barking at the sky

[NANCY RICHARDS]

For a reason I have no notion of, my 2-and-a-half-year-old Cairn terrier's focus has gone skyward for the past week or so. He barks and growls at the sun, the clouds, contrails and who knows what else.  He gets quite worked up over whatever he is seeing.  He has always barked at birds, deer and the neighbor's cows and dogs, but this is something else. In the house, he barks at my skylights and the can lights in the ceiling.  I have blocked his view from the bottom of my windows so now he watches through the tops and barks. Maybe he's seen a UFO?  

I am concerned about how upset he gets. If I can catch him, he runs inside from the front to the back of the house barking, I stop him and calm him down but often he is revved up before I can.  I am unable to be outside with him off the patio because I use a walker and can't go in the yard.  I am still struggling with recall with him.  I had it when he was young, great recall, but I had to board him when I had a hip replacement and he came back to me without any recall at all.  So, calming him outside is impossible.

We had a Rotty that did this, but he had a good reason.  The neighbors inflated their hot air balloon in the empty lot next door and sailed it off into the sunset.  It took him about two or so weeks to get over that experience.

Has anyone experienced their dog doing this and what helped? 

[Adrienne Farricelli]

This can certainly appear like an odd behavior, but dogs have their own good reasons for barking at things. Sometimes it's not easy to pinpoint exactly what the initial trigger was, especially if we're not always outside with them. Perhaps your dog one day witnessed a bolt of lightning that hit the ground, or perhaps an airplane flew very low, hurting his sensitive ears. Perhaps something fell onto him from a tree. It could also be your dog felt pain one day and associated it with the sky. Sometimes, dogs may find out that whatever they are doing grabs out attention, and therefore they keep doing it because they like the attention. 

And we must consider medical issues as well. Some out-of-the-blue behaviors of looking upwards may be related at times to seizures or pain. A trip to the veterinarian is important to rule out medical causes when there are sudden onset behavior changes.

Since you haven't established a strong recall with him yet, there are some alternate behaviors you can engage him in so as to take his mind off the sky. One would be scattering kibble on the ground before he is sent outside and telling  him to "find it!" so the first thing he thinks about when going out is to go on a fun treasure hunt. https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/members/brain-training/elementary/the-treasure-hunt/

Another is to make a smacking sound: https://www.braintraining4dogs.com/the-airplane-game/the-smacking-sound/

Another is using a dog flirt pole to get him focused on that or tossing some balls for him to chase. If this is difficult, there are some automatic ball launchers or even machines that emit bacon-flavored bubbles for dogs which dogs have a blast with chasing.

Upping your dog's brain games and training can also keep his mind focused on other activities so that he doesn't get bored and feel compelled to seek a hobby of his own, whether it's digging craters in the yard, barking at things or getting obsessed about the sky. 

[NANCY RICHARDS]

Thank you Adrienne,  Your answer gives me some things to try.  I have figured out that contrails and clouds are big attractions for him and he gets very ramped up.  He jumps to catch them and he can jump high. His head is over the top of my four-foot fence it's scary that he'll go over and be gone.  I will take him to the vet to check him medically.

 

Nancy

[Adrienne Farricelli]

You're very welcome! Keep us posted on how it goes!