Earlier I mentioned a possible correlation between reactivity and vision problems, which got many of us thinking about the relationship between eyesight and reactive and/or fearful behavior in dogs. I had remembered that a researcher at UW-Madison did a study on eyesight in dogs, in which GSDs had an especially high rate of myopia, or nearsightedness. That got my attention, given how many reactive GSDs I’d been seeing in my office at the time.
We just found the study, and here is a summary of it: (You can find the entire study in Investigative Ophthalmology & Visual Science, Vol 33, No 8, July ’92, by Murphy, Zadnik & Mannis). The researchers looked at the physical structure of the eye (no one asked the dogs if the marks on the wall were bones or dinner bowls!), to evaluate the eyesight of 240 dogs presented at the UW-Madison clinic, and in 53 GSDs in Guide Dogs for the Blind programs. In the general study, they found 3 breeds in which over 50% of the dogs were myopic: 53% of GSDs, 50% of Miniature Schnauzers (but note many of those dogs were in the same family), and 64% of Rottweilers. In contrast, only 19% of the GSDs in the Guide Dog program showed signs of myopia.
But there’s more.Here’s a quote from the study that really got my attention: “By far, the most common form of myopia in humans is juvenile myopia; this occurs at 6 – 14 yr of age . . . “. Wow. I had no idea that there was such a thing called “juvenile-onset myopia” in people. Son of a gun. Oh my. No kidding?! Wouldn’t that suggest that at least one significant factor in Juvenile Onset Shyness in dogs MIGHT relate to their eyesight? Someone wrote me recently and asked if I had any good ideas for Ph.D. project. Well, there you are! I would love to see some research on this; any veterinarians out there who know if there is such a thing as “Juvenile Onset Myopia” in dogs? I’ll ask around too. . .
MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Willie and I have been working sheep every day, twice on a good day. Here are 3 photos I took Wednesday of us working on our “mini-drives.” Our goal is to keep the sheep in the center of the alley bounded by the orange cones.
Notice in this first photo that the lamb’s head is turned to the right. That tells us that he is about to try to go that way, so my job was to flank Willie counter clockwise just enough to head him off, before he makes a run for it.
In this next photo,Willie has moved to the right just far enough to turn the head of the lamb, but the flock is still too far to the right. See how they are now right next to the cones? I want them smack in the middle.
Now we’ve got them back into the middle. The next step, not shown, is to flank Wilie back clockwise, to his left, to keep them going straight. I either just didn’t get it photographed, or it all went to hell in a hand basket, I don’t remember. But overall, it was a great session and we ended on a good note for both of us.
I can’t wait to come home from Seattle and practice some more. (But do come up and say hello in Seattle, there are lots of folks coming and it should be a great weekend. Grisha Stewart is doing BAT training on Saturday, I’m doing a summary of Treating Dog-Dog Reactivity (got some great new videos) and an afternoon on The Biology of Play. Come up and say hi if you can make it!)
Frances says
Did you mean to say that the juvenile onset myopia comes in at 6 – 14 months, rather than years? It would fit better with the shyness. It would be very interesting to have some research – I can get an idea of my animals vision by their reaction to moving/non-moving objects, and the difference in distance between these, but if someone could come up with a simple, inexpensive, non-invasive eye test for dogs, cats and horses it could be very, very revealing (sic). It seems to me that they use many of the same clues that I do – I have been short sighted most of my life, and can be completely thrown if people change the colours or style of clothing they usually wear, or walk differently because they are for once wearing heels. Faces are the least of it – I am very bad at facial recognition. I actually have excellent vision now, corrected with contact lenses, but it is as if I learned how to recognise people back in my childhood when everything was blurred, and still need those broad brush clues to do it successfully.
Of course, we have not yet mentioned the juvenile onset selective deafness – which I suspect is an even more common problem!
Anne J says
The herding lesson pictures are great- I have a bunch of old fence posts with no fence on them that I use as a target for driving, or for turning the sheep through as if they were panels.
The myopia connection is interesting- I had never thought of that. Especially since one of my little pups (3 1/2 months) was barking at a pile of wood today that was about 200 feet away. I know she couldn’t see what it was, it just looked like a big lump in a flat field to her.
Mary Beth says
My cross eyed dog doesn’t necessarily see very well, but she is the least reactive dog I have. Now, the 14 year old dog developing cataracts…..wow! She’s getting more and more reactive and flinchy. Hard to watch them get old.
Interesting thought about the secondary fear period and juvenile myopia. Although it seems like puppies are often cross eyed, but get over it by 10-12 weeks of age.
