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In recent years animal behaviorists have theorized that thunderphobia arises from a hearing impairment, a trauma, or a biochemical imbalance. Nicholas Dodman, the head of the behavior clinic at the Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, speculates in The Dog Who Loved Too Much (1996), his collection of case studies, that dogs who fear thunder somehow become charged with static electricity. He prescribes the anti-anxiety medication BuSpar (buspirone), desensitization to the sound of thunder, and "measures to prevent static electrical charge buildup." But no one is certain of the cause of the problem, and no one has a foolproof treatment.

Dodman and Borchelt belong to a small but growing band of animal-behavior therapists, who in just two decades have achieved notable results in treating phobias, anxiety, aggression, panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders, and other conditions leading to the destruction of property, self-inflicted injury, disrupted lives, or attacks on other animals and people. Moreover, in focusing on the dog as a sentient being who exists with its own behaviors, predilections, and perceptions in a human society, they have contributed to a dramatic shift in the way people train and relate to their animals.

Notwithstanding those accomplishments, the young science, which covers both domestic and wild animals, is troubled. The field is divided between veterinary behaviorists, like Dodman, and applied animal behaviorists, usually ethologists or, like Borchelt, pyschologists. While their goals are essentially the same, the two groups frequently disagree about terminology, diagnoses, and treatments, which remain experimental. More troublesome, demand for behavioral therapy, fueled in part by media reports and Dodman's book, has outstripped the availability of certified practitioners, who number fewer than forty nationwide.

For years veterinary schools ignored behaviorism, and even today fewer than a third of the nation's twenty-seven veterinary schools have behavioral clinics, meaning that most veterinarians continue to have little or no training in thefield. Absent mandatory licensing, unqualified practitioners -- generally dog trainers -- are advertising expertise in behavior modification to meet the demand. Too often, for fees that can reach $75 an hour, they offer inappropriate, even wrong advice to pet owners who believe that they have consulted a certified professional. Most advice columns, books on raising and training dogs, and postings on the Internet also offer erroneous advice. "The field is growing but not with sufficient competence and training to back it up," says Karen Overall, the director of the behavior clinic at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, where a dog owner might have to wait up to five months for an appointment.

ESSENTIALLY, "training" is the process of getting a dog to perform tasks on cue; "behavior" is the way the dog acts. "Most of us want basic training and good citizenship for dogs, and most dogs can figure out the rules and contingencies to live with people," Peter Borchelt says. "Those who can't read the cues, or for whom the rules are confused, or who have their own rules or have anxiety, are the problem dogs."

Many dogs engage in normal but undesirable behavior -- jumping, barking excessively, soiling the house, making sexual displays toward people, or hyperactivity, for example. These "management problems," as they are known, can be addressed through training, which is why some trainers boast of expertise as "behaviorists." But if ignored or handled with abuse, these problems can turn serious.

By a rough estimate, severe problems arising from aggression, phobias, anxiety, and other conditions afflict up to 20 percent of the 52 to 57 million dogs in American households. "The dogs I see are abnormal," says Overall, an ethologist and a veterinarian. "And many things that people try in order to rectify the problem make it worse, or even actively encourage it."

I once heard of a woman who bought as a pet a six-month-old Alaskan husky considered an unlikely prospect for racing. After observing the dog tremble when doors blew shut in the wind, she decided it was noisephobic and tied it to a doorjamb for four hours while she opened and slammed the door. Released, the dog went wild and nearly destroyed the woman's house. When the appalled breeder arrived to rescue the dog, she asked where the woman had gotten such an idea. "From a book that tells you how to desensitize your dog," the woman replied. The husky became an excellent sled dog, but it is shy of strangers.

The costs to human beings and dogs of untreated behavioral problems are immeasurable. Countless owners become virtual prisoners of their pets, afraid to leave them alone or to touch them. Property damage and veterinary and medical bills can run into tens of thousands of dollars. Many dogs are abused, neglected, or killed outright. Each year four million are abandoned to animal shelters, a large proportion for misbehavior ranging from rambunctiousness to biting. Of those, 2.4 million are euthanized. Dog bites -- the true measure of aggression -- average more than four million a year, with about twelve resulting in the victim's death and about 750,000 requiring medical attention. Four out of five attacks are against neighbors or members of the owner's family.

