Anyone ever have a dog afraid of guns?

Several of ours disappear upon seeing a firearm, both long guns and handguns. They have never been around the guns firing.

More on unwittingly reinforcing bad behavior, a classic example:

Doorbell rings. Dog charges the front door, barking and growling viciously. Owner hugs dog and pets dog; “Easy boy, it’s my friend!”

Message to dog: I get pets and hugs when I charge the door.

It’s sad to watch a dog owner lecture or reasoning with his pet. The pet understands action, body language, tone of voice, not words.

I take the holster off when I am inside the home and carry the gun around, the second I insert the IWB into my pants and the clip clicks, my dog is ready to go out with me. In other words, no, the current one is not afraid of guns, gunshots, or thunder.

My Son had a Labrador that was subjected to some lame brain kid's throwing firecrackers near her outdoor kennel when she was a pup. Never got over it. Any noise spooked her. He loved that Dog and kept her for a long lifetime. My sixth Labrador and she never flinched once from a gunshot. I started her with an old Winchester .22 and moved up from there.

I've never had a hunting dog...my dog's job was always to let us know when someone other than family was outside the house.

When my girls were young, they made our dog afraid of the vacuum cleaner. Girls are grown and gone now and that dog has passed. We have always had dogs. Longest we've gone without at least one is 2 long yrs.

My last 3 just got up and moved to another room when I vacuum. They hated the 4th of July and New Years Eve. The three spent the evening on my lap wrapped in towels, shivering.

Now there's only one, she's 14, mostly retired, blind, and arthritic, but still has good hearing. She doesn't pay attention to loud noises any more, but a close loud thunderclap will cause her to raise her head. She let's me share her recliner. She will be our last. We are in our late 70's and early 80's; too old to start over with a puppy, and no one to take care of one left behind.

J-Bar said:

Message to dog: I get pets and hugs when I charge the door.

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As it should be. A guy once tried to open my front door late one night. My lab charged the door, barking. I watched the guy run off down the street. I want my dog to bark and charge the door every time. Dogs are far more reliable for early warning than a Ring sensor-that's for sure.

For those of you working with gun shy/loud noise shy dogs, check out Ten Minute Retriever by John and Amy Dahl or or Gun Dog by Richard Wolters (Wolters has been dead a long time). They discuss techniques on how to address this problem. (Basically, and as I said earlier, it requires a lot of positive reinforcement/food rewards. Essentially connecting gun shots to things they like.) However, depending on the severity of the problem, there may be no repairing the damage.

PWC said:

They hated the 4th of July and New Years Eve. The three spent the evening on my lap wrapped in towels, shivering.

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We lost our beloved Ruger (cocker/springer cross) a couple of months back, but he too hated the 4th of July and New Years Eve, as well as thunderstorms. About 10 years ago, my wife bought something called a "Thundershirt" for him. It was like a real thick and stretchy vest she could wrap around him.
It never worked either. Every time the thunder would start to rumble, or a neighbor up the road started shooting up fireworks, Ruger would head for the bathroom and jump in the bathtub. He'd calm down and quit shaking if I got in the tub with him and held him in my arms until the thunderstorm was over, or the neighbor ran out of fireworks.

Friend had a Brittany that was gun shy from the first shot and never recovered. Another friend has a Pointer that is great at finding birds but then is afraid of the birds and blinks them. One of my little house dogs is afraid of thunder but the other will attack the vacuum sweeper and the robot swimming pool cleaner. Dogs are just weird.

Is the dog afraid of brooms? Long sticks? I'd try to figure out if it's the firearms and noise she associates with them or a striking type object that triggers her anxiety. Knowing which aspect she fears will help to determine which way would be the best approach to try to get her help.

Dogs are as different as people .My father raised beagels and brittney spaniels and some are not bothered by gun shots and some are .we had a beagle that was scared of guns but it was that she equated that tool/thing with the noise.she would hide when any long gun was around .My father told me that he was told you could try and break a dog of the gun shyness by tethering it and just keep shooting till it was ok around the noise.he never tried that method he said it was cruel. as far as he was concerned a gun shy dog was not a good hunting dog.

Speedo66 said:

Rescue dogs may relate long guns to a stick, if its been beaten with one, perhaps that's where the fear of them comes from.

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This particular dog knew what rifles were. When I first brought him home from the pound, he was OK with sticks, shovels, canes, rakes, brooms, etc but pick up a rifle and he would leave the room.