Andrea says
This is something I’ve thought about a lot. My female Doberman, Tink, has a totally detached retina in her left eye and thus is blind on that side. Her right eye has an optic nerve coloboma, a congenital defect that severely limits vision. I wonder now if her rather sudden reactivity with other dogs coincided with the detachment of her retina on the left, she hasn’t always been blind in that eye, and it has no coloboma, so until the retina detached she had good vision on that side.
She didn’t start improving on reactivity until I took her to an ophthalmologist and found out exactly how bad her vision is and started making accomodations for her. She’s also improved since I got a 3rd dog, a female German Shepherd who seems to know that she needs to be Tink’s Seeing Eye Dog and takes good care of her. Tink gets a big confidence boost from her GSD buddy that she never got from my male Dobe, with whom she grew up. Weird how these things work out.
Tracy says
@Frances, that confused me too at first. I think she meant that it occurs at 6-14 years in humans, not dogs.
cathy says
I can certainly relate to Andrea’s post. I “adopted” a dog who had just had an eye removed at 2.5 yrs old. He was having lots of trouble with depth perception. Combine that with a dog he didn’t get along with and a living environment that seemed chaotic to him (kids, stroller, bikes and people rushing to pet him because he is so cute) and you had a dog acting like what my sister called “the corgi from Hell”. He got a corgi buddy at our house who also functioned like a seeing eye dog, instilling confidence in going outdoors. We also worked on the depth perception (his former owners had started that) and gradually he became such a different dog. At 12.5 years old, and a little hard of seeing in his good eye now, my husband called him yesterday a “friend to everyone” because he is so good with our other animals. He doesn’t react much to their antics (probably misses seeing half of them) and so gets along with everyone. He sort of lives in his own little world, but it seems to be a good one.
Heidi Meinzer says
Wow! I’ve gotta get my Shepherd mix Sophie checked out! The possible tie between shyness and myopia makes so much sense, considering how great dogs are at, and how much they rely on, reading body language.
I’m very curious to hear more about the BAT session. CAT has been very controversial, and it seems BAT may have much more promise. Please let us know what you think!
MJ says
Wow. I’ve been wondering about how my Lhasa Apso sees ever since I got him at 14 months, from a show home. He is so oddly reactive. Asked the vet about his eyes on the first visit and she had a look but didn’t find anything off. This dog can greet someone effusively and then go around the house, run into him/her again and bark his head off in alarm. (Clearly his nose doesn’t work very well.) He often doesn’t seem to know who people are until they speak to him. And will alarm bark at people who do not speak. I tell them .. “just say ‘hi, Zibi’ and he will shut up.” Usually that works.
I know he can see, but HOW he sees has me mystified.
Cait says
One thing I *do* wonder about that study is how does it explain say, collies, where the vast majority ARE effected with some degree of vision loss (due to CEA) and yet reactive collies are surpassingly rare (and seem to be concentrated in smooths.)
Sharon Baron says
Huh. Very interesting stuff. I’ll forward this on to my dog’s eye surgeon. (I have a 4 year old diabetic Lab whose cataracts were surgically removed just about a year ago). I’d be interested in his comments on the idea of Juvenile Myopia.
Jackie says
Myopia in humans generally occurs at 6-14 years, because while the child is growing fast at that age sometimes the eyeball grows out of proportion, so the distance between the lens and the retina is wrong. There are genetic and environmental contributions to this, thoughthe environmental side isn’t well understood. It seems entirely plausible to me that this could happen during rapid growth of a puppy, too. So, do puppies have a pubertal growth spurt like children do, and if so does that tend to coincide with the timing of juvenile onset shyness?
Sue says
Absolutely fascinating information about the possible connection between vision and reactivity. Our three year old golden retriever / border collie might be an example. We’ve worked with him on shyness/fear issues since he was a few months old. At the same time we’ve wondered about his vision. He seems to be able to spot a rabbit almost a quarter mile away (we know his whines and he definitely has a “bunny whine.” ) However, he becomes puzzled and fearful of people/large objects up close. Thanks for your post. I’m going to be doing some more reading on this issue for sure.
Jackie says
Another point I thought of: myopia would be more of a problem in breeds that are very visually oriented. So it wouldnt’ surprise me at all if it was, say, much less of a problem in beagles than collies. Are GSDs very ‘visual’? – I’d expect so, given their history.