Responding to the assaults and lurid news reports, a number of local governments have since the late 1980s banned pit bulls and other breeds deemed vicious. Owners of killer dogs have occasionally been imprisoned for manslaughter, and civil judgments for serious attacks have reached $2 million. A few judges have sent dogs to behaviorists for evaluation before sentencing. Calling bites an "unrecognized epidemic," Randall Lockwood, an animal behaviorist with the Humane Society of the United States, says they are largely avoidable through education, better breeding and socialization of dogs, and laws that hold owners responsible. Like most behaviorists, Lockwood argues that breed-specific ordinances fail to control dangerous dogs; the legislation, like the purchase of protection dogs, is based on the illusion that all members of a breed behave in a uniform, genetically programmed way.

In fact behavior is not uniform within breeds, and any dog can bite. Moreover, aggression -- technically, behavior related to hunting, defense, and dominance and subordination -- is not synonymous with viciousness. Aggression that expresses itself as boldness and assertiveness in seeking and capturing objects (popularly called "prey drive") is desirable in working dogs, although not in family pets.

Nonetheless, USA Today reported in 1995 that 38 percent of Americans had dogs because of their fear of crime. Many of those animals came from traditional "guarding" or "protection" breeds -- akita, chow chow, Doberman pinscher, German shepherd, mastiff, Malinois, and Rottweiler. Properly bred, socialized, and trained, these dogs can be model citizens. But as a result of inbreeding and overbreeding to meet rising demand, many are showing up with extreme forms of aggression and fearfulness, which some owners encourage with abusive training and rough play. Not surprisingly, purebred dogs and intact males are disproportionately represented among those with aggression problems, which usually emerge between eighteen months and three years of age -- adolescence to young adulthood.

Poor breeding practices have also produced lines of show dogs with extreme dominance aggression, primarily English springer spaniels, cocker spaniels, bull terriers, and golden retrievers. Dogs with this condition, called rage syndrome and associated with epilepsy by some researchers, albeit without hard evidence, attack their owners without apparent provocation or warning.

Aggression, whether it is expressed through territorial defense, possessiveness around food or toys, fighting with other dogs, predation, or attempts to dominate members of the human family, is the problem behaviorists are most frequently asked to treat. Many dogs are aggressive out of fear. Anxiety and phobias are the next most common. Sometimes the conditions are knotted together. "Dominance aggression, fear, and anxiety are related," Karen Overall says, "but the behaviors are different, and we want to modify behavior." She urges owners to seek assistance at the first sign of unusual or threatening behavior.

TYPICALLY, a behaviorist begins with a case history, including details of the dog's genealogy, upbringing, behavior, and training; videotapes and personal observation when necessary; and a physical examination to look for medical conditions associated with a number of problems -- thyroid dysfunction with aggression in young dogs, for example. After addressing any physical causes, the therapist designs a program to modify the problem behavior and to teach owners and their dogs the cues and rules that will make living together more bearable. The program may include counterconditioning and desensitization to stimuli that frighten or arouse the dog. Occasionally trainers are recommended, but the goal is to teach the owner to teach the dog through consistency and rewards. Some dogs are put on low-protein diets to reduce their energy levels; others are neutered.

Compliance with the program is not automatic. People are slow to alter their habits and harder to train than dogs. Indeed, some family members actively resist the program. Overall recalls an older couple who sought treatment for their German shepherd, a fear biter who guarded their store. During the consultation the woman became frightened that the dog would lose its aggressiveness and cease to protect her, and she refused to proceed.

To break through the established responses of dogs with severe problems, many behaviorists employ medication, especially from among the drugs developed during the past decade for treating depression and anxiety in human beings. Prozac helpswith aggression arising from serotonin imbalances, for example, and Xanax, according to Overall, "shatters anxiety." (By law only veterinarians can prescribe medication, so applied animal behaviorists work with them in such cases.) But these drugs are expensive, and the few scientific studies that have been conducted suggest that they are effective only about half the time, perhaps because the drug therapies are experimental and many practicing veterinarians do not know what dosages to prescribe.

