Ideas for gun shy dog - Page 1

I have exposed Chaos to guns on couple of occasions, including few times when we will hang outside a local indoor gun range. He seemed fine, but I always had food or toy with me, so he would be somewhat indifferent to the sound. The day of his BH trial, we were checking for his chip and he was laying on his side, completely relaxed, when the gun shots started and he freaked (jumped up and tried to get to the car). I got startled too, I was with my back towards the field and I didn't even register that they would start the fire. So I guess me jumping a bit didn't help much :(

So I am wondering what is the best way to desentize him? So far I have come up with couple of options: 

1. get cd "Gundog conditioning system" or Gunshy cure?                                      
2. I spoke to the people running the local indoor range and they are ok with us coming inside the store, in the hallway b/n the range and the store. There are no outdoor shooting ranges that I could find. I have no gun knowledge, so I have no idea of how comparable the gun sounds are (I guess it depends on what people are shooting that day) and whether the location (indoors/outdoors) matters that much?
3. a local LEO offered to take me out to his property and shoot his gun there. This is probably one time thing. 
4. any other ideas?

Thank you!

Was he frightened or excited?  Some dogs associate the sound of the gun with the whip cracking and go straight to stimulated protection mode.

Margaret N-J

You need to be very careful doing this and I would caution to proceed slowly.  If the dog "freaked out and tried to get to the car" then he was startled, not excited.  A dog's reaction to gunfire if it thinks it is the "whip" being cracked is to go forward towards the sound.....not away, IME.  I have made some other posts on possibly correcting this issue.  One big consideration is that the problem may be a temperament flaw and then this is a huge issue to correct.  If it a result of a bad experience with gunfire but an other wise sound dog then it is fixable.  I have a handler in our unit that was involved in a gunfight with a suspect that fired 50 rounds from an AK-74, striking one Officer five times.  The K-9 handler returned fire and hit the suspect ending the fight.  The dog was pretty severely traumatized by the sirens from 4 or 5 Police cars blaring and the sheer number of rounds exchanged.  We addressed the issue, worked on it and now the dog is back to being as solid as before.  
 
You really need to be brutally honest with yourself and determine whether the issue is a temperament flaw (genetic or other wise) or a bad experience.  If it is a temperament issue it is what is and I would still work the dog through it.  Start with a cap gun from a distance and work closer.  Then a .22 blank gun and work closer.  Then proceed to a larger caliber blank gun.  Start from a good distance and have the person shooting move closer when the dog has a favorable reaction.  DO NOT rush this.  

As you have noticed the dog is ok when in drive, ie food or toy.  I would practice with the dog in high drive doing OB and reward for correct heeling, down, etc when the rounds are fired.  The reward is correct performance and the gunshots are ignored by you.  The reward is not for "being good" around gunfire if that makes sense.  The gunfire is to be considered normal by you, like a car driving by for example.  When I test potential Police dogs the gunfire test is the first that is done and is administered when the dog is not in drive.  There is not toy, no praise, no agitation.  The dog is taken out and walked on a loose leash and allowed to sniff and pee then I fire rounds.  In drive the reaction can be completely different.

I would be very careful bringing a dog to a gun range.  My rule when shooting with dogs is: If you are wearing ear pro the dog needs hearing protection as well.  Rifle rounds sound very different to dogs than pistol rounds and the concussion is also different.  We do a lot of shooting with our dogs including multiple officers moving and shooting M-4's and Pistols.  We need our dogs to be gunfire neutral and remain calm and under control during gunfire.  This takes a lot of training and sometimes the dogs trained with a lot of whip action are extremely aggressive under gunfire, exactly what we don't want.  I had a friend bitten during a shoot out by another handlers dog because the dog simply targeted the first guy shooting.  That Officer was able to lock the dog into the back of his knee where the dog had him with his left arm and hold him there while he continued to engage the suspect from behind cover striking him several times and ending the fight.  That instantly changed the I trained our dogs under gun fire and we have re created that scenario many times in training.
 
If it is a genetic or temperament issue please go slowly and carefully.  

Has he been exposed to it since then? If so, how was he? How much exposure has he had, total? Any bad experiences? Have you always had to distract him with a toy or did you just, incidentally, happen to have a toy with you when it happened so you're not really sure how he is when not distracted by an object? He was fine previously, and then just this one time, lying in a vulnerable position (on his side with strangers around him) was startled by it and you also jumped? Is this correct? Did he jump before or after you did? Was he reading your startled response or was he genuinely just spooked by the sound? When you say he tried to go to the car, do you mean for a second or two until he realized it was nothing and you'd also recovered, or do you mean he was inconsolable, yanking the leash from your hands, or pulling you toward the vehicle in a panic, long after the rounds had ceased and proceeded to shake behind a chair for the rest of the day?    Exaggerating to make a point......... I'm not getting a clear picture of the severity or mildness of the problem and I think it is important as far as how to approach fixing this. 

