# Washing machine fear



## trevthesparky (Sep 25, 2010)

Our 3 year old german shepherd has recently developed a worrying behaviour. When the washing machine starts he gets scared and when it starts a spin cycle he is absolutely terrified and will not remain in the kitchen or adjacent living room.
As a pup he used it as a kind of security blanket, he was mesmerised by the clothes going round inside of it. He used to sleep by it during the day and was never phased by the noises it makes.
The only reason we can come up with for the sudden fear is that maybe when he was alone in the house (which very rarely happens) a spin cycle kicked in and the vibrations rattled something off the worktop.
While we have had no problems training him we are at a loss to come up with a way to get round this problem. Any ideas?


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## haeveymolly (Mar 7, 2009)

trevthesparky said:


> Our 3 year old german shepherd has recently developed a worrying behaviour. When the washing machine starts he gets scared and when it starts a spin cycle he is absolutely terrified and will not remain in the kitchen or adjacent living room.
> As a pup he used it as a kind of security blanket, he was mesmerised by the clothes going round inside of it. He used to sleep by it during the day and was never phased by the noises it makes.
> The only reason we can come up with for the sudden fear is that maybe when he was alone in the house (which very rarely happens) a spin cycle kicked in and the vibrations rattled something off the worktop.
> While we have had no problems training him we are at a loss to come up with a way to get round this problem. Any ideas?


Personally i would do nothing, just ignore the fact the washing machine is making this noise and ignore that your dog is making a fuss/being scared by it.
Our youngest springer is timid so is or has been scared of just about everything and we have found the best way to deal with some things is to ignore that something is going on the more we tried to distract her, soothe her the more attention we was drawing to it. She was only a few of months old when the fireworks started around here and as none of mine were ever scared of them and can be walked with them going off around them, i figured molly would be upset by them so when i heard them going off i would take her outside walk aroound the garden with her and completely ignore the noises and i can walk her the same as the others off lead while they are going off. So we have done this with everything she has shown any fear of and she is no where near as bad as she was, ime sure she will always have a nervous streak but she is a happy dog with not so many hangups


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