Sarah Stremming CPDT-KA says
Thank you for this post. Aside from being fascinating, it gave me a potential missing piece to the puzzle of a current case. He is a rott with juvenile onset reactivity, so his eyes are getting checked out ASAP. Thanks again!
Cynthia says
I just ordered and watched Grisha Stewart’s BAT DVD. Has anyone else tried this technique? What do people think? I personally find that one of my dogs responds really well, while the other has a hard time tearing himself away from staring at the dog/person in order to experience the functional reward of walking away.
Amy says
I was so glad to read this as I have a dog that is reactive only to things that are at least 10 yards away. At first I thought she may not have ever have had the chance to be approached by people or dogs from a distance (I don’t know her background) but it was with people and dogs that she knows and loves and once they hit the 10 yard mark her stand-offishness turns to all wiggles and wags. Classical Conditioning helped but she was still unsure. Now I think she may be nearsighted.
Also, I will be one of the folks at your seminar in Seattle this weekend. I have been booked for almost a year now. I will see you there. Yay!
Deanna in OR says
Actually, I have a slightly reactive Collie. My last Collie was normal-eyed and was the sweetest dog to all humans and animals. I used to say I needed to get a kid for my dog.
However, my current Collie, Willow, has mild CEA (not enough to keep her from being very successful at Agility), but she has always startled easily when she suddenly sees something while walking or hiking. She acts startled and starts barking… doesn’t matter if it is a dog, people, bike, whatever. She’s 7 now and we’ve been working on it since puppyhood, and it’s better if I am pro-active and can warn her someone is coming. I always wondered if it’s just a temperament thing, coming from show lines, but it would make sense if she saw something suddenly appearing in her field of vision that wasn’t there just before.
I’m very nearsighted myself, and my eye doctor does an initial check of my vision with some sort of machine–no need for me to say anything, to get a preliminary read. It seems like that would work on dogs, if you could get them to look into the machine, for a research project. It comes up with a preliminary prescription, including astigmatism, which we then fine-tune with the eye chart.
As a research topic, it would also be interesting to investigate reactivity among different kinds of vision deficiencies, not just myopia.
I’m bummed I won’t be able to make it to Seattle this weekend–I’m so close, in Vancouver, WA, for an agility trial. Maybe, Trisha, you’ll get back to Oregon State one of these days!
Jackie says
I’m interested in your comment that reactive collies are surpassingly rare. I get the impression they’re really common, judging by a UK rescue forum I read regularly. Or are we talking about a different breed – ‘collies’ in UK means Border Collies, where I think in some countries it usually means Rough Collies.
My dog (a border collie cross) can spot things like rabbits a very long way away, yet he also does the sometimes-not-recognising-people-close-up thing, until they speak. This is often if they have a new hairstyle or very different clothes on, or come in the wrong door. I had attributed this to his general fear of humans – after all they must still smell the same. Hmm.
trisha says
Written while sitting on the 30th floor of my hotel room in downtown Seattle overlooking the sunrise on the Sound, early Saturday morning. Ummmm, so pretty:
To Frances: Oh yes, I was talking about people when I mentioned 6 to 14 years, and thanks for the laugh about Juvenile Onset Deafness–I burst out laughing when I read it. It was fascinating to read about your vision and how that has affected you. I do believe that many ‘behavioral’ problems are related to sensory deficits in dogs (unilateral deafness as another example.) I have one good eye and one bad one, and when I wear glasses I have terrible depth perception. Seems my brain has grown up compensating for the different eye sight of each eye, and when it’s corrected my brain can’t adjust. I can’t make myself walk onto an escalator if I have my glasses on, I am so unsure of where the floor is. I’m sure if I was a horse or a dog some people would say I was just being stubborn.
To cathy: I’m interested to hear how you worked on your dog’s depth perception. I’ll bet we’d all love to hear what you did. (Andrea too, how did you help your dog compensate for a vision problem?)
To Cait: I’m guessing the collies you meant were rough or smooth coats, not BCs? I do see a lot of reactive BCs, less of the rough/smooth coat breed, but more of those lately than 15-20 years ago. The issue of deficits in vision is an interesting one; there are so many ways a dogs eyes can not function properly. I suspect what they see (or don’t see) with myopia or CEA or PRA is very different.
To Jackie: Thanks for the information about JOM in children. Yes, adolescent dogs do have a growth spurt and yes, it does appear to coincide with the onset, in some dogs, of reactivity. Definitely would need research though. The difference in growth patterns would also explain why some dogs seem to improve all by themselves (things start looking ‘normal’ again) and why other dogs need treatment (either they become classically conditioned to certain types of people/objects), or, they maintain their myopia, as do some people, when they are mature. And yes, I’d say that GSDs are highly visual dogs (that’s a belief of mine, not a ‘fact’). GSD owners, your thoughts?
