Hi all,
My partner and I got our first dog just over two months ago, and he's a four year old ex racer from Ireland. He's a lovely, friendly dog who initially had some separation anxiety but he's greatly improved in just two months following advice we read online - to the extent we're now able to leave the house for a few hours in the evening and he'll sleep through! All in all, he's a very relaxed boy who is easy and very loving - we both adore him and he seems to know it.
There's a few behaviours we're still working on (i.e a small amount of barking and lunging at other dogs, but generally only if they approach him whilst he's on lead - so we keep him muzzled) and we know socialisation over time will likely fix this, but yesterday we saw a behaviour that so concerning / upsetting that we're really not sure what to make of it.
We went for a walk with friends who have a lurcher (they get on great!) and they had a run around, and afterwards we took him into a pub. He's been in pubs before, but generally is quite restless and nervous so we never keep him there for long. Yesterday however, he completely broke down. He got under a table and made a shriek that I've never heard from a dog before. He was visibly shaking, clearly petrified, to the extent he even seemed terrified of me. He was frozen and paralysed with fear and making noises that had half the people in the place coming over worried. The look on his face wasn't his usual 'I'm a little nervous panting', it was pure terror coupled with a frozen, submissive posture.
We quickly removed him from the situation, walked him home (during which he continued to make aforementioned screaming noise every so often), and was entirely out of sorts for the rest of the day. It wasn't until our neighbour said it looked like an episode of PTSD that we even thought about it, but with hindsight, this was far beyond his usual nervous behaviour in new situations.
We were wondering if anyone could shed any light on this behaviour at all? Of course the the mind always jumps to the worst scenario, i.e he's been in an environment like a pub before and has been physically abused by drunk people, but perhaps its also just a new environment. We of course won't be taking him back to any pubs again because we never want to see him suffer like that - but it would be good to get some insight.
