Why does my dog keep barking at noises?
If your dog keeps barking at noises, it’s worth asking what might be making those sounds harder to cope with. Pain can sometimes be part of the picture.
Dogs barking at noises is high on the list of things people find difficult to live with, whether it’s fireworks, car doors slamming, or people shouting outside. On some days, all it takes is a dainty mouse fart to set off a cacophony of barking (and if you’ve got multiple dogs, it’s even more melodious).
Noise sensitivity is often approached as a behaviour issue. A dog might be described as fearful or under-socialised. But there’s another possibility that’s easy to miss: pain.
Imagine a dog with a sore joint or muscle being startled by a sudden noise. They jump or tense up, and that movement hurts. They may then begin to associate the noise (or the situation in which it happened) with an unpleasant experience. If it happens again, they may become more watchful for the sound or wary of the place where it happened. That anticipation can make the next noise more startling, and the sudden movement may hurt again. Over time, their reaction may grow stronger or spread to other sounds and places.
While we can’t assume this is what happened in any individual case, it’s certainly a plausible explanation.
What does the research show?
A small study published in 2018 looked at the clinical records of 20 dogs referred for noise sensitivity. The researchers looked back through their histories and compared dogs with identified musculoskeletal pain with dogs believed to be pain-free. Note: the study didn’t establish why the dogs in the second group had become noise sensitive; fear of noises can have several contributing factors.
Two patterns stood out in the study:
• Noise sensitivity began at different ages. In the dogs with identified pain, sensitivity to noises tended to appear later in life. Across the two groups, the average age when it began differed by nearly four years. This suggests that a dog becoming noise sensitive after years of being comfortable with sounds is a good reason for a thorough health check and to consider pain in a vet’s assessment.
• Fear sometimes spread beyond the noise. In the pain group, the researchers found themes of avoiding associated places and, in some cases, other dogs. Those themes were not apparent in the comparison group.
So, why would pain make the fear spread, rather than staying focused on the sound itself? With a straightforward fear of noise, the sound is the clearest, most identifiable thing predicting a bad experience, so the fear is likely to stay closely tied to that sound. But when pain is involved, the dog is reacting to the physical sensation of pain, and pain is a much stronger, messier trigger for learning than sound alone. Everything present in that moment; the surroundings, the ground, other dogs nearby, can get bundled into the same association, not just the noise.
This fits with wider research on pain and behaviour. A review by Mills and colleagues describes cases in which painful conditions contributed to behaviour problems that initially appeared to have another explanation. It’s another reminder to consider health alongside behaviour, especially when a change seems out of character.
It’s also worth noting in the first study that nine of the ten dogs with identified pain improved after treatment, which reinforces why (yes, I’m going to say it again) checking for pain can be such an important part of helping a dog who has become frightened of noises.
Could ongoing pain make a dog more sensitive to noise?
Research in people offers another possible clue. In a study of people with fibromyalgia, those living with chronic pain were more sensitive to both pressure and sounds than people without the condition. We can’t assume the same process occurs in dogs, and this study doesn’t prove that pain causes noise sensitivity. But it raises the possibility that pain and sensitivity to sound may be connected through the way the nervous system processes sensations
What about the stress bucket?
Think of a dog’s ability to cope with daily life as a bucket. Each experience, whether good or bad adds a little water: a noisy lorry, an unexpected visitor, a poor night’s sleep. Given time to rest, some of that water drains away. But if several things happen close together, the bucket may fill faster than it empties. Then a small noise can be the final drop, and the dog reacts much more strongly than you’d expect.
A dog already carrying chronic pain is, in effect, starting each day with a partly full bucket, so a noise a comfortable dog would shrug off may be the one that tips a painful dog over the edge.
The takeaway
If a dog's noise sensitivity appeared later in life, has grown to include specific places, or seems bigger than the noise itself would explain, it's worth asking whether it could be pain-related. Of course, pain won’t be the cause for every dog, but for the ones it is, no amount of behaviour work will fully resolve the fear until the pain is addressed too. So, if any of this sounds familiar, it may be worth speaking to your vet.
And if you’d like a a clearer starting point for a conversation with your vet or perhaps you’ve noticed changes in how your dog moves or holds themselves, my Movement and Posture Assessment can help document those observations.
References
Lopes Fagundes AL, Hewison L, McPeake KJ, Zulch H, Mills DS. Noise sensitivities in dogs: an exploration of signs in dogs with and without musculoskeletal pain using qualitative content analysis. Frontiers in Veterinary Science. 2018;5:17.
Mills DS, Demontigny-Bédard I, Gruen M, et al. Pain and problem behavior in cats and dogs. Animals. 2020;10(2):318.
Geisser ME, Glass JM, Rajcevska LD, et al. A psychophysical study of auditory and pressure sensitivity in patients with fibromyalgia and healthy controls. The Journal of Pain. 2008;9(5):417–422.