Dog spooking - Has it happened to you?

[Devilshands]

I tried a new route - through fields and then over a stile onto a private road (dead end one way and leading to a country A-road the other way), cross the road into another field - today.

All fine until we got onto the road. All three dogs made a break for it screaming in terror at the same time (so not just one starting it and the others following).

I've never seen or heard anything like it. Thankfully they were all on the lead, given we had to cross a road, so I managed to stop them bolting...although I did end up flat on my arse several times given they were all trying to run off in different directions...

It took thirty minutes of careful wrangling, persuasion and gently calming them down to even get them to stop screaming and go back over the stile. The youngest is still shaking a few hours later 😕

In thirty years of dog ownership it has never happened before. A dog might get scared of something and refuse to walk past it, but very quickly does...but I've never seen or heard any of my dogs scream in terror like that before.

Just wondering if it's ever happened to anyone else and what the circumstances were.

Safe to say I won't take them back that way again...

No, never. That sounds terrifying. Do you know what started it?

Not like that no, sounds terrifying! My dog did once slip his harness after being confronted with one of those triangular roadwork signs on the pavement but nothing like you describe, I wonder what they were so scared of 🤔

Absolutely no idea! I went back just now to have a nosy...just a normal lane and stile! No funny smells. No dead animals. No doggers. No weird signs. Just perfectly normal.

I would be less freaked out if only one of them had acted like that, but to have all three go bonkers was just horrible!

I wonder if there was a noise they could hear but you couldn't?

Mine did it once when he was younger and I worked out it was the huge round hay bales in the middle of the field we were walking beside, tightly covered in shiny black covers. No idea why they frightened him but he was terrified of them.

He also got spooked once by the back of a road sign on the pavement, growling and barking (he was a solid, stoic Labrador and that was one of the few times in 10 years I heard him bark, the only time I saw him growl aggressively) it was solid black plastic in a triangular type shape with thick feet. He refused to go near it and we had to cross the road to get by it barking all the way, as soon as he saw the other side of the sign he stopped.

Happens a quite a lot with mine
He's a flock guardian breed so he is often on the look out for danger real or imagined
Odd things he has spooked at:
An oddly shaped tree stump
A watering can
A new bench that the council thoughtfully placed in his favourite park.
A man carrying a high chair in a cafe (that was very embarrassing. I guess he thought the bloke would attack us with it)

My mums dog once did this and we eventually realised that it was because the road had been salted and was stinging her paws!

This sounds terrifying OP. I know you say they simultaneously erupted into hysterics but one of them could have subtly set the others off with just a vibe. They look for signs from the pack. Even so. Over the years I've had dogs bark at things like traffic signs or be wary of something new but it has always been something obvious to me. It could have been a smell.

That does sound scary but my lab went outside at 4am one morning and was really barking and growling. It scared me as I was worried someone was in the garden that I couldn’t see as he very rarely barks or growls and it sounded really menacing but the next day it turned out that a blue plastic bag had got stuck in a tree behind the fence…

He also jumped with all 4 paws off the pavement because there was a leaf underneath him 🙈.

My (late and loved) Border Collie once got really spooked going through a graveyard (on her lead and on the footpath and never allowed near any graves) that we regularly visited - she was always on the lead and path, close to me and was used to the graveyard as we visited twice a week but one day she absolutely refused to go down a certain path and was growling (she wasn't a growler and was usually a lovely, placid dog) and she was digging her paws into the path but I couldn't see or hear anyone or anything - weird thing was, we'd been on that same path a few days earlier and I'd heard a woman talking quietly behind me and as I'd turned to apologise and let her pass (as I was taking a photo of a beautiful old gravestone) there was nobody there.

Was actually probably a rational explanation but she'd never got spooked before and never did again.

I took my oldest (she's a cocker so it's manageable if she gets scared as she can't drag me over!) back this afternoon as she's always been pretty robust (literally nothing scares her). I wanted to test if maybe one of the others set her off...

...and she again had hysterics. No idea what it is there, but she was absolutely terrified - and it's definitely not normal 'scared'. We're talking full blown screaming, eyes wide, unable to be calmed down and hyperventilating all the way home on full run.

I feel awful as I thought she might be okay by herself 😞

Big cats in Britain

So bizarre. It has to be something they can hear and you can't. Maybe some aresehole has got one of those ultrasonic noise things that teenagers and animals can hear.

I wonder what on earth it could be! I think animals, dogs especially, pick up on all sorts of things that we're not at all conscious of.

I wonder if it was a noise or vibration that they could sense, but you couldn't. Do you have a local Facebook page you could post your experience on? It would be interesting to know if any other dog walkers in the area have had the same thing happen.

You were brave to go back. I'd have been too scared.

If it's just happened again hours later, I would guess that it's a high pitched noise that you can't hear. Dogs hearing is so sensitive compared to ours.

My two hardy little terriers did this once. Exactly the same time, shrank back, cowering, whining and whimpering. It totally unnerved me and we scuttled back the way we came. Took DH with us to investigate later and, without a doubt, it was a shredded compost bag blown up into the hedge!