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Comment by DanielVZ | Hacker News Reader

Many pet owners have seen this behaviour, and what I find note worthy too is that that trauma can be easily detected when the animal doesn't react according to intention.

Anecdotically, I adopted a mistreated dog this year. He's a really good boy, and shows the exact same behaviour the paper states regarding accidental interactions in general. But if you are for example brooming and slightly touch him, he immediately hides and may even piss himself. It seems to me that he was beaten up with some kind of stick when he was just a puppy. Poor boy :(

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We adopted a border collie around 1.5 years old two years ago with this same behavior. He was completely paranoid and would piss everywhere if you touched him in certain places or came close too quickly. He really would turn into a shaking blob of jello around strangers, and would lose his shit around any of our Asian man friends or even around them in public, he’d void his bladder and back away barking and snarling.

Took a while for him to get comfortable and after giving him a lot of positive reinforcement and space he’s become the most extroverted love bug I’ve ever met. He regularly smashes up against me when I’m on the couch and at the most inconvenient times because he’s got the grace of an unsupported blob of ballistics gel, but what I love most about his growth over the last two years is that now he’ll even try to put his nose under unsuspecting pedestrian’s hands on walks! Even if they’re Asian men!

He only pees now when he knows he’s in trouble

What does it mean to be in trouble, for your dog?

Selling unsecured credit default swaps.

Oh, come on, they can't help it! It's best not to punish their natural behavior

I had a dog with similar traits-- fearful and would piss herself, scared of brooms and loud noises, scared of people walking directly towards her--and I know for certain she was never mistreated by a human. She was the runt of the litter, for whatever that's worth.

Anyhow, I don't always think these behaviors are the result of tragic circumstances, even if they often are.

Mmmm, my dad was a veterinarian and me being a dog trainer ( well, for 4 dogs of our own where I learned a lot from where I trained my dogs), so i got to a lot of my dad's clients to help out with their new/adopted dogs that behave frightened.

It's weird that your dog still has the same behavior after one year with "his own family".

I think playing with a dog has a lot of "accidental" touches that should make him accessible to those actions.

I also don't think it was a stick, since my own abused dog was afraid of sticks in particular. As long as we had one it was okay and he didn't care ( since we played with it). But if someone unfamiliar would try that, he would become aggressive ( happened one time many years after, when an older guy with a walking stick came over and wanted to silence/move the dog with his cane. Luckily I was nearby and heard the sound immediately )

Thats for all the info! Luckily he is getting a lot better. We avoid aproaching him with stick-like things in order to not startle him, so the last time I saw him piss himself was about 7 months ago. The only thing that hasn't improved is his fear of my parents. It's only with them, he even aproaches strangers now. But I guess he'll learn to trust them with time.

Depends on the dog but this is a relatively easy context to recreate so I'd recreate it (starting with low level stimulus and working your way up) in order to desensitize and counter condition the dog.

How has he been with you ? do you see improvement in his well being ?

take care

Yes absolutely. He's overcoming his trust issues with strangers and I'd say he's pretty happy with us. The before/after difference is huge and I'm so lucky to have him.

so nice to hear,

may y'all have the nicest times

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