Ballistic at Sneezing (only mine)

[jumba]

I swear I saw a post about this once, but I can't find it. I hope you all don't mind that I am asking this!

Addie is a wonderful puppy. She is careful and thoughtful on when to bark or alert, she is nearly there with her leash skills, training her is a breeze and she has no signs of nervousness with other people or other dogs.

The one thing I feel a little helpless on is her behavior when I sneeze. She ONLY does this to me (not to my DH, parents or in-laws). And because sneezes are so random, I can't set her up to teach her. She is too smart to think a fake sneeze is my real one (tried that! She just looks at me like "hahaha Mom. Funny!")

When I sneeze, she barks, twirls, tucks her tail and jumps up to rebound off of me. She does not growl or bare her teeth. I was unclipping her from her leash one day and happened to sneeze while bent over her. This was not the first time I had sneezed around her nor the first time she reacted this way. But when I sneezed, she immediately shot out from under me, barked, twirled and jumped at my face, knocking my glasses into my face and then they fell off. I did not scold her, because she was clearly afraid of the noise. I did not coddle her either because I did not want to reinforce it.

She reacts this way every other time, too. I don't want her to be scared and get hurt when she junps up (or me get hurt for that matter - glasses being pushed into my face kind of hurts LOL).

Does anyone have any ideas on things I can do to desensitize her of this?

 

[Caro]

This is the thread you're thinking of http://www.sheltieforums.com/showthread.php?t=22630&highlight=sneeze but unfortunately no solutions.

If she's only doing it with you at least you know it's a game and not an anxiety thing.

I'm thinking this through as I type so bear with me. I can think of 3 options.

Option 1 - the easy option. When she barks at you get up and walk away. Eventually it becomes no fun to bark when you sneeze. Of course depending how often you sneeze it could take a while...

Option 2 - de-sensitise. I think a sneeze would consist of 3 elements for a dog - the noise, the physical movement, and a surprise. I'd suggest if you are doing fake sneezes to desensitise go for at least 2 of those elements and just keep doing it until she gets sick of it. Otherwise tape the sound of you sneezing and play that over and over again so you can remove one of the elements that set her off and maybe her reaction won't be as over the top.

Option 3 - redirect. This might work best, but you'll have to practise with fake sneezes too. And you could make it more fun by teaching her to get a tissue for you when you sneezed. I taught this to Tully to deal with her shredding tissues (worked really well). I figure when a sheepdog creates a job for itself that you don't like, give them another job you can live with. And it's so gosh darn cute when they bring the tissue to you.

 

[jumba]

Thank you for that! I started to make the noise and the motion. That was the key! She is already a little better, and I am sure that with more time we will be 100% improved.