At least once a month, the rock quarry near our house does blasting.
We hear the warning sound first, and then… BOOM.
The whole house shakes.
Ginger immediately starts looking for somewhere to hide. Wizard hears that exact same warning sound, but his reaction is completely different.
Same house. Same noise. Same moment.
Two very different dogs.
Anxiety doesn’t always look the way we expect
Watching Ginger and Wizard over the years has helped me learn to see anxiety differently with each of my dogs.
It would be easy to decide that because Ginger hides, hiding is what an anxious dog does. But another dog can experience stress very differently.
Some dogs become restless. Some get clingy. Others bark, pace, freeze, shut down, become more reactive, or suddenly seem unable to listen to something they normally understand.
That’s why the behavior itself is only part of what I want to notice.
I also want to know what happened before it.
Sometimes the bucket was already getting full
I often think about stress like an overwhelm bucket.
One thing gets added, then another, then another. Maybe your dog didn’t sleep well. The routine changed. There was construction outside. Someone unfamiliar came over. Then that final loud noise happens and suddenly your dog seems to have a much bigger reaction than you expected.
The noise may have been what you noticed, but it might not have been the only thing contributing to how your dog felt that day.
I explain this idea more fully in Dog Anxiety: Understanding Your Dog’s Overwhelm Bucket, including some of the less obvious things that can fill a dog’s bucket.
Watch your dog, not someone else’s
Ginger and Wizard are a good reminder that we can’t assume two dogs will respond the same way simply because they experienced the same thing.
And we can’t always compare our dog to the dog next door, the dog we had ten years ago, or the dog someone is talking about online.
The more useful question is: What does stress look like for my dog?
Once we start recognizing their individual patterns, it becomes much easier to notice when that bucket may be filling before we get to the BOOM.
Originally sent to Rescue Dogs 101 subscribers on August 13, 2026. Published online in September 2026.