If you just want a neutral response (unless you're being fired at, LOL), I think I'd want to analyze it a bit more and decide how to proceed from there. I, personally, do not like dogs who ignore it totally. It may very well be a threat some day. I like the dog to at least notice it, give some flicker that he heard it and assessed it and it was nothing to be concerned about at that time. On the sport field, he has to behave according to the rules, but in "real" life, I want him to be aware of his surroundings at all times. But that's just me............


Ask yourself those questions and then fine tune the suggestions you got plus your ideas  you already had to come up with a tailored plan, customized to the severity of the problem. I guess my initial thought, if it were my dog, would be to assess it before getting too worried, especially if it's never been an issue before. Any animal, humans included, can be startled on occasion when in a vulnerable position. If this is truly a fluke, and he's not generally a sound-sensitive dog with genetic nerve issues, a few more exposures similar to the setting in which he startled should suffice as far as desensitizing. If it takes much more than that, I'd lean toward a temperamental propensity to this. I judge the recovery with a lot more emphasis than the initial, knee-jerk reaction as far as evaluating a dog goes. 

Slamdunc, I don't know enough to determine whether this is "temperament flaw (genetic or other wise) or a bad experience". I don't know how long it takes for a dog to get used to gun shots...I am trying to be completely honest, the few times that we have been to a club, maybe 3 times there were gun shots, I know one time the gun was different, because the trainer went really far, maybe 60 feet away and was firing and Chaos got nervous and I think he wanted to go back to the car, but I can't remember for sure. The first two times it was a smaller gun or starter pistol and he was fine...The folks there did give me a warning and I was feeding him the whole time, so I have no clue how he would be if there are no distractions. I have always assumed it is a process, gun shots>dog gets nervous>feed/play with the dog, work on OB, ignore the sound>praise the dog like you said, and repeat. I have no idea what kind of gun was fired at the trial.

He went through a fearful phase (afraid when it was dark outside) as a puppy, but I have not seen him scared like that under any other circumstances. Trash trucks, thunder, things being dropped in close proximity, he will look at it, but not fearful at all. I have seen him being startled couple of times, when he is sniffing something very intently and something moves behind him or he suddenly becomes aware of movement, but he recovers right away, it lasts for a split second.

I will find out if I can fire a cap gun/blank gun in the city and see how he does.

Jen, no, he hasn't been exposed at all since. I've been thinking about it and what to do. He was definitely startled and scared. I can't recall if I jumped first or he did, I was so focused on scanning him for the chip...I completely tuned out what was happening behind me. Him being scared lasted more than second or two, and I don't think he ever came to the conclusion that it was nothing. He was pulling me towards the car pretty strongly, he was absolutely determined to get out of there. I can't tell you for the life of me how many shots were fired and when they stopped in connection to his pulling, but once we were about 20 feet away, he was fine. It might have been the proximity to the sound, maybe 10 feet away? He didn't spend the rest of the day shaking or anything like that, we did the traffic portion of BH and he was completely normal and fine. I don't want to expose him again without having a solid plan in place and right now, I am not sure how to address it.

 

If that was the first time he was that close (10 feet is pretty close, especially for a first time), and nothing really happened in the end, he may not be that bad the next time. I had a Czech male once who was really afraid, as in, would run right through you get the hell out of dodge, and he was fine after gradual exposure- fine enough to be selected for SWAT. 

If he were mine, I'd work with him all the same, especially if it's not so severe that he didn't calm down once it stopped and was able to successfully perform right after that. That tells me that while he may indeed have a certain amount of sensitivity to it, genetic or otherwise, he's certainly not a hopeless phobic and with PROPER, careful exposure, you should be able to improve his reaction considerably, especially since he's fine when it's not 10 feet away and he's in a vulnerable position. 

I've been working on exposing my dog to loud sounds since last summer when I found out she doesn't like fireworks (and I honestly think it is our older dogs reaction that initially freaked her out). We literally have these two giant firework shows that go off right across the street every year, so you can see where it gets annoying to have a dog freaking out about it. We finally figured out that our other dog is 100%  FINE as long as he can get into a tight space and feel like he is in his own little world... usually he'll pull the blankets off of my dads bed and then bury his self in those between the bed and the bookshelf next to it. Problem solved for him.

With my dog though, I make loud noises either A LOT OF FUN, or they are completely ignored. I've been pulling up firework shows on YouTube, and then also been letting her pop balloons (which she thinks are the coolest thing in the world now). And its been getting better, slowly, but the real test will be when firework season comes back around. Maybe you could try something similar with the gunfire?

Once spring and training kick back in, I know the people we train with said we could do some desensitizing with gun fire, so I guess we'll see.

Good luck with Chaos!!

here is a recent thread you might find interesting:
http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/forum.read?mnr=688641-gun-fire-training

personally, i prefer to use gunfire as a test for nerve strength rather than train
dogs to "pass" at a trial.  we do some target practicing here at home & i usually
observe how the dogs react or don't react, but i am not making a conscious
effort to desensitize them to gunfire or loud noise.  i would prefer they ignore
it completely or act curious about what we are doing.  if i were a competition
person, i might have a different view.
pjp

Ziegenfarm, what about a dog who was fine several times before and was just spooked one time? 

Not a good sign, since you are only as good as the last thing you did, meaning the dog, of course.