(From page 155 of the book)

Someone may be curious about how the WeStopFear project, and the innovations introduced through the project came to be. How and why were they developed? And what might the future hold?

Here comes an overview of this journey from its very first and imperfect beginnings, and up until where the project stands at the time of the writing of this book. The text is written from the point of view of the author, who is also the inventor of the Simple Secure Steps method.

The story behind the innovations: A long journey

As the reader may realize already, I, the author, have spent some considerable time thinking about this issue. I believe this issue is perhaps one of the largest, unresolved problems that pets may face, but have not gotten the general attention it should. The problem is widespread and common, and the consequences can be very serious, even to the point of devastation for the animal, or even untimely death.

Can this be the next big step that dog owners and pet owners can take, to fix or keep at bay a serious and even fatal problem, which pets of all kinds may face?

These innovations came gradually and took a few years to take shape.

Dogs and horses in trouble during new year’s

It started simply enough. I was driving through my hometown, Reykjavik, Iceland, in the month of December of 2008. It was a very strange time in the nation’s history, as just three months earlier the entire banking system of Iceland had collapsed. The future was unclear. Maybe that was part of the reason that when I heard a news story on the radio that, instead of just brushing it off, I felt an urge that it would be very necessary to do something about what was discussed in the news.

The evening news on the radio came with a story about how frightened horses and dogs would become, during the New Year’s Eve.

Icelanders have the custom of lighting a huge number of fireworks. This of course is done both for fun, and to support the search and rescue teams of the country who earn money selling fireworks. As a result, fireworks are generally very expensive, since buying them is the primary way of raising money for the rescue teams.

But this isn’t just fun.

This was and is a real problem for the animals, who become very frightened because of the flashing lights in the sky, and loud sounds from exploding fireworks, and can harm themselves or run into the night and get lost during the fanfare. I was sorry and shocked to hear this.

“Wait a minute. Shooting up fireworks is something you do to have fun, right? But the animals are mad with fear?” They don’t know what is going on, and apparently, they take this as potential threat.

So Icelanders LOVE their fireworks in the new year, but often the animals don’t.

3 billion dollars’ worth of fireworks in 30 minutes?

As I have a business degree, I had fun comparing the amount Icelanders spend on fireworks. They spend around US$ 3 million on these and burn most of it over the course of half an hour, from 11:40 of December 31st, to 00:10 of January 1st. The population of Iceland is 1/1000 of the population of the United States, so according to that, if Americans were as crazy about fireworks, they would light up a US$ 3 Billion worth of fireworks in just 30 minutes. That’s quite something. If a single company was selling these fireworks, it would sit securely on the Fortune 500 list of the largest corporations in the United States. A Fortune 500 corporation, selling things that are burned up in just 30 minutes per year. Pretty crazy, huh?

What about police dogs and police horses?

I didn’t think much about this more, until a few weeks later when this was brought to my mind again. Again, in the news was some story about an upheaval in some foreign country, and there were policemen on horses.

Police dogs and police horses? In the middle of this? If it was possible to train them to tolerate riots, with shouting, firecrackers exploding, fires being lit, stones thrown, and who knows what, then surely it would be possible to train ordinary dogs, horses, and other types of pets to know and tolerate fireworks?

Couldn’t you simply play these sounds, and even try to show the visual side to them as well, the fireworks, on a TV screen or using a screen projector? To get them used to these stimuli.

Fantastic! A solution existed!

By searching for a few keywords on the Internet, I found out that a solution already existed, at least for the sounds. It was possible to buy simple audio CD discs or collections of MP3 sounds, and play these sounds for the animals according to a system. These therapy methods were called desensitization or habituation by professionals. It seemed a relatively simple process.

My interest was awakened. I started looking around, to see which products were available. It was clear that these products that were available, for implementing these methods, were mostly not very sophisticated. They consisted of audio CD discs, perhaps with some simple instructions printed on a small leaflet in the CD box. The companies offering these were not large, and for the most part did not utilize sophisticated marketing methods to promote and sell their products. I, having a business degree with emphasis on marketing, could see that clearly.

Why isnt’ it widespread?

At another, later date, I started thinking what the reason could be, that the use of these methods wasn’t more widespread? Problems stemming from sounds that animals don’t recognize can be very serious. Noise phobia can rob a dog or a cat, or perhaps other types of animals too, off their quality of living. Instead of living their relatively care-free life, then their emotions and thoughts are taken over by an utterly irrational and unnecessary fear. Or even a nasty, multi-faceted long-term phobia.

