Heartbroken -- I Thought I’d Ruined My Dog

A Cautionary Tale – don’t ever do this to a dog!

This past weekend Olive and I ran in an agility trial. This one was our first ever trial outside, in bright sunshine. Livvy won several events which is awesome but there was a much bigger victory for us imbedded in this trial. I share it here as a cautionary tale to all dog lovers.

When Olive was about six months old, we were at a family gathering and she was being her energetic, engaged self, wanting everyone to play with her, throw a toy, etc.. One of my loved ones had the idea of getting the laser light pointer to play with her. All my instincts said not to allow it, but in that particular relationship I’d often been the one saying “no” or being disapproving of some their actions so I went along. I could see right away that Olive was hyper-engaged and told them to stop. He asked if he could take her outside and I allowed it. About five minutes later I went out to check and was devastated. Olive was literally frothing at the mouth, chasing the damn light spot around the dark yard.

I immediately scooped her up and took her inside. She was an over-stimulated mess and kept looking left and right at nothing, trying to find something that wasn’t there. The tiniest movement of light jerked her head one way or the other. My heart sank as I realized this was serious.

I tried putting her in her crate, which she is usually very comfortable in, but she just kept pouncing and pouncing on any shaft of light. Finally, I took her into the bedroom and shut down all light sources. I held her next to me in total darkness on the bed feeling her tiny body tremble as her head jerked from side to side. That went on until about 4:30 in the morning when she finally fell into exhausted sleep. I felt sick to my stomach.   

The next morning, she was fixated on every shaft of light and moving shadow in the house. A few days later I took her out to the trail system where I often run her and Freya. It was afternoon and the sun was fairly low in the sky. At first, I kept Olive on a leash trying to get her to redirect off my shadow as we were walking. Finally, once we were out in wilderness, I let her off leash. With the sun behind her, she took off chasing her own shadow and would have run into eight lanes of traffic doing so. I could not call her back and she didn’t stop until she ran into sage-brush that blocked visibility of her shadow.

I was literally watching a loved one have a psychological breakdown. I was devastated. I didn’t know “Laser Light Syndrome” was a thing – I’d never heard of it before – but it is indeed a real danger. It can flip a dog into an intense version of OCD and as Livvy demonstrated, it can damage a dog within minutes and with a single exposure. Experts think the pathology is tied to the dog being intelligent enough to know there is something there but even when they catch it, it isn’t there.

The first two months after the incident, I was genuinely afraid that I had damaged Olive for the rest of her life. On walks she’d fixate on my moving shadow, or hers, or that of any other dog. At agility practice, she’d focus on any light beam coming into the arena. I just kept encouraging her to look up, at me, at her toy, to do jumps and other obstacles, rather than notice the light beams and shadows and I would reward her with a toy or treat when she did.

Gradually, the shadow and light fixation lessened. When she was about a year old, I took her to a three-day agility camp, which was on outdoor fields. There were several things that happened the morning of the first day that stressed her out and in the agility field she once again started fixating on moving shadows. I was heartbroken yet again, wondering if she would ever be able to live a normal, happy life, let alone do agility competitions.  

One of the trainers at the camp showed me techniques for getting her eyes up off the shadows onto me using high value treats and then putting her into a shady area with no moving light right after a practice session. Since then, I’ve continued to help her redirect and sometimes just remove her from situations that trigger the fixation. I also exercise her a lot, including outdoor off-leash running and agility practices.

The trial this past weekend was a huge milestone. She fixated on moving shadows a few times when we were in the waiting area under canopies near the ring entrances but quickly redirected and had no interest in shadows while we were on the course.

She did start having, for reasons I could make out, some trepidation on the teeter-totter, which you can see in this video, but she made up for it in the rest of the course and won this event. Now, we’ll go back-to-basics on teeter work. 

The main point of my sharing this it to caution people about laser-light-syndrome and urge people to never, ever, do that to a dog. In fact, now that I am more aware, I would never do it to a cat either. It is a very dangerous practice. The second point of this post is to let folks know that with solid, consistent, positive redirection and commitment you can help a laser-light damaged dog recover.  

Here's a video of Olive winning the Time to Beat event. And here is her haul from the whole trial. She is such a good little lady!

#laserlightsyndrome #dogagility #dogsrock