I’m hoping to see if anyone has any bright ideas on here before we have to get a behaviourist in which is sadly where I feel this is going.
Our nearly 3 year old ddog has become scared to go on walks, we know the cause of this is fireworks. She has never been scared or bothered by fireworks before, not bothered by noise of them when in the house and happily trotting off into the garden to have a wee whilst they’ve been going off.
About a week after bonfire night we were having our usual afternoon walk in the local park (in the daylight) when someone who’s garden backs onto the park decided to start letting off fireworks and she was petrified. We tried to act normal and headed home but she was beside herself and we had to carry her some of the way and she was trying to crawl under parked cars to hide. Ever since then she won’t go in the park or gets a couple of steps in and puts the breaks on. We haven’t wanted to push her so we’ve been doing mainly road walking still around the local area and she was getting better with not stopping much but then again on New Year’s Day we were out on a walk (in the daylight again) and someone started letting off fireworks and we’re even worse than we were before. We can’t even get more than 3 houses away before she just stops and won’t move. She’s also become very very nervous of other dogs when on our usual walking route and curls up into a little ball when other dogs come to sniff her.
When at other places e.g the woods or other parks she’s absolutely fine walking well behaving normally and happy to greet and sniff other dogs so this fear is obviously tied into our normal walking route.
The problem is that with me now returning to work after the Xmas break I don’t have time in the morning to drive somewhere else to walk her and I don’t want to walk through the woods on these dark mornings as a lone female.
Has anyone got any ideas of how we can help her overcome her fear?? We’re desperate.
Sorry for the long post, tried to include everything i think is relevant