Our poor dog.

Mia’s got a terrible fear of high-pitched noises which includes the very shrill sounds of our smoke alarm.  Imagine her fear when they came in to do the fire alarm testing, an annual event worthy of front row seats, popcorn and ear plugs. Usually the smoke detector sends her swiftly upstairs, but the frequent on-off of the test this time sent her into conniptions. The moment it started she ran into our shower stall but then migrated to the less crowded but no less interesting downstairs laundry/utility closet.

Why is she so afraid of the alarm?  Aren’t dog whistles high-pitched too?  They have a frequency higher than can be detected by the human ear, but not all dogs can hear them.  It seems large dogs don’t hear at the same high frequency as small dogs and cats, so at 70 pounds it puts Mia kind of the in the middle:  maybe she can hear them, maybe not.   What are they even for?  When I Wiki’d ‘dog whistles’, I discovered that they were designed to get the attention of the dog, but also to “inflict pain for the purpose of behavior modification.”

Hmmm.  Was there a nefarious individual in her past armed with a dog whistle but missing a conscience?  Maybe.  Or was she panicked in a fire situation where the alarm sent people running to and fro, her fear sending her into a closet where she put her paws over her eyes, whimpering and having to be rescued by a big strapping firefighter who risked his own life by putting his oxygen mask on her to save hers?  Perhaps.  Or does she just not like the ear piercing shriek of smoke detectors? Possibly. Or maybe she’s been traumatized by the frequency with which I burn toast, which sends me running around looking for the chair to climb on to reach the smoke detector but I can never find a safe chair so I usually just find a broom to smash at the noisy disk to beat it into submission just so it shuts up but which causes me to trip on the dog over and over again, which usually sends her running up stairs?

Probably.

Sorry Mia.