3 year old female Vizsla recently started showing anxiety/fear with thunderstorms. She’s a good hunter, no issues. But has started showing major signs of distress at the least rumble of thunder. She’s typically scared of fireworks. Issues started in the last month or so. She resides inside at night, outside during the day weather permitting. She shakes and pants uncontrollably. She sits close by, I speak softly to her and pet her slowly. Any suggestions? Thank you

Our dog panics about anything out of the ordinary. Thunder, fireworks, car rides, etc. The vet gave us some sort of gabapentin liquid which made him have accidents. We ended up with melatonin and this seems to work best for him.

That’s unbelievably normal. The fireworks and thunder have no association with the hunting. I’ve had 2 pointers, 1 GWP and now an English Setter. ALL would react to fireworks and thunder terribly. One pointer would scratch at the door to the bedroom then crawl under the bed. Oh, and all were house dogs. All were good hunters. You should give them a place, I used wire crates. Put a sheet or blanket over it, more secure feeling. Don’t put them out. Back when, people took their dogs to the gun range to fix them for gunshot, doesn’t work. Same thing, this fear isn’t unusual.

My Brit would go out and play in a thunder storm until a tornado came through plenty close to the house, the rest of his life he would tell me a thunder storm was coming quite a while before I could hear the thunder. Giving him a Benadryl before the storms got here helped some.

I would be very careful about crating a dog suffering noise anxiety. Wire ain't gonna muffle sound. And while some dogs might feel safe, others seem to feel trapped, and then the crate just magnifies the anxiety into something really serious.

some swear by these a thundershirt or anxiety vest

I don't know how well it will work with an older dog and for sure it would have to be done with more care and a lot more gradual same as if one were attempting to fix a gun shy dog. Every dog I own when I first get them I put together a long desensitization list that I try to get the pup through during the first 6 months while the pup's brain is a sponge. For fireworks and thunderstorms I crate my pup in my home office for crate training and to sleep because that is where my PC is. There are long sound loops on youtube of fireworks and also of thunderstorms. Also they can be found for streaming on your TV. I find one to start that is not too aggressive. Maybe just rain at first and let it play real low while the pup sleeps. I progressed to more aggressive ones I can find and louder and louder over time. Originally I used tapes and CDs of sounds three Vizslas ago, but youtube now makes it easier. I will also play these while feeding the pup. This resulted in every Vizsla I have owned not having a problem with thunder and fireworks. In fact it created the opposite effect and sometimes a thunderstorm will put my dogs to sleep. Good luck.

That’s a heck of an idea!

X2

Thunder Shirts work to a degree. Xanax or Ativan work best, they work well on dogs and owners.

Recently had to cut the dog's mouth out of the crate door. She got her snout caught up in it. She'd completely freaked out, I'll never forget the site or sound. She's only been in the crate once since then and we haven't left her in the crate alone since.

And most of all, it works. It is thundering outside right now and my Rosie is crashed asleep on the floor. It is one the first things I start on when I get a new pup no matter if I think they will need it or not. And there are several hour loops of raw sound on there of other things like construction sounds, mower sounds and just about anything else you can think of that your dog might encounter at some point. I just make sure I start with sounds and a volume level that the pup shows no reaction to, then gradually move up from there. BTW, I also sometimes use thundering rainstorm sounds played on my TV in the camper at at the hunting lease when I am having a hard time sleeping. It is just as effective on me as it is the dog.

Echoing this especially if young. Most real anxieties in dogs are not quick fixes and require a lot of effort from the handler.

I haven't had to deal with noise based anxiety, but my current dog had extreme separation anxiety when she was a puppy. Like couldn't leave the room, let alone house without potentially hurting herself separation anxiety. Luckily this was during the pandemic and I was working from home and had the time to train on it. This involved me stepping outside the room she was in with the door open where she could see me for maybe 1 or 2 second then coming back. Building that up to a few minutes, second intervals at a time. Then we would start over but with the door closed. Then we would start over and it would be leaving the house door open, door closed, etc. Once we built up to about 30min (took about 2 months) the intervals seemed to jump significantly and by 3 months I could leave for hours at a time. The whole goal was to build up her anxiety threshold without letting her go over it for even a second, if I did there were setbacks. This meant I had to take her everywhere with me or have a friend watch her if I needed to go out and do something where she couldn't come. The end result was a dog that had zero remnants of her anxiety and in the process had built an enormous amount of trust with me.

Try a thunder jacket (worked on my cousin's dog), but my understanding from them researching that is that dogs that get thunder phobia, it only gets worse with age, and typically can't be trained away (unlike most things)

I have 2 products that are my favorite for storm and firework anxiety. There's a product called Sileo gel thats given in the cheek pouch like 30-60 minutes before a storm or fireworks. It works incredibly well.

Trazadone also works really well.

Talk to your vet about it. Both of these require a prescription.