Behaviorists estimate that they help the dogs' owners in 50 to 60 percent of cases of extreme phobia or severe separation anxiety, and in 75 to 90 percent of cases of aggression. People grant their dogs a lot of leeway, Borchelt says, and success doesn't necessarily mean anything more than a perceived change for the better. Sometimes the dog and its owners need a divorce, and in cases of extreme aggression euthanasia may be the only option. Some behaviorists refuse to treat a dog they consider to be a threat to life. "I don't think we cure anything," Overall says. "We control behavior."

THE best dog handlers have the ability to "get inside a dog's mind" -- to determine by its posture and vocalizations how it feels, whether it is fearful or bold, how its owners treat it. They never ask an animal to do something it cannot do, and as result they often coax outstanding performances from even the most retiring and timid dogs. In a sense, animal behaviorists are moving to expand and systematize that intuitive understanding, but much about the species' behavior is unknown. The last comprehensive study was concluded more than thirty years ago, when John Paul Scott and John L. Fuller published their seminal work Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog (1965), establishing critical socialization periods for puppies and laying out parameters of canine behavior. Since then researchers have made progress in particular areas without deciphering the complex relationship between nature and nurture.

What is now clear is that genes lay down the basic blueprint for each dog, including a predisposition toward certain complex behaviors, such as retrieving and herding, and temperaments, such as fearfulness and sociability. But environmental factors as disparate as the health and diet of the mother during pregnancy, conditions at birth, the mother's temperament, diet after weaning, trauma and illness the dog might suffer, and the attention it receives from its human breeder have a tremendous and lasting effect on a dog's development. The human beings who adopt a puppy also have a dramatic impact, because dogs do not mature fully until they are two to three years old. That is why "puppy tests" designed to predict a dog's personality and abilities are largely useless. It is also why differences in behavior and temperament between littermates are usually more striking than differences between breeds.

Early and consistent socialization to human beings and to other dogs is crucial to a puppy's mental and emotional growth. Puppies not socialized to people between their sixth and twelfth weeks -- the majority from pet stores and commercial breeders -- often become fearful, aggressive, phobic, or anxious, as do many of those who suffer serious early illness or trauma. Dogs left alone for long periods, and those with constant human companionship, are prone to separation anxiety, as are those rescued from shelters.

Fear, aggression, panic and obsessive-compulsive disorders, phobias, and anxiety also have genetic components, especially among purebred dogs. "There are a lot of lines with naturally occurring strangeness," Borchelt says. When a dog is used to produce multiple litters, various of its attributes enter the gene pool repeatedly. Inbreeding fixes those traits, including physical and behavioral problems, and overbreeding guarantees their wide distribution. The only way to avoid buying a dog produced through these practices, common in the show world, is to check its genealogy, observe its parents, and steer clear of commercial breeders and pet st ores. Ethical breeders do not mate dogs who have problems.

WITH purebred dogs routinely costing $500 to $1,000 (more for "trained" animals), people are reluctant to give up on a pet, and since sloppy breeding practices seem certain to continue, many owners are likely to need assistance. But finding it is not always easy. The American College of Veterinary Behavior certifies veterinary behaviorists, and the Animal Behavior Society certifies ethologists and psychologists specializing in dogs and cats, who must have masters' or doctoral degrees. The Association of Pet Behaviour Counsellors, based in Great Britain, also has several members in the United States. These organizations are the only ones currently setting standards of education, research, and clinical experience for practitioners. Nationally, only fourteen veterinarians, in eight clinics associated with veterinary schools or in private practice, are board-certified for behavioral work, along with approximately twenty-five applied animal behaviorists. Trainers are not required to be certified, and no regulation prevents any of them from calling themselves behaviorists.

Ideally, breeders would produce the healthiest dogs they can, veterinarians would work with qualified trainers (preferably certified by a national agency, much the way water-safety instructors now are by the Red Cross) to teach owners how to train and live with those dogs, and specialists would be called in to help with severe behavioral problems. But for now, absent sound advice from their veterinarians, people seeking assistance should call the veterinary school nearest them and ask for a referral. With persistence and some creative treatments, the thunder in the sky will stop reverberating through the dog.

Illustration by Barbara Banthien