To Deanna: It sounds like the research at UW was done in a way similar to the eye test you describe, so it is relatively easy to look at the structure of the eye and determine if the dog might be nearsighted or not.
And to all about BAT/CAT: Time for me to go and get ready for today. Grisha is going to talk about BAT in general today, but demo with dog-dog reactive dogs. I’ll be working with 3 dogs tomorrow morning too, so it’ll be a dog-dog reactive extravaganza. I thought next week I’d post a summary of the different methods that are being used most frequently (that’s my goal for Sunday morning, to go through all the ways you can treat dog-dog reactivity, and talk about which works best in which circumstance.) I’ve got some great new video of Willie and his new girlfriend, using one method, it’ll be fun to show. (He’s doing beautifully by the way, is back to his old self, or even better.)
Terry Shackleton says
I am not sure but my kitten may have sent my previous unfinished comments. darn things keep playing on the keyboard. A training issue I must work on.
In short owning a kennel that takes dogs out to socialize several times per day watching their interactions is both a necessity and a passion. I have seen too many dogs showing signs of nervousness and fear that have hair obscuring their vision because of breed cut or their are in need of grooming.
Then their are many of the Aussie Shepherd generally either the reds or blues with fear aggression I have seen. putting what you have said about vision and what Temple Gradin has said about single trait breeding leads me to wonder.
Hannah Branigan says
Fascinating! I have also always wondered about vision with certain reactive dogs. I have also noticed that some dogs seem to be worse or better at certain times of day, or in certain types of lighting.
My personal dog who is/was very reactive (much improved after several years of work) is much easier to trigger at twighlight, and for that and other reasons, I have often thought to myself “I wonder if he sees well?” He is also more likely to react to fake animals (cement deer, inflatable Christmas decorations, etc) in my neighbors’ yards. Then when he gets close enough to get a smell of the scary thing he abruptly relaxes and never looks at it again. I remember one time a couple years ago, my parents gave us a larger-than-life chicken statue (it was a joke, but I put it in the yard anyway). When I let him outside, he spent a good 10 minutes dancing around barking at it “Help! Alien! Monster Chicken! We’re under attack!” He finally worked up the courage to creep up to it, stretch his nose waaaay out, while his body was rocked waaaay back, get a good sniff. Then his body language completely changed. I swear, he seemed to look faintly embarrassed… as if to say, “Oh, nevermind.”
Katie Trachte says
Patricia, Have you had any experience/read about Early Takeoff Syndrome in dogs? It’s VERY interesting and shows up around 2-4 years of age. A dog who is unable to judge the appropriate take off distance from a jump. Linda Mecklenburg has done a lot of work with ETS dogs (I currently own one) and the shyness you mention can happen in dogs refusing to jump because they can’t SEE the jump. We’re not really sure what causes it but we do think it’s genetic. Of course a dog not taking a jump could mean a whole host of things (physical, lacking proper foundation training, structure) but we do believe there is an actual syndrome when you eliminate the previous.
Nicole says
We experienced our first occurence of juvenile onset shyness at 9 months with our shar pei, and are currently in the second round at 15 months. Eyesight has been a huge factor for us, ours stems from the heavy head wrinkle – the fact that he can’t see higher than 30ish degrees and seems to have a blind spot directly in front. Strange hands are already touching his head before he sees them coming, so in combination with the juvenile shyness, has meant lots of extra work. I can definately see how eyesight plays a factor.
Frances says
I hadn’t really considered the hair in front of the eyes as a factor – I must keep a diary, and see if there is any change in my poodle Poppy’s behaviour as her clip grows out. Probably not, as I never let her get very shaggy, but it is certainly one to consider.
Cait says
Trisha – yes, sorry- rough/smooth collies, not BCs. 😛 Do BCs COME in non-reactive? Some days I wonder. (I am kidding. I know facetious doesn’t come across well in text). I mean, I know there ARE reactive collies out there (and I’ve had one- my first smooth was a reactive barker, although he wasn’t really unduly upset by just about ANYTHING. (We translated it as “HI! HI! HI! HI! I’M MALCOLM! HI!”) but it was definitely in response to visual stimuli primarily and secondarily as what appeared to be boredom on long-duration behaviors.)- but in general, they just seem SO much less sensitive to sudden environmental changes. It’s not that they don’t have their own flavor of problems (Primarily shyness, though, although it seems more general), it’s just that they seem much less pronounced than in BCs. I really hate to attach it to intelligence- I’ve had some really smart collies!- but I do think it might be related to how much more intensely AWARE of the environment (well, particularly of the sheep and their movements, but also how that relates to terrain and things like where the gate is in the fence- all of this at 20mph :P) BCs have ot be than our pet version, whose greatest sensitivity seems to be to people’s emotional states.
