PetAdvice: questions, stories, etc. about your pets.

We have two mixed breed rescues, Milo (8) and Kona (3). About a year ago, we acquired a laser-pointer after friends showed us how much their dogs enjoyed chasing the red dot around their house. For a month or two, we did this for perhaps 5 minutes at a time on no regular schedule.

Initially both dogs were interested in chasing it. But pretty quickly Milo lost interest. But Kona still seemed to enjoy chasing it. At some point she figured out that the red dot was associated with something I held in my hand that came from a kitchen drawer. From that point forward, whenever she heard me enter the room, she’d run over to that part of the kitchen and look from me to the drawer and back. It was incessant. And sometimes I played, sometimes not. But her play and associated bark slowly began to take on a different character and progressed from play towards aggression at the dot. So, a month or two after we started, we retired the laser pointer for good. That was perhaps 8 months ago.

Then a new thing happened. We had random instances where Kona took notice of sunlight glinting off of random objects as we moved around the kitchen doing normal things. It could be a pitcher of water, a watch crystal, or a phone screen. But she’d pursue and bark at the shiny speck. But as it wasn’t a long-lived event, her actions and bark never ramped back up to where it had been with red dot.

But now she’s hyper-fixated on shadows. Our kitchen has perhaps 8 canned lights. So, during the times of day when the kitchen lights are on, when Kona looks at the floor, she’ll see her own shadow cast from those 8 light locations. And since she’s moving her head and wagging her tail, the ear. and tail shadows are moving. She’s not actively pursuing the shadows, but we’ll find her fixated on them for 10-15 minutes at a time. Sometimes we’ll distract her with another toy. Other times we’ll turn off the lights. And still others it’s not apparent what she sees, because the humans are in a mostly dark room illuminated by only a computer screen that Kona is not observing, but she’s fixated on a dark area.

I’m wondering if anyone has any guidance on how to “untrain” this behavior.