Bombproofing Your Pet for the Big Booms

Marty and Laura tackle the big booms of summer, fireworks and thunderstorms, and how we can bombproof our pets ahead of time.

LR: You made a comment to me last week when we were together that I thought was so great. We were talking about our phobias, your fear of heights. My claustrophobia. And you’re like, ‘we don’t know why we have these phobias. Dogs don’t know why they have their phobias either.’ And I just thought that was such a genius comment that I’d never really kind of spun it that way in my head. So can you expand on that a little bit for me?

MG: Well, I’ll try. I mean, the point is that I’m afraid of heights. I know I’m not gonna fall. I know I’m OK, I get that. But there’s something really visceral and really guttural that every sphincter in my body tightens up and I get nervous and upset and there’s a certain things I don’t handle well. And so it’s hard to explain to anybody. Because my friends around me are like, what’s wrong with you? You’re not gonna fall over the cliff. You’re not gonna fall off the edge. You’re fine. I’m like, OK, My head says I’m fine. My gut says I’m not.

And so, that’s kind of the thing. We have to realize that it’s a real true gut reaction. And when you say you think with your gut or you feel with your gut, what’s your gut reaction? I think it’s really important that we realize that our gut is part of our nervous system, and it’s probably a very important organ in all of that. So when you feel like you have a gut feeling, believe it and don’t diss the dog by saying ‘what’s wrong with you, you shouldn’t be afraid of that. It’s just Thunder. It’s just lightning. It’s just fireworks. It’s just, you know, whatever, it’s just the vet, it’s just the groomer, it’s just the car.’ It’s whatever it happens to be. It is not “just,” it is a visceral, true guttural response that you’re dog or cat cannot overcome.

You can try to do some training, you can try to do some counter conditioning. There’s all kinds of stuff people try to undo by training, but sometimes it takes some pharmaceutical agents to sort of accelerate this timeline of getting through those things.

The Marty & Laura Show is produced by Pure Dog Talk Inc., with sound design and editing by Premium Audio Services.