So, I’m in the shower this morning, and someone crashes into the bathroom door. I assume Tom is rough-housing with the pups and just laugh. But, when I open the door, I find Lilly cowering outside.
As soon as the door is wide enough, she bolts in, scrambles over the scale and wedges herself between the wall and the toilet. (I posted a photo of this spot in the Places She’ll Hide entry a few weeks ago.) So, it was fear, not play, that sent her crashing into the door.
I turned out the light, let her calm down and got dressed as usual. I didn’t know why she was afraid, but I often don’t. Then, just as I turned off the hair dryer, I heard a noise we’ve known for a while really freaks Lilly out.
Here’s a 4-second audio clip of it — Scary MAC noise.
It’s a BLING kind of noise that Tom’s Mac makes whenever he opens or saves an excel file. We don’t know why, but this noise scares the heck out of Lilly. We realized the problem a few months back when she came flying down the stairs and into my arms while he worked on his computer upstairs. She literally shook in fear. It took a few instances before we made the connection between that noise and her reaction.
But, here’s the weird thing … Tom is working on a new project that requires all manner of metal banging, sanding, grinding and such. We’re talking seriously screeching noises. Noises I would compare to fingernails on a chalk board, and those don’t bother her a bit. Thunder storms, fire truck sirens, rumbling engines are not a problem. But this particular computer sound does her in.
I’m pretty sure it’s not an associative fear. In other words, I don’t think it’s combined in her memory with something else that’s scary. I think it’s just the noise itself.
I don’t claim to understand it.
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