To suggest that firework phobias in dogs are more manageable than you might think

[Veterinari]

Every Bonfire night/Christmas/New year there are threads on this.

Most dog owners will know the basics:
Behave normally, have the radio on
Ensure dog has a safe dark comfortable den to hide in
Offer reassurance - you cannot reinforce fear
Long walk during the day to tire out followed by a good feed - more likely to be content and less reactive
Distract with licki mats/frozen kong etc

But also:
Get your dog checked for chronic painful disease - arthritis and dental disease are common and noise phobias are strongly correlated with chronically painful conditions. Treating the pain has been shown to reduce noise phobias (and is good for welfare)
Start firework desensitisation therapy using apps played at low volume or the 'sounds scary' resource.

Use appropriate medication:
Speak to your vet - sileo and pexicon are the licensed medications and can be game changing
Also pain relief if there's an underlying painful condition.

For milder anxieties supplements like zylkene, yucalm etc may help - again speak to your vet or behaviourist.

Adaptil (pheromone) alone is unlikely to make any difference in a phobic dog. Genuine panic/phobia usually needs medication

Thunder shirts and other complementary approaches can be helpful for some dogs but the response varies

All our dogs always loved fireworks and would sit out in the garden watching. We always introduced ours to loud noises and fountain fireworks from a young age with treats. So they saw the bright lights and then loud sounds as a treat night.

It was always quite funny when people stopped us and shouted at us for walking our dogs on fireworks night when it really just meant extra treats and oooo shiny to them. Rabbits however where our issues lost all bloody recall if they saw a rabbit 😅

@40somethingJBJ you can do the sound desensitisation with your parrot too, start quiet and at a level he doesn't seem worried, over time (a long time!) Increase the sound. We did it for our dog as he is generally nervous wired to be sound reactive but a side effect is that our cat and our house rabbits are also not scared of fireworks. You need to keep it going sporadically through the year though so they don't forget.

Mine was fine with fireworks initially until he was out in the garden having a pee when one of those ridiculous loud bangs went off a couple of doors away. Not bonfire night and no warning beforehand. He freaked and ran straight into closed glass doors (fortunately no injury).

It isn't bad enough to need medication but he isn't happy and is currently lying on DH but breathing fast/anxious whilst they are going on all around us. Really hoping he doesn't want to pee until they have finished.

@BenWyatt

There is a really easy solution to this - humans could stop being so damn selfish.

And hell could freeze over.

Maybe if the pubs were open the sad sacks with nothing better to do than set off bangers would be indoors.

It's animal cruelty now. For an evening on November 5th is one thing.

@BiteyShark

Mine was fine with fireworks initially until he was out in the garden having a pee when one of those ridiculous loud bangs went off a couple of doors away. Not bonfire night and no warning beforehand. He freaked and ran straight into closed glass doors (fortunately no injury).

It isn't bad enough to need medication but he isn't happy and is currently lying on DH but breathing fast/anxious whilst they are going on all around us. Really hoping he doesn't want to pee until they have finished.

Fucking scumbags. Did you have it out with them?

My dog is at absolute peak stress tonight after a week of it. (She has noise issues anyway, for other reasons). We are at Sileo level, and I thought that wasn't working until I discovered DH was just giving her mini-doses as 'it's expensive' 😡. I made him give her the full dose last night and it worked a treat. Turns out that was the last of the tube. Now we can't get any more until monday at the earliest. He's getting angry at her stress FFS.

Oh, and DDs friend had a bird that was so stressed by the explosions last night it tried to fly through its cage bars and broke its neck. 😥

@PlatinumBrunette

My dog is at absolute peak stress tonight after a week of it. (She has noise issues anyway, for other reasons). We are at Sileo level, and I thought that wasn't working until I discovered DH was just giving her mini-doses as 'it's expensive' 😡. I made him give her the full dose last night and it worked a treat. Turns out that was the last of the tube. Now we can't get any more until monday at the earliest. He's getting angry at her stress FFS.

Heartless bastard. Sounds as bad as the horrible sods persisting in setting these things off. Dogs need our love and support at the moment in particular.

What about dogs for whom all that doesn’t work?

What a terribly smug post.

Some of us do all that and STILL have dogs that react and go through hell. And it’s not just odd days it’s weeks and weeks at a time. For hours.

