Why is my dog hypersensitive to noise?

Noise sensitivities in dogs can be caused by physical health conditions, but often this sensitivity is due to fear and a phobic reaction. It is not unusual for dogs to show fear when exposed to unfamiliar stimulus, however, phobia is an extreme response that may drastically affect your dog’s life quality. Noise phobias in dogs are a mental health concern that are often caused due to genetic factors, stressful or traumatic environmental events, poor socialization, or medical conditions that affect the mental development. Common stimulus that can cause fear are: Thunder and storms Fireworks Construction work or unusual road noise Gunshots. Due to the nature of the phobia avoidance is not always possible. Your veterinarian will look at your pet’s full clinical history and perform a full body examination. A diagnosis of noise sensitivity is often made due to the pet’s clinical history.

A new study suggests that before you look for a behavioral solution, you should make sure there isn’t an underlying medical cause. The study looked at two groups of dogs that were brought to a clinical animal behaviorist because of fear or anxiety triggered by sound. One group was also diagnosed as having some type of musculoskeletal pain, such as hip dysplasia or a degenerative joint condition. The researchers hypothesize that when a dog suffering from pain gets startled or tenses up from a loud or sudden noise, it aggravates their pain. This causes a learned association between loud sounds and pain to develop, which can easily generalize to all kinds of situations where the dog has experienced noise. Dogs that had pain tended to become more broadly fearful — along with being afraid of places where they had heard loud noises, they generalized the fear to new situations, people, and dogs. The dogs diagnosed with pain also developed their fear of noise later in life than the control group. The average age that their fear of noise started was around four years older than the dogs who didn’t have pain issues. Therefore, if dogs develop this fear later in life, they should have a thorough medical exam before any attempt to address the behavioral problem.