Erin says
Interesting! I’ve always known that my one-eyed doxie got some of his reactiveness from his lack of sight on one side, but didn’t know how much it contributed to his shall we say tense state of being!
Janice says
Glad you got nice weather in Seattle–it was a lovely weekend here in the Pacific Northwest (wish I could have attended but health problems precluded this). (Seattle is one of my favorite places–awesome nature all around, nice people, great food).
I had juvenile onset myopia–started in glasses at 5 years old and my eyes rapidly progressed more and more myopic. For a while they put me in bifocals to try and slow it down and ultimately I was put (kicking and screaming) into hard contact lenses at age 14, which did slow it some. I ended up at -8 diopters in both eyes. What Jackie said about differential growth rates is true and also one of the environmental conditions that seems to exacerbate it is to have glasses and read with them (seems counter-intuitive, but reading through a corrective glasses lens for myopia puts considerable stress on the eye–this does not occur in contact lenses). I always wanted to read with my glasses off because it gave me such headaches to read with them on and my teachers would never let me (add a whooping case of dyslexia to this and you can imagine how much I loved elementary school). When my kids came along, they not only inherited my dyslexia but also started going myopic and I argued with the eye doctor to put them right into contacts (since soft lens disposables had by then come along). They wouldn’t do it for my son and he started the rapid descent into myopia. I finally got them to put him in contacts and when my daughter needed glasses, I fought tooth and nail and got her directly into contacts. As a result, she has stabilized at -3 and my son at -5. Obviously some genetic factors there as well but I think that steering clear of the glasses helped them.
Dogs don’t do close up work and so they might be less influenced by environmental rather than genetic factors (differential growth rates). But it does make me wonder since we have done so many significant alterations to the growth rates in the bones of dog’s heads to make the shapes seen in the different breeds. But dogs simply don’t have that good of eye sight to begin with. I was surprised when interviewing a veterinary ophthalmologist for my book on caring for aging dogs to find that dogs only see at 20/60 to begin with. I was disbelieving at first–they’ve gotta see better than that, I remember saying. But she assured me that this was correct–people think that dogs see a lot better than they do when in reality dogs are just very good at gathering more information from their other senses while humans are weighted very heavily to the visual sense predominating. Also, while our visual cortexes are very geared to high degree of visual acuity, dogs are more geared to movement perception. Still, I would be more inclined to look for other physiological explanations for juvenile onset shyness first. For example, there could be modifications due to maturation occurring in their sense of smell that we have no way to measure because dogs sense of smell is so advanced from our own that we can’t even imagine how to study it. I would think that another place to look is the physiological changes brought about by puberty. Even if we have removed the dog’s gonads through neutering, there are still neurological and endocrine changes occurring at that time. If I was a betting woman, I would look there first.
Susan Mann says
Trisha- you might be interested in what Linda Mecklenburg is trying to look into. After working for many years with dogs with jumping issues (in agility- she is an extremely talented trainer, handler, and coach) she has written about what she refers to as Early Takeoff Syndrome (ETS) which she believes to be a visual deficit of some kind, probably involving depth perception,that starts to show up around age 3 or so, in some lines, and some breeds. She is working on finding a genetic component, as well as getting the vet opthalmologists to do more retinoscopies.
Unfortunately, I’m on dial up, having trouble with my internet connection, so can’t send any links. She wrote an article for Clean Run magazine, if you wanted to contact them and get that issue. There are also some youtube videos you can probably locate without much difficulty. Much of the discussion has been on agility forums, so harder to access.
mungobrick says
Interesting –
JJ says
With all the advances in laser surgery for human eyes, I wonder if any of that could be used to help dogs with eye problems.
hornblower says
This is definitely something that deserves some research.
Hwvr, in the comments here we’re getting lots of n=1 self-reporting which is probably skewing the perception (haha!) of how prevalent this is. So just to even things out: one of my dogs is blind in one eye & he is my non-reactive dog.
