Everyday objects | 9 | Electrical racket

‘Get ready for the biggest wave of mosquitos coming right towards us over the next couple of days’. What a great headliner in the news last week, and not one to look forward to if you spend a lot of time in the woods like I do. The last couple of weeks were already one big mosquito fest since it was mostly very poor on wind and the temperatures were still high. So what do you do then? You open all the windows in the evening to cool off, but that also means that mosquito happy hour starts building up indoors. And that is where the electrical racket comes in.

But what comes in more is the amount of drama that comes in with it made by the dog. The electrical racket makes this high pitched sound and the dog of course hears that. And makes him go berserk. I’m not sure if it is because of the sounds of it, or because of the waving motions we make with it. Regardless, there is a lot of drama and panic in there because of it.

I remember this behavior also from my old dog in the Antilles. But with him it was way worse and that dog had a big trauma regarding electrical noises. I remember one day when I was in town and at some point a segway drove by with the zooming sound. The dog broke out of the leash, took off, and I found him back home uphill 2 miles down the road shivering scared. Not cool.

That dog clearly had a trauma from something and he also had a scar on his head from something from before I got him (I got him as a rescue). I always expected it had something to do with electricity considering how heavily he responded to electrical stuff. Also with the electrical racket. In summer times the mosquitoes were bad over there, I also slept under a net and every couple of weeks I would put the whole bedroom in the anti mosquito stuff for an hour to just kill everything that was there. It looked like a cemetery after that….

Fair enough…here the mosquito business was not that bad, but there surely were a lot hanging around here. When I went a lap through the house after having the doors open for an evening I would zapp around 20 of them. Not a bad score. With this dog we have been training him to calm down during the zapping action while giving him treats as a distraction while zapping. And then afterwards when he wasn’t barking or howling also another treat.

This worked way better than expected honestly and the dog is over his barking sessions while zapping. Sure…he is still edgy then, but I guess this is more now because he expects treats and not because he is scared anymore.

Maybe one day he will be happy when I pick up the electrical racket to zapp some mosquitos because he will associate it with good stuff! Maybe…..

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