Monday, August 7, 2017

It Works!!! # Chewy Influencer

When Samba's puppies were four weeks old, they moved into a pen in the kitchen and I began their introduction to noise. I kept a TV on a lot of the time and I clanged pots and pans and ran the dish washer and the blender and anything else I could think of to accustom them to household noises.
Then at five weeks they started going into a pen in the garage when Rob worked at his projects using hammers and power tools. They learned to sleep thru all the racket and they never showed fear at loud noises, even thunder.

Then a few years ago that changed. Several of them started becoming anxious during thunder storms and especially at the sound of fireworks. Now Mackey is uneasy during thunder storms and Sebastian, Lola and Norma Jean show fear. Fireworks get all of them upset.

Norma Jean seems to be the worst. At the first sound of thunder, she climbs on my lap and starts clawing at me. I've tried taking her to the basement, keeping the room dark and playing loud music, but nothing distracts her.
When Chewy offered Nutramax Cosequin Calm chewable tablets for review this month, I decided to try them. I didn't really expect them to work, but what did we have to lose?
They arrived on Thursday and on Saturday morning I heard a distant rumble of thunder. I gave Norma Jean three of the cute little bone shaped tablets and she chewed them right up, so they must taste pretty good.
We didn't have long to wait to test them. The storms moved in quickly and lasted all day, with lots of thunder and torrential rains. And what happened with Norma Jean?

She sauntered over to her pillow and laid down for a nap. Neither Rob nor I could believe it. She was relaxed, not panting, pacing and drooling. She didn't try to climb on us or claw at us.

These things worked!!!!
Just as a final test, that night there was a big fireworks show to end the county fair. It's just a couple miles from here and we heard the booming for about an hour. The Calm was wearing off by then, but Norma Jean still didn't go crazy. She laid on her pillow looking around and panting a little. It was still a good reaction for her.

If your dog has a noise phobia you might want to try Nutramax Cosequin Calm. I don't guarantee the results because every dog is different, but these helped Norma Jean enormously and we'll be using them again next time a storm comes by. The key ingredients are L-theanine, magnolia and phellodrendron extracts.
Chewy sent us a box of Cosequin Calm at no expense to us in exchange for our honest review.

7 comments:

♥♥ The OP Pack ♥♥ said...

WOWZERS!!!! Wish we had known about those for poor Ciara. Mom wonders how many of her seizures those chews would have warded off. Thanks for the info - we definitely need to have a box on hand. Hmmmm, wonder how they would work for Lightning riding in the car.

Woos - Lightning and Misty

Bella Roxy & Macdui said...

Those sound great! We don't have any real fears of storms or fireworks....not that we have storms or fireworks often. But Roxy, especially, doesn't like loud noises.

Molly the Airedale said...

I was exposed to dad's workshop with all of the loud noises and I was with mom and dad every single day in the building of Crumpie's barn from day 1 when mom and dad brought me home from my breeder. I hate fireworks and thunder and I always have. We will be giving these a try! Great review, Miss Sue! Thank you!

Ruby Rose and the Big Little Angels 3 said...

Making loud noises around new born pups is a great idea

Marjie said...

Your picture of the box of puppies is terrific! I'll mention these chews to Cass and Jeff; Bebop really doesn't like noises, and having a blocky little guy like him racing toward you when noises happen is a great way to be bowled over.

SissySees said...

Hooray! We know how important the right calming solutions are. This morning - presumably due to Sissy's sickness - Gretchen had a mild breakdown over the spoon clanging on my cereal bowl. Even Remy is on edge... I may pass around some calming chews here, just to make ME feel better!

Lapdog Creations said...

Woo Hoo! That's awesome!!!