighbors lost their dogs to these preditors. By now we were so very, very tired and hungry but we thought that our sweet little Minnie would be tired and hungry too. We had rain gear on but little Minnie would be wet and the night had turned unseasonably cold. We just couldn't stop looking. Out I went again with a flashlight and Will took the car to look down by the lake. We hadn't had Minnie long enough for her to instinctively find her way home, we were sure of that. This search again wasn't successful. We came back to the house. I was in tears. I was sure Minnie would be eaten by the coyotes this very night.

The telephone rang. The neighbor's visitors had seen a little dog, soaken wet walking slowly down on the road below us. Out we went again with the car, but couldn't find her. Our son-in-law came home from a long day at work. Now the evening was pitch black with no moon to light up the paths. Chris decided that he should have a go at trying to find Minnie. He retraced a path we had already taken earlier. He found her trying to get through a deer fence an orchardist had put up. We think that she must have heard us calling her but just couldn't find a way though it. We were all soooooooooo happy when we saw Chris coming home carrying the puppy.

Now, we had to make sure this never happened again. Where did she get out? Well, we had put a high, 5 foot chainlink fence on three sides of the dog run but on the other side was a wooden fence approximately 3 feet high. We couldn't figure out where she got out until on another stormy day we saw her climb the fence at the corner. I wish that we had a picture of that! I couldn't believe it! Needless to say, we found a solution to that problem.

I don't know what made Minnie so terribly afraid of thunder. She now shivers and shakes uncontrollably even when she hears rain hitting the windows. What is even more perplexing/annoying, is she has taught our other younger dogs to be afraid also. The two younger puppies were brave little things when we brought them home. They watched Minnie trembling during a storm and now copy her. They probably think, "Well, she's older than us, if she's afraid, there must be something to be afraid of." Whatever the reason. Twiggie and Bella are also afraid of thunder, lightning and rain. A Phobia? You tell me.

Contributor's Note

I have added a photo of our three dogs. Cute, huh?

This photo was contributed by: Will Borden's Fine Art

PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE

The Great Irish Famine
The Great Irish Famine and loss of life.
www.squidoo.com/TheIrish

Beautiful story about your lovely dog Minnie (all are adorable. Thanks for the picture) and how dogs develop fears. My eleven year old Golden Retriever is not doing too well and I've developed fears of a future without her. She seems to be doing fine with her ailments. I wonder: Is it better to be human or dog?

I know what you mean. We get so attached to them and they usually die before us so the loss is hard to take. I have seen dogs who mourn the loss of an owner though. So, I don't know if it is better to be human or dog.

I hope your dog continues to do fine.

cute picture indeed! I would say animals can have phobias as well as express all other emotions. The other two dogs you have have learned the behavior from the first one, be it just fear or a full on phobia or whatever.

They surely do and can keep us all in a twist.

Hi Bill,
I did answer your request somewhere else. Just in case you didn't get it. I would be pleased if you add this story to your fine website but I would like a link back to http://www.squidoo.com/LaraineRose if you do.

Such beautiful pictures. Interesting that she passed her phobia on to the other dogs. It must have been awful wondering if she would get eaten by the wild ones. So glad you found her in time.

Thanks Janet. We have since dog-proofed our fences. That doesn't mean that they won't ever dig their way out though. It is a worry.

Thank you for sharing this story, Loraine. A number of years ago, I worked with a woman who was terrified of thunder storms. When she was at home, and it would begin to thunder, she would hide between her bed and the bedroom wall. She purchased a black lab and soon, the lab and she were hiding behind the bed during storms. True story!
Great picture of your dogs!
Best wishes.
Frederick

Oh, I don't doubt the dog picked up the phobia from the woman. I just hope that I don't pick up the phobia from my dog and start climbing fences! ;)

Love the picture. All of your dogs look like sweeties. I've only had a couple of dogs and they were both afraid of thunder. Maybe they learned it as wee pups from their mom.

Hi Mulberry. Darn moms!

If you are not averse to trying something a bit "far out", you might want to check for "Surrogate EFT for Animals" on the web.
EFT is a very simple method to get over phobias and it can be used quite safely on animals, you just have to overcome any resistance to doing something that at first impression comes across as silly-looking.

Hi Dirk,
Where can I learn about Surrogate EFT?
Laraine

This is a lot like the book I'm reading "AS YOU THINK"
'As You Think: Second Edition' by James Allen, Marc Allen http://amzn.to/cFgvzV

Thank you Bill for posting the YouTube on this. Emotional Freedom Technique? As it happens,I have heard about it. I'm not sure how this would help my dogs but I did try it on myself and it is sort of fun.

We were used to our previous dog sleeping on the bed so we were amused when we found Marley sleeping in the closet in the morning for about a month after we got her.

When I was a youngster (I can hardly remember that far back, but..) we had a dog that hid in the closet whenever we were getting ready to leave on a trip. We'd bring out the suitcases and Blondie disappeared. Funny little things aren't they!

Bill Coughlin already mentioned some of the useful websites.
I will probably write a short intel about EFT later today.

The surrogate bit just means that you basically imagine that you are the animal and then work on yourself.

Thanks Dirk, I read your intel about EFT and realized that I had heard something about it and even tried it. That's acronyms for you.
Thanks for clearing this up for me.
Best Wishes,
Laraine

Great Intel and picture. Most young dogs that have an older dog to watch, copy what they see the older dog do. We had an older female dog when we got a little male Poodle to keep her company. The Poodle watched everything the female did. He would then try to copy her. If she did something several times, he was able to get the routine down correctly and it then became his habit too. We two dogs and my younger daughter, who lives with us, has one. Even though Teia is afraid of thunder and other loud noises, the other two who are fairly close in age don't copy anything from her. I guess there has to be a bigger gap in ages before the young ones look to the old ones for guidance...good or bad.

Thank you for commenting. It is true that the dogs copy from one another. It was funny when the young ones were trying to copy our older dog's howling. It took them a long time to master that. When they did, they looked at me out of the corner of their eye, with what I though was, a sheepish look. When I laughed, they howled all the more and louder. Dogs are fun!

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