5 y/o spayed female Vizsla acting VERY strange, please read. [HELP]

They started more gradually with my dog. I adopted her when she was about 1.5 years old and the rescue and her foster family told me "no problems".

We (my ex and I) did not notice any issues either until about a month later. She crawled under the box spring during a thunderstorm and would not come out. But she didn't do it consistently at first--just randomly.

Then she started having small poop/pee accidents in her crate (which she had never seemed to like) and it took us a while to connect those with bad weather. Sometimes it was just a really humid day, but no rain.

Eventually it got to the point where I was renting an old Victorian house a few years later and realized, in shock, one day that she had been routinely peeing on the wood floor near the back door in rainstorms while I was at work. The dog walker I had then also started reporting lots more weird behavior, like panting, pawing, scratching at windows, etc.

With my dog, it is pretty clear that it's weather or noise related. As she has gotten older, it has gotten both worse and better. Like she handles flat-out rain MUCH better (the sound of the drops on the skylights used to terrify her, but now she will munch on a Nylabone and chill when that happens as long as there is no wind/thunder). But she will randomly develop new, weird phobias, like the whole 6pm-10pm thing, where she won't walk at night. Which SUCKS in summer weather.

I know her well enough to know how to respond to her--when to be gentle and when to make her suck it up. With the walk thing, I actually just drag her about 30 feet from the apartment door to a hole in the fence around our complex that leads to a strip mall. She shakes, puts her tail between her legs and stubbornly pulls back towards the house from my door all the way to the fence... but once she is at the fence, her tail starts wagging and it's all happy smiles for the rest of the walk. You'd think she would have realized by now (I have done this probably a hundred times at least) that the apartment door to the fence is just part of the same damn walk she likes... but who knows WTF goes through her head.

I do not mess with her in LOUD thunderstorms though or when the snow plows are out. Forget it.

I also think moving to a condo with a huge, four-lane highway and traffic circle literally directly behind my building has exacerbated her anxiety. But what can you do?

It is really difficult, but manageable if you love your dog. You sound like you care tremendously!

/r/dogs Thread Parent