How best to train to ignore sirens?

[Leanne]

We had a fire alarm at school on Friday... Mas was sound asleep and it woke him up and scared the crap out of him.

Obviously he also now has an ear infection so it may well be that it actually hurt him anyway he went ballistic.

He’s never had an issue previously but he’s now barking quite manically at police sirens if a police car goes past and my step son was just doing a game that had a siren and had the same reaction, luckily I had some food near me and in his steroid induced hunger he quickly stopped and started munching

Is it a desensitisation task? Do I just play it around food times etc or will that stress him more? I can’t avoid it entirely!

 

[kateincornwall]

If you onto the Dogs Trust website , they have a link to a CD you can play , it covers lots of sounds, you can chose which sound you want to play, it starts off low and gets louder . We had this with gunshot , so we just played it while we were doing normal things in the house, its very good x

 

[HAH]

What a shame @Leanne , I am sorry for Mas - and obviously you’d like to help him get over it. I reckon you’re right that his ear infection will be making him more sensitive, and if it’s painful he might be associating the two.
Really good suggestion from @kateincornwall about early doors gentle reintroduction using recordings. I remember @snowbunny saying on a thread about fireworks around Bonfire Night that recordings miss the higher and lower frequencies that dogs hear, so I guess you might need to shift the stimulus to actual alarms at some point, although if possible muffled down.
I think I’d start really really gently and see how he reacts, using short sessions and making sure you reward generously when he’s okay, and remove the stimulus and scatter feed if he finds it difficult. Not sure that’s the right way, hopefully others will correct!

 

[Emily_Babbelhund]

Poor Mas. Loud noises can be such a trouble depending on the dog. @snowbunny might weigh in as well as she has a LOT of experience with noise desensitisation.