Question
My 10-year-old mixed dog has developed quite the arcane fear, she fears power outages.
Whether it happens when it's dark (when all of the lights turn off at the same time), or during the day (in which case, the sound of the wireless phone losing signal from the dock station gives it away), she would start shaking, tail between her legs, come to us for protection.
Now my dog is a burly dog, she stood her ground against dogs several times her size, she can take on anything and doesn't seem to be afraid of anything (loud bangs, fireworks, even a recent war with alarms and rocket whistles and explosions), nothing except for this.
None of us (the family members) are behaving nervously during an outage, and it seemed to just happen to her one day.
What could the cause be, how can I even begin to diagnose it, I hate seeing her like this.
Answer
The fire alarm and battery UPS will sometimes beep when power is lost. Even if this had only happened once in your dog's past, the link between power outage and beeping is set in stone and can trigger anxiety. The beeping may not happen in subsequent outages, but some part of him is expecting it. My dog practically climbs on top of my head when he hears the UPS or fire alarm beeping due to low batteries.
Answered By - user3140253