Poor dogs are nervous wrecks tonight!

EmptyPockets

Surprisingly, our's have been really really good - not paying any attention at all to the fireworks. We thought we'd be having trouble with them barking and being scared, but they've been completely chilled out. Surprising when there's been some whacking bangers round here.

zaksmum

It must be brilliant to have your dog not be afraid of the fireworks...I wish mine were like that.

Funny enough, Lucy's quite bolshie in other ways and can certainly look after herself with other dogs if they're aggressive (or romantic!) with her.

It's just these fireworks reducing the poor thing to a jelly.

Mupette

It's been horrible, Friday night next door to OH decided in the pouring rain to leave their pup out, i was so angry with that, then they start their fireworks, my pup was not happy, but calmer than his first time hearing fireworks 2 years ago.

Then last night we were late getting back to OH's and pup was a little nervy, didn't think why till i went upstairs to find he had poo'd on the bedroom carpet, too scared to go out the cat/dog flap to do it, poor thing, not his fault.

glad it is over now till new year.

morg_monster

My vet friend told me that a lot of animal firework phobias can start because their owners expect them to be scared. There was a thread on here this week about how sensitive animals are and how much they can pick up from their owners, I guess its the same thing, if you expect them to be scared and make a big fuss, they can pick up on that and think that there is something to be frightened of. She said animals aren't necessarily "programmed" at birth to be scared of loud noises, so if they don't seem scared of them, just act normal, no need to fuss them or do anything out of the ordinary. Obviously there's a lot of ways animals can become scared of loud noises in general, not just fireworks :-( and so I know lots of dogs and cats are terrified of them. But it's sound advice if you have a new pet - don't necessarily expect them to be scared. obviously precautions like keeping animals inside are just good sense!

We were wondering how our 2 rescue cats would react, but although they noticed the bangs, they did not care at all about them. We had a professional show just up the road, and a couple of close neighbours had their own too. One cat spent the last 2 evenings asleep, the other sat on the front windowsill, craning to get a view of the pretty lights & flashes. When the neighbours directly across the road had lots of fireworks last night, in full view of the lounge window, so very loud, she really loved it! Kept miaowing when they stopped...

cubegame

Our westie isn't especially bothered by fireworks and normally on hearing them starts to whine to go outside to bark at them!

However, I do think it's time for some sort of ban on over the counter fireworks to prevent this problem.

Mupette

I never assumed pup would be scared and upset, when he first heard them i had told DS to not make a fuss, so we just sat on the sofa watching tv, as if nothing was happening, it was pup who has a habit of running to me if he is scared and he spent the night shaking in my arms.

Last year wasn't that bad alough i must admit advice and pills from the vet, made him very sleepy, and i hated drugging him,

so this year i opted for the dap infuser and collar, which seemed to work on the odd rogue fireworks before the big day, but wasn't happy friday as they were so loud being just next door (i am sure they set them off just by the adjoining fence)

adviceforall

We try and ignore ours and just provide him somewhere he can hide.. He spent most of last night hidden under a blanket draped over things to make like a little tent, there wasn't as much shaking last night he just kept himself tucked away out of sight with just his back legs poking out..every now and then he would poke his head out to make sure everyone was still there.

hethmar

There was some huge ones going off at a Rugby Club up the road but the dogs handled it very well this year. Ralph kept following me about if I got up to make tea or something but most of the time both of them were more interested in laying on the rug in front of the fire. Thank gawd.

What I can never understand is with all this "Elf and Safety" stuff, why on earth people are allowed to play with explosives?

zaksmum

hethmar wrote: »

There was some huge ones going off at a Rugby Club up the road but the dogs handled it very well this year. Ralph kept following me about if I got up to make tea or something but most of the time both of them were more interested in laying on the rug in front of the fire. Thank gawd.

What I can never understand is with all this "Elf and Safety" stuff, why on earth people are allowed to play with explosives?

I know...it's crazy when you think about it. Even little kids around here were setting off fireworks totally unsupervised. Two boys aged about ten started up a bonfire on a tiny patch of waste land near their homes and I saw their mother usher them out into the street with a medium sized box of fireworks and warnings to "be careful with those fireworks now..!" and the door firmly slammed as she went inside and left them to it. There's no way I'd have let my kids EVER light fireworks.

There are a few fireworks still going off tonight but Lucy's ok with the odd ones...it's just when she had to cope with nearly 8 hours of it on Friday she was in a dreadful state.

I've tried to ignore her or calm her by stroking her and talking to her but her terror was painful to watch, poor thing.

Hope that's the end of them for a while now!

hethmar

I try to ignore the dogs if they do show any fear as you can feed it by comforting them. I had all the doors closed, the telly up loud and the fire on. They were pretty good this year I must say. Diggs isnt worried anyway bless him, he was a stray in Manchester and OH says he probably thinks its just another drive by shooting