Once he became accustomed to gunfire though, he would get excited when I picked up a rifle (or rifle case) because he knew it meant we were going out into the forest.

My old girl dog (that I put down last week at age 16) didn't like my guns. We called her a reincarnated Quaker. When she could walk a lot she would leave the room even seeing a dart gun. We also have an "assault" gun that we use to kill flies and spiders, she didn't like that one at all either. I shoot in my backyard sometimes when I am too lazy to go to the range for a quick magazine so I figure all the times I did that was sensitive to her ears.

My oldest lab is terrified of gunfire. He even hates dry firing. So I limit all loud things around the house. When I am going to make noise I tell him boom boom so he can hide. When done I give the all clear “all over, all done” and he comes out of hiding all happy. During thunder and other things he hangs out with me and not the wife. He’s smart. Yes he smells guns and gets nervous. Tell him the all done key word and he calms down. The other lab just looks at him with a blank expression as to what is all the fuss about.

They do have a good sense of smell. My second lab’s best trick to have someone hide something. Let him smell your hand (that touched what you hid), give the command “find it” and in a short time he has your item in his mouth.

I had a dog "Rudy" that was afraid of guns. I would take one out and he would shake and hide. Had that dog for over 16 years. Best friend ever.

@Bottom Gun and @J-Bar both made excellent points for curing dogs of being gun-shy. I've done both. Both work depending on how much patience you have.
I also try to keep my dogs at a hearing safe distance when I'm target shooting because I don't want them to have unnecessary hearing damage.

The Exile said:

I really don't understand how this is happening, whenever I pull my guns out of the box she tucks her tail and feels the room. If the door is closed she sees herself to the corner nearest the door, and she moves her head away my hands until I force her to see they're empty at which point she relaxes slightly. Now she has a general phobia of sounds, comes to cower underneath my bed whenever my dad's air compressor goes off and she is practically vibrating constantly on July 3rd and 4th, so it wouldn't be too shocking to me if she didn't want to be around me shooting them, but i've never taken her to the range or anything. Any ideas what could be spooking her? I'm not trying to turn her into a hunting dog given she's clearly uncomfortable with the noise but no clue why she'd be afraid of the actual gun itself like she knows what it does despite having never seen it do anything.

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A Tale of Two Yellow Dogs, and How One Picked a Krag
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The first dog I had (Kilo) was a Yellow Lab. At his peak weight, this big dude weighed over 80 pounds. The house SHOOK when this dog walked. Fortunately he was as gentle as a kitten.

He was my first service dog. I had him half of high school and all of college. He was a GREAT service dog, and too smart for his own good.

He was also gun shy. Thunder, gunshots, fireworks...he wasn't having it. "OUT OF SERVICE, BOSS! CHECK BACK IN TWENTY MINUTES!"

The second service dog I had (Winston) was a Golden Retriever. Anyone on this forum who attended the Syracuse, NY gun shows from 2012 to 2019 would have seen me at the show with Winston..

He wasn't all that smart, and he wasn't all that skilled a service dog...or maybe I was the problem. But I loved that dog. He was my buddy, and he was loyal to a fault. Thunder, gunshots, and fireworks didn't bother that dog a whit.

Anyhoo...back to the Syracuse gun show. I was tooling around, and stopped to look at a Krag. I was on the fence about buying it, and Winston jumped on my lap, and wouldn't stop licking my face until I told him I'd buy that rifle.

Conversation between me and the dog: "What? I'm supposed to buy this?"
(Golden Retriever happy growls)
Great...I have a wagging, bouncing dog, and I'm $400 lighter in the wallet. That rifle became "Winston's Krag," and I still have it.

He did a good job of picking...it's an 1898 SA. Every piece of information I have says it should be a rifle, but there it sits a carbine, down to the barrel with correct front sight and barrel band. The serial number places it in a block of 100 that were known to be rifles, one of which was documented at the siege of Peking in 1900. But Springfield's records show a single 1898 carbine manufactured in 1899. So it's JUST BARELY possible that I have THE ONE.

It has an 1898 rifle rear sight and is in what I think is a Bannerman stock. But the carbine stock and rear sight would be an easy swap if I had them.

I'm glad I found this thread. Thanks for letting me pull up a soap box. Kilo has been gone longer than he lived, and I had to put Winston down three years ago today, after a bad seizure he didn't bounce back from (brain tumor).

tws3b2 said:

I had a dog "Rudy" that was afraid of guns. I would take one out and he would shake and hide. Had that dog for over 16 years. Best friend ever.

