[hollysmommy]

Okay So The Other Day I Posted Some Videos Of My 5 Month Old GSD Chasing A Laser. It Was the First Time Ive Played With Her With It And Only For About 5 Minutes. People Have Commented, Telling Me To Quit Playing With The Laser Even Though I Only Used It Once Because She Could Develop An OCD. I Honestly Thought "My Dog Wont get An OCD Blah Blah Blah" (i still haven't played with it with her only that one time)
WELLLLL Guess what? I Think She Does Have An OCD Now( I Feel Like Such A Bad Mom. She Literally Will Not Stop Running Around Looking Up At The Ceiling. I Though At First Maybe It Was A Shadow Or A Fly But Their Are No Shadows And No Flies. She Wont Stop. I Dont Know What To Do. Anyone Have Any Suggestions?

 

[Castlemaid]

Can you redirect her to a toy? A tuggy or a rope toy, have her chase THAT, let her catch it, play tug with her? Do it a LOT until your arms fall off! Your aim is to get her to bring you her tug toy for you to get her to chase it and play with it, so she forgets about the stupid laser, and will think that chasing REAL toys and playing with Mom is way more fun anyways.

I would also up her excercise a bazillion times so she is so tired when she comes in she just crashes. Up her training so that her brain is too tired to think about the laser. Get her out of the house and doing activities so her connection of having fun is OUT of the house, not in the house looking for the stupid light.

I'm sorry that you have to deal with this. So many people don't realize how bad laser lights can be. There have been people here that were in the same boat as you, but since they stopped the laser light play the instant their dog showed OCD behaviour, the OCD did go away.

 

[hollysmommy]

i will deffinately do that! ive played with my animals with lasers all the time when i lived back home and not on my own and none of them displayed this:/

 

[Puppy]

Take her out, play with her with some other toys. Let her have fun, and stop worrying about it. Lasers are dangerous for her eyes (the same with humans).

 

[Konotashi]

Are lasers bad? <Stupid alert.

 

[Lin]

Are lasers bad? <Stupid alert.

Some pets can become obsessed with them, because its an object they can never catch. Especially high prey drive dogs.

 

[PaddyD]

Okay So The Other Day I Posted Some Videos Of My 5 Month Old GSD Chasing A Laser. It Was the First Time Ive Played With Her With It And Only For About 5 Minutes. People Have Commented, Telling Me To Quit Playing With The Laser Even Though I Only Used It Once Because She Could Develop An OCD. I Honestly Thought "My Dog Wont get An OCD Blah Blah Blah" (i still haven't played with it with her only that one time)
WELLLLL Guess what? I Think She Does Have An OCD Now( I Feel Like Such A Bad Mom. She Literally Will Not Stop Running Around Looking Up At The Ceiling. I Though At First Maybe It Was A Shadow Or A Fly But Their Are No Shadows And No Flies. She Wont Stop. I Dont Know What To Do. Anyone Have Any Suggestions?

Methinks you have OCD too. Obsessive Capitalization Disease.

 

[Castlemaid]

I've heard and read horror stories of dogs being so obsessed by lights and shadows that they would not pay attention to anything else, and would endanger themselves trying to chase reflections - like a dog going through a window to chase the headlights of passing cars.

I read about an adopted Rottie that was obsessed with the new owner's dining room chandelier. The dog spent all his time literally trying to climb the walls to get to the chandelier. When crated, he would spend all his time trying to get out of the crate to get to the chandelier - wouldn't be surprised if that obsession stemmed from laser play - and that behavior may have been why he was at the shelter in the first place.

There are people that do let their dogs play with laser lights, with no ill effect - but why take that chance? It can do something to their brain - triggers the chase/catch hunting sequence. These behaviours are hard-wired survival instincts, so not easy to de-program once the programming goes awry.

 

[ShenzisMom]

I find it interesting that I've always heard warnings about the herding/working dogs and their prey drive, and not sighthounds. Thoughts?

 

[Caitydid255]

My Dad's rule with laser lights, which I follow, is always end the game by putting the light on the toy, therefore the animal thinks it caught the light when it picks up the toy. I don't know if it was his rule or we were lucky, but none of our animals have developed OCD.

 

[AgileGSD]

My Dad's rule with laser lights, which I follow, is always end the game by putting the light on the toy, therefore the animal thinks it caught the light when it picks up the toy. I don't know if it was his rule or we were lucky, but none of our animals have developed OCD.

IMO it really isn't the lack of catching the light that is an issue as much as it makes the dog start searching for flickers of light or dark, something they never really paid attention to before. You're lucky that your dogs are ok with this sort of thing but really, it's best to avoid laser light play all together.

 

[clearcreekranch]

I played with Wolf and my other dog with a laser more than one time before I knew about the ocd. It took about a month for them to figure out it went away permanently. Don't beat yourself up.