Living in Los Angeles, even dogs end up in therapy.
A Southern California doggy daycare facility is prepping canines for Independence Day by blasting the sounds of fireworks all day long in a therapeutic “desensitization” method that will keep them calm when the real explosions begin on the Fourth of July.
A caption on an Instagram video posted by Dingo Doggies Campus, located on Obama Boulevard in LA, reads:
“Fourth of July is right around the corner! So we have started fireworks conditioning for our pups! We play the fireworks sound track all day everyday and we have it playing in the kennel rooms for our boarders on July 4th evening to blend in with the real fireworks.”
The dogs at the elaborate facility walk on treadmills, snooze and make their way through obstacle courses as a recording of fireworks plays in the background as part of their behavioral reprograming – their calm demeanor also reinforced by pets and praise from a worker, saying, “Good job, you guys.”
Dingo Doggies Campus bills itself as a “school for dogs,” offering training focused on better listening, impulse control, and respectful socialization.
Renée Bogaarts, the owner and lead trainer at the daycare, admits she’s “obsessed” with dogs. She founded the school in 2014 after realizing “that dogs today, especially in big cities, aren’t getting their biological needs fulfilled, which comes to the surface via unwanted behaviors.” she said in an interview with VoyageLA.
Fourth of July fireworks can cause many dogs deep anxiety, resulting in shakes, whimpering and whining, and causing some to cower in a corner.
Fireworks noise can also be downright hazardous.
According to the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine:
Fear of loud noises is very common in pets. Fourth of July fireworks pose an exceptionally fearful stimulus for most dogs. Every year, dogs become so fearful that they may escape their yard or house and run the risk of becoming lost or hit by a car. Dogs do not develop these fears overnight, however, and there are techniques that can be used in the months before the stimuli to reduce this fear.
The technique that we recommend is called “Counter conditioning and Desensitization.” Basically, your dog is currently conditioned to display excessive fearful response to a given stimulus. Our plan is to undo this learned behavior and replace it with a more relaxed behavior. This is called Counter-conditioning. We also want to expose the animal to the stimulus in a gradual and controlled manner which does not elicit the fearful behavior. This is called Desensitization.
That is exactly what the daycare center appears to be doing in its video.
“We specialize in nervous, anxious, socially shy dogs and puppies,” owner Bogaarts told VoyageLA. “But really every dog benefits from our program.”
Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel owns a pug named Sadie Puggers that spends most of its time sleeping on his lap. He is also the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