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Yep. It definitely does not mean the dog is no good. Not well suited for hunting, perhaps, but still can be a great dog.

My lab couldn't sit still in a blind. Once he saw the birds, he wanted to go after them. Never could break him of it. We didn't duck hunt much, but we had him for 8 years and he changed our lives.

My dog Maddie, a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, doesn’t like black or blued guns. Actually she doesn’t like anything that is black. My black leather jacket sends her looking for a hiding place. I can show her my stainless and wood 10/22 and she just looks at it. If I show her my Ruger PC Carbine she gets scared and leaves. If I show her my silver motorcycle helmet she looks and that’s it. If I pull out my black helmet she hides. I have no idea why.
She has never heard a gun go off so that isn’t it. She is very skittish with Thunder and fireworks so I am sure gun fire is a no-go.

The Exile said:

I really don't understand how this is happening, whenever I pull my guns out of the box she tucks her tail and feels the room. If the door is closed she sees herself to the corner nearest the door, and she moves her head away my hands until I force her to see they're empty at which point she relaxes slightly. Now she has a general phobia of sounds, comes to cower underneath my bed whenever my dad's air compressor goes off and she is practically vibrating constantly on July 3rd and 4th, so it wouldn't be too shocking to me if she didn't want to be around me shooting them, but i've never taken her to the range or anything. Any ideas what could be spooking her? I'm not trying to turn her into a hunting dog given she's clearly uncomfortable with the noise but no clue why she'd be afraid of the actual gun itself like she knows what it does despite having never seen it do anything.

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I skimmed the replies and did not see another post by the OP answering the questions I have.

First off is she a rescue? If so you have no idea what kind of life she had before. Even if you got her from the puppy prison at a very young age, generally 8 weeks is the quickest they are available for adoption, you have no idea what she went through in those first 8 weeks. Puppyhood is very different from child hood, they learn very fast and those things they learn then are set in stone, and are very difficult to remove.

It sounds like she knows what a gun is, this is just a thing remember, no different from any other thing. I had one dog that was afraid to death of a garden hose, loved playing in water, but if the hose was out ears came down and tail tucked, and very low to the ground. We figure somewhere along the line she was beat with a garden hose.

The smell thing could be correct, guns do have a specific smell to them, and dogs live through their nose. But if it is just a bad smell to them, like deodorant it usually does not set off a reaction like that. Generally they will quickly leave.

One thing and it could be just wording and how I am reading you, NEVER "force" anything out of a dog. This just underlines the bad in it for them. It must be their idea to see....how to do that, easy.

In the dog world there are different "values" of goodies. Having a pocket with a baggie of their food is a low value goodie. Having a pocket with bacon bits in it is a high value treat. Give her a treat, if she leaves her food she is very scared, if she leaves a high value treat she is about as afraid as she can get. Please don't "force" her to do anything, this is very against what you want.

You need to work with her, Pick a gun, unload it and get her to come to your "gun area". She will get afraid of that entire area, but from what you say it sounds like she will follow you to this area now so we can skip coaxing her into your gun area. So she is in your area, before she gets there take a gun unload it and lay it on the floor. You need to entice her to come close to it, don't touch it yet you just want her in the room with the object. After she is good with the object then try to touch it, have the treat ready (it does not take much, a thumb nail bit of bacon is about right) and offer that treat to her.....in a nut shell this is how it works.

I don't want to really say much more as this will be deemed as a dog training post and not a gun post and removed by the FBI of THR, so I will leave it at that.

If you get to read this, and I hope you do, dogs are special friends like nothing else, go slow, don't force or lock her in, she must come at it with her own pace.

I left out a great deal, but this is a cliff notes version of what you need to do.

I know people that have broke hunting dogs of gun shyness . They do it with food and sound . Give the dog it’s food and then bang on a pan or something . When they leave their food take it up . Keep doing that everyday day for about a week and most are fixed .

I always take my dogs when they're pups to a trap range. I start out where you barely hear the shots. Walk slowly closer playing with the pup, making sure they're comfortable. Has worked every time, even with our French bulldog.

My dog will eagerly fight any animal on earth. He is terrified of cardboard boxes.

Had a Basset that would go hide when I took a gun out of the safe. Not really sure why. The dog was terrified of fire crackers and thunder and gunshots in the distance. My current Beagle spends a lot of time hiding in the laundry room when there might be thunder storms.

Our dog has no problem with guns as long as the capacity is 10 rounds or less.