What level of distress warrants medication? Our neighbours let off fireworks continually for over an hour tonight. That's a really long time in terms of fireworks. Our GSD x Retriever was panting and whining, hiding underneath the dining room table, then pacing, then returning to the table.

Would you recommend a vet consultation re. medication, or should I just continue the quiet reassurance, firm, slow strokes (they seem to help), etc?

From the chat on mnet you would think there were fireworks going off constantly all year.

I live in the south east. We hear them on a couple of nights round Diwali, usually on 5th november & the nearest Friday & Saturday night to it, and on NYE. That's it. I've never had a neighbour setting them off for birthdays etc, and having asked friends and siblings, they havent either.

Are fireworks really that common? I dont know anyone that struggles with their dogs being upset by it either, except one guy who refuses to keep his indoors on bonfire night - everyone where we live has double glazing and it really does muffle the sound a lot, if you turn the telly up a bit you can barely tell there are fireworks at all.

@Lougle

What level of distress warrants medication? Our neighbours let off fireworks continually for over an hour tonight. That's a really long time in terms of fireworks. Our GSD x Retriever was panting and whining, hiding underneath the dining room table, then pacing, then returning to the table.

Would you recommend a vet consultation re. medication, or should I just continue the quiet reassurance, firm, slow strokes (they seem to help), etc?

Take a pic of your traumatised dog, go round and ask them if they're proud of themselves. These people are sick.

We are at the point of just having a speaker where he sits as loud as possible. As a rescue we missed the early years to desensitise. We tried medication with little success. It’s painful to watch him shiver. It’s October to mid January where I am. I had to change his eating times as he is too scared to leave the house to toilet. The medication hasn’t worked but for a few years I didn’t even know it was available. So this thread is definitely helpful.

I also feel sorry for wildlife, farm animals, horses etc.
Easier to control a situation at home, but fireworks scare all number of creatures.

Agree, it’s not just dogs, it’s horses, and many different animals, many of whom cannot be trained or drugged, ever seen a terrified horse op?

We live rurally, every year there is an accident with animals , the sheep panic and run into barbed wire and get all cut up, we’ve had horses jump their fences in a panic and run into the road, dog ran away in a panic and got hit by a car, cats who died of heart attack, dog suffering and shaking

It’s not the sound, it’s the vibrations

Drugs mean that dogs show less shaking which is nice for the owner but does not actually benefit the dog, it just masks the symptoms (according to our vets)

I would not mind if it’s just the 5th, but here (SE, village between 2 cities) it’s every bloody day from 31-15 Nov, people do bonfire night parties any old day. Some do various! The school does one, the village committee do one the next day, the prep school does one a few days early, then all the private parties

It’s out of control and animals suffer for a stupidly, anti-environmental “tradition” that’s grown out of control

@chipsandpeas

ive tried everything possible, my dog has been drugged up and wearing a thundershit, had a sock round his ears and nothing works hes 14 in december and unlikely to change now

Don't lose hope. One of our dogs who had been terrified of fireworks, became increasingly deaf in her old age , and they didn't trouble her any more.

My greyhound was scared of loud fireworks and real gunshots ( fromshoots) but not in the least worried by the same sound effects on TV, but I found he responded pretty well to an adaptil collar. (worn from around 1st November as any benefit is cumulative).

I'm sorry for all those who have animals who are affected by this, really. Conversely, I have two cats who barely seem to notice the fireworks.

I think the issue is that a minority of people are pet owners, and then even within that only a minority of pets are affected (maybe 20 percent? These threads are self selecting so proportions will always seem higher).

So when only a small number of the population are affected I'm not sure it is reasonable to expect people to not use fireworks at certain times of the year, especially when it does act as a fundraiser for schools, charities etc.

Maybe there should be powers for local bylaws to be put in place in areas where there is a lot of livestock but the fact that there isn't suggests it isn't a huge issue. I've never heard about farmers complaining about fireworks, and as a collective it's not like they're exactly shy about complaining.

@Noconceptofnormal

I'm sorry for all those who have animals who are affected by this, really. Conversely, I have two cats who barely seem to notice the fireworks.

I think the issue is that a minority of people are pet owners, and then even within that only a minority of pets are affected (maybe 20 percent? These threads are self selecting so proportions will always seem higher).

So when only a small number of the population are affected I'm not sure it is reasonable to expect people to not use fireworks at certain times of the year, especially when it does act as a fundraiser for schools, charities etc.

Maybe there should be powers for local bylaws to be put in place in areas where there is a lot of livestock but the fact that there isn't suggests it isn't a huge issue. I've never heard about farmers complaining about fireworks, and as a collective it's not like they're exactly shy about complaining.

Not a huge issue? It's not just the animals is it though? There's people with PTSD, children and adults with disabilities, babies and toddlers who are unable to sleep though them. It's been going on for weeks here, huge bangs - not the normal ones.
How do you know that its a minority of pet owners who are affected? Have you conducted a poll of pet owners? My own dog isn't scared of them, he barks loudly at them and gets distressed because he thinks he can't protect his family. When he's outside on a walk they don't bother him.

I haven't conducted a poll of pet owners but I think if it was as big a problem as you say to the groups above there'd be big petitions calling for bans, signed by millions of people.

The sample of people I know are not representative but I know pet owners, I have a baby and small children so know parents of the same age and I have a sibling with ASD so know other adults with ASD and their families and no one mentions how difficult they're finding the fireworks.

Most people diagnosed with ptsd are no war veterens by the way. And even those with combat ptsd are no necessarily affected by fireworks. All but a tiny few of WW2 veterens have now died.

I have sympathy with those that do, I really do, but there would always be a reason to stop every fun thing people can do.

@Pikachubaby
Drugs mean that dogs show less shaking which is nice for the owner but does not actually benefit the dog, it just masks the symptoms (according to our vets)

This is completely inaccurate and your vets are misadvising you. It may have been true 20 years ago when sedatives were commonly prescribed, buts since it's been recognised that sedation simply stops a panicking animal from responding, and doesn't stop the feelings of fear, vets have moved away from prescribing sedatives.

The modern medication we prescribe acts in the central nervous system to reduce feelings of anxiety and fear - they're similar drugs to this used for anxiety and phobia in humans and generally don't cause sedation. Licensed and effective veterinary anti-anxiety medications have been around for years. Plus the connection between noise phobias and chronic pain is now well recognised.

There's simply no reason for dogs to experience severe anxiety and/or pain due to lack of prescribing in the modern day. Safe and effective medicines are available.

@Boulshired

We are at the point of just having a speaker where he sits as loud as possible. As a rescue we missed the early years to desensitise. We tried medication with little success. It’s painful to watch him shiver. It’s October to mid January where I am. I had to change his eating times as he is too scared to leave the house to toilet. The medication hasn’t worked but for a few years I didn’t even know it was available. So this thread is definitely helpful.

@Boulshired what meds have you tried? There are several options available

Alternatively, ban the sale of noisy fireworks - which can cause a lot of distress for chronically ill, old, and PTSD-suffering humans, as well as many animals - for use in private homes?

@Lougle

What level of distress warrants medication? Our neighbours let off fireworks continually for over an hour tonight. That's a really long time in terms of fireworks. Our GSD x Retriever was panting and whining, hiding underneath the dining room table, then pacing, then returning to the table.

Would you recommend a vet consultation re. medication, or should I just continue the quiet reassurance, firm, slow strokes (they seem to help), etc?

@Lougle Yes I would for a couple of reasons.

1. Noise phobias are often associated with underlying painful conditions so an arthritis/dental check is sensible
2. Noise phobias to to progress and can generalise to other noises over time so by addressing them early you reduce the risk of them worsening. The meds I mentioned in the OP are licensed in dogs for noise phobias. Other meds are available but often have to be used off-license e.g. some human anti-anxiety meds.

@Kcar

What about dogs for whom all that doesn’t work?

What a terribly smug post.

Some of us do all that and STILL have dogs that react and go through hell. And it’s not just odd days it’s weeks and weeks at a time. For hours.

@Kcar

You've tried counter-conditioning, environmental modification,
Chronic pain therapy (neuropathic and nociceptive?) , sileo and pexion with no effect at all?
Have you tried trazadone too?

In my experience a systematic approach that covers all of the points made in my OP is rare. The research confirming the link between chronic pain and noise phobias was only published about a year ