I started typing this out initially, then realised I'd given a full psychologists report of my dog and half a melodrama describing the iron incidents. Oops.My dog recently started freaking out about the iron or ironing boards and I'm not sure why. She's a 14 and a half year old collie cross (with a jack russell....and possibly a whippet/lurcher....) so highly strung doesn't even cover it whenever she's having one of her anxious freak outs. It's not new for her to have weird "triggers" that set her off, but we may have potentially discovered a whole new one and I want some advice.First time it happened I was at my boyfriend's. He sets up his ironing board and starts ironing in the living room, and my dog suddenly jumps up behind me on the sofa shivering and begins curling right up into my back and cowering. She's only ever this keen to sit on/near you when she's scared, and obviously because she was shaking so hard something was up. I assumed she didn't like the ironing cord so I took her out of the room, but she didn't really settle. I ended up having a shower in my boyfriend's en suite letting her lie on the bathroom rug (she loves a good bathroom when she's scared) then settling her down on my boyfriend's bed once she'd stopped being totally loopy with fear. She was asleep and snoring in minutes which is normally a sign she's exhausted from being so wound up.I mentioned this to my mam who sometimes looks after her over the weekend. She said she needed to do ironing over the weekend and she'd keep an eye on her. Sure enough I pick her up on the Monday and she says that the second she brought the ironing board out to set it up doggo was shaking and running upstairs to get away. I initially thought it was the iron's cord that was freaking her out, as ropes/cords/wired used to be one of her "triggers" when she was younger, but she has been desensitised to them in recent years. I assumed because my boyfriend has a load of wires/cords in the same place coming off his TV and computer combined with being in a new place the iron cord might have tipped her over the edge. But my mam said she hadn't even touched the iron and Bon was already beside herself.The next time I'm at my boyfriend's with dog and he needs to iron again we try to see what she's like if he just gets the ironing board and doesn't touch the iron. Yup, as soon as she sees the board beginning to get set up the tail is tucked between her legs and she's off into my boyfriend's bedroom to hide. Well, at least now she feels she has a safe place to calm down and we've solved the mystery of what's scaring her. She's never been keen on lots of activity and moving furniture around, never to that extent, but there wasn't anything else it could be. As per usual once everything's packed away and she's taken for a little walk to trust him again she's her normal calm, well behaved self.Only my mam had the dog this weekend and has discovered a new layer to the mystery. My step-sisters wedding is in a fortnight so she's been chained to her sewing room recently to get everything done in time. She had the door closed and the dog was lying on the other side happily chewing her bone as she was using the sewing machine. Bonnie's very used to sewing machine noises and although she doesn't like being shut out of rooms my mums husband was walking around the house so she didn't mind. All of a sudden she apparently ran outside and began panting/shaking violently, then curled herself up very tightly and refused to come in. This is her usual response to the smoke alarm or some other scary high pitched noise (such as my phone which must now always be kept on silent) beeping at her. Obviously my mums husband has no idea what's happening (he grew up on a farm so he doesn't "get" pets) and goes to ask for my mams advice. He opens the door and apparently she was ironing some table runners, totally oblivious to what's happening with the dog.So now we've got to wonder what the hell it is about an iron that can provoke said response in my dog from the other side of a closed door. My mam suggested there could be a high pitched sound coming from the iron that we can't hear, which seems very far fetched. But it does seem like everytime she's freaked out it's very much been her "scary sound" response (hide in bathroom, curl up tightly, get as far away from sound as possible, let you tuck her into bed) so it's starting to make more sense. Perhaps the board was a red herring and she was just freaking out because she knew it meant the iron would come out? And before anyone asks I broke my own iron last year and haven't had s chance to replace it so I've not done any ironing at home since then.Tl;Dr anxious dog is scared of something about irons. Seems to be a high pitched noise, but where would that be coming from? Help? via /r/dogs http://ift.tt/2sDqYRF
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