Just sent this back to BowWowFlix: Dog Behavior, Medicine & Training: Storm & Other Phobias, Ian Dunbar
On the DVD, apparently the formula for a "noise phobic dog" is- Large, Black, Herding breed
That would be Enda, who was destroyed by two seperate events during her second major fear period. Not saying she would have turned out normal had I done SEVERAL things differently, as yes I also believe there is a major correlation with genetics. All I can say this far in Beaucerons, stay away from pedigrees with a bitch by the name of "Tennessee" in it.
But also mentioned in that DVD which was interesting, dogs who show noise phobia before the age of 1 year are the ones who usually have it for life and tend to get worse. This would explain why Jinjo is getting much better, he's always had an under the bed hiding thing with the vacuum cleaner since puppyhood, but he wasn't "noise phobic" till an bad instance with my brother and some bottle rockets when he was about 4-5 years old. In 2008 was when the terror started though, my father got a present the previous year of a Nail gun, we were building the chicken coop for our new lot of 26 chickens, and that was it for him. No idea what happened, but a few years later it was so bad when we torn apart the stair case to replace the warped landing, he actually some how managed to jump across the hole in the floor that went to the basement, and I found him shaking and drooling in the bathtub! Fast forward, yesterday afternoon a few neighbors decided to unload some left over fireworks, I had my two in the back yard and instantly Enda ran to hide in the garage, Jinj, sat by the fence keeping one angry eye on a certain naughty sheep, he was NORMAL!
So, I do believe and see a lot of what was said on the video, and I would suggest you rent it if you have BowWow if you have a dog with noise issues, I found it to be very interesting.