My Dog is A Raging Lunatic!

Poor Buster has been afraid of thunderstorms for years. I have tried everything from comforting him to ignoring him and the only solution is to place him in his kennel. If I leave him out, he will scramble for safety and sometimes that means going behind entertainment centers and behind furniture where he can get hurt. His favorite place is the tub but that is not an option. He digs as if he is reaching out to China so he spends the time in the kennel. Many a sleepless night because of it. Since we started ignoring him altogether when he is frantic, we have noticed a difference. I guess the idea of negative attention creates the frantic dog even more. He used to run away when he heard loud noises but we stopped that too. I used to get scared and freak out, which was causing him to freak out more I guess. Now we just call him to our side softly and give him a short petting, then inside to the kennel as usual. I don't medicate him since it is hard to know when storms come but occasionally I will give him 1/2 a Benadryl which really helps.

When he was a pup I made the mistake of taking him to the fireworks. I believe this is what started the whole nightmare for him. I didn't know nearly as much about dogs then as I do now. I guess that is one of the reasons for all of my research. Daisy is one year old and she thinks it is playtime when it thunders. Again, we did that. I did not want her to end up like Buster. It is so important when they are puppies to know as much as we can in order to have an awesome dog. Dogs can live almost 20 years sometimes so it would be nice to enjoy those years with them.