This could lead to a chain of events that resulted in damage, injury, pets getting lost and even pets getting killed. Pets were known to be mad from fear, trying to escape what they thought was a clear and imminent danger, but was sounds from some rather harmless sound source. It is also known that pets have become so badly affected by this fear, that the owners have had them euthanized.

This was and is actually a serious issue. The harm done can be considerable. Every year, pets live in agony, the situation causes unhappiness in the homes and a lower quality of the relationship between the pets and their owners. And every year pets get lost or killed. All of this is extremely sad, utterly unnecessary and irrational.

A process too demanding on the ordinary dog owner?

At one moment, I started really asking myself this question: Why isn’t it more common to do this kind of therapy, since the problem can be so serious?

I was thinking... thinking... thinking. Really concentrating on this pressing question.

Why aren’t dog owners commonly doing this, for instance to get their dogs used to these sounds beforehand, to prevent these problems from arising in the first place?

In a moment of epiphany, I realized that while the method of desensitization and habituation are basically very simple, then the methods available, meaning the steps of the process that the dog or pet owner must implement, simply were too cumbersome to work with. They called for some very long-term dedication, where uttermost precision must be maintained at all times.

There is a small number of people willing and able to do this. But the masses - the normal dog and cat owners - are simply preoccupied with all sorts of things on a daily basis. They have jobs to go to or school to attend. Then they need to do some shopping, fix breakfast and dinners, they want to watch some TV or read a book, do physical exercise, meet with friends, or have quality time with the human members of the family. Every day, there is more to do than can be fitted into their schedule. Every day they would like to spend more time on various things.

On top of this, they also happen to own a dog or a pet. That calls for some dedication daily as well. If you own a dog, you often need to walk the dog every day. This takes a certain amount of time. So there maybe isn’t too much time available in addition, to go through a process of playing sounds every day, for instance to prevent possible problems with fear of sounds, at some time in the future. Or perhaps, to treat a fear of sounds that is there already.

Seemingly small things can be a threshold

The small details that these conventional methods required may not seem like much. The need to set the volume exactly every time you play these sounds, perhaps on various audio devices, some of which don’t have any markings or scale by the volume button. The need to almost be on a stopwatch to stop the playing at exactly the right moment when you are using the music mix method. Or to listen attentively so that you will hear when the soundtrack is finished, to hit the stop button.

These requirements may seem small and simple. But in a world where people’s lives are already cluttered and filled with all sorts of tasks, some of which are postponed week after week since they don’t have time to do all they would like to do. These small drawbacks would raise a threshold, and this threshold, I knew from my little knowledge of psychology, and some more knowledge of marketing, would simply mean that a large portion of people simply wouldn’t do this.

The fact is, that these problems with unknown sounds are not always apparent. They may or may not arise at some unknown future date for your dog.  If they arise, will it be in this year or next year? And will it be serious? Will it lead to frantic fear, and even my dog getting lost and getting killed?

Nobody thinks that is going to happen to their sweet, well-behaved dog.

All this means that in the moment of the day, this problem often wasn’t pressing in that very day. So, people postponed, or never really considered doing this. Perhaps partly because as the available methods weren’t good enough, and no better methods were known, and thus being discussed. This problem and the methods to deal with them simply were not considered seriously.

Lower quality of life is the result

So the simple fact is, that while this may be a serious issue that isn’t addressed properly, then the technical solutions available to do this are simply too tedious for the general masses of pet owners, ordinary people living ordinary, hectic lives, to do this as a general standard.

These problems are not prevented well enough.

Quality of life is lower. Pets with these problems are “away“ from their owners, in their own little personal battles with a fear that is totally irrational and unnecessary. Pets develop anxiety problems.

They become more difficult to manage.

Pets get lost.

Pets get killed.

Sorrow is in many homes.

I realized that this was an issue where improvements could be made. What about these technological solutions that are available to implement these methods? Would it be possible to find a way to improve upon these?

A slightly better solution

One thing I saw quickly was that you could do a much better job of giving the instructions to the users who would conduct the therapy, by offering the instructions on a large members’ website, rather than just a small, printed leaflet in a CD box. There, you could use text, pictures, audio and video to enhance the experience, and hopefully increase the likelihood of a successful completion of the therapy.

So, I concluded that this could be a field that I could go into, and offer new products to dog owners and later on, even owners of other types of pets. I coined the slogan None Left Behind, meaning that I might focus on all types of species from Fauna, the animal kingdom as it is called, that humans have taken into their home, and can at times experience fear problems related to sounds.