Very much looking forward to the BAT etc posts for my reactive girl 🙂
em says
Fascinating possibility! I have to chime in on the other side, though. Otis was LEAST reactive when his vision was worst. Recovering from entropion surgery, his eyelids were very badly swollen and often schmeared with antibiotic ointment. I know he couldn’t see well, but he didn’t react to ANYTHING. He hit his reactive phase abruptly, at about two years of age, not during a growth phase. For great danes, two is still considered adolescence-he was done growing, but still putting on muscle mass. As far as I can tell, he could see as well then as he can now, though I am not sure that he sees particularly well. His nose and ears are so good, it’s hard to tell. He’s NOT easily fooled by fake animals, if that’s any indication, but on the other hand, he seems to have a great deal of difficulty differentiating between similar-looking dogs at a distance. On yet another hand, that does seem to indicate that he can identify a yellow labradoodle at a hundred and fifty yards, even if he can’t tell that it’s not his best dog buddy until much, much closer (maybe five yards). This makes for some interesting moments at the dog park…hapless labradoodles and their owners quailing in alarm as dogzilla comes thundering gleefully down the field…He does pull up at the last minute, settling for a dissappointed sniff and mill-around instead of the flying chest bump he expects from his best buddy. 🙂
It would be so interesting to hear more about the link between shyness and sight!
Nancy S. says
As a person who suffered from Juvenile Onset Myopia I found this thread VERY interesting(I got my first distance glasses in 4th grade and have been wearing them ever since.. now in my 50’s).
For years I have noticed a lot of puppies reach a certain age and seem to become reactive to things in the distance. I always attributed this to the dog suddenly NOTICING things in the distance.. but after reading this I think the Myopia is a dead on possibility.
My GSD is 15 weeks old and has started to be reactive to things.. sometimes fearful of things.. that are from 15 feet on out. She acts for all the world like she cannot really SEE those things and reminds me of ME when I had to get glasses. The only thing she does not do is rub her eyes and squint!
She SEES other dogs but is reactive until the wind turns and she realizes it is a dog she knows.. so smell still counts a LOT. If the thing she is concerend with is something she has seen before and she is down wind, she is less likely to be reactive. If she is upwind, her reactivity is greater.
I am not looking to get a PhD since I only have a BA (and I am old and I am working and have no time), but I have been thinking of ways to test for Myopia in puppies on gross observation. We cannot ask dogs to read an eye chart, so lets see if we can come up with a substitute that isolates sight and isolates sight at a distance.
If we could figure out a way to see where a dog ceases to recognize an object so as to determine at what distance sight is deteriorating it might be of value.
If someone else wants to do the complete study and include measuring the structure of the dogs’ eyes to back up what the test would show, that would be great.
Previously people have told me puppies go through a second “fear Period” at about 14-15 weeks. I suspect this is the onset of myopia. Now if it turns out to be Myopia it would be worth while to figure out how the dog compensates for it (by senese of smell??? Hearing?? both? One can make conjectures) or if, at a later date, the shape of the eye changes so that vision clears and returns to sharpness????
And the next question.. if the puppy has myopia how do we correct their vision if we can??? laser surgery? Contacts???
Ideas?
Stacy Braslau-Schneck says
I wanted to add my $.02 in case someone is planning to do further research on this… my dog Flip will turn 12 this month and in the past year he’s had a return of a fear of drains and grates which I had “cured” him of when I first adopted him at 8 months. Not only is he afraid of storm drains and those big metal plates in the sidewalk that move and make a noise when you walk over them, he’s now afraid of every manhole, utility access, and historical sidewalk marker we come across. At the same time, he’s developed noticeable cataracts. I’ve been wondering if they’re related. (It is severe enough of a problem that I think I will not be able to take him to ClickerExpo in January after all – I’m afraid he will be too nervous about every new floor he’d be ask to walk on.)
Would love to see someone pursue this further!
Marianne says
I know this is a very old entry, but….
Shortly after reading it when it was first posted, I adopted a puppy. Right from the start he seemed to have trouble recognising people. If hubby covered his face, my puppy would treat him as if he was a very scary stranger, while my other dog would know it was still hubby under there.
He also reacts strangely to new objects, as if he thinks they might be something scary and has to stop and stare at them for while.
I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but my puppy is now 9 months old, and has been reactive since he was 6 months old. Last night I suddenly remembered this blog entry and went back and found it. And I am convinced that myopia is part of the problem in my puppy.
So thanks for posting it, and also about different ways to modify the behaviour. He has gotten a lot better, but there is still a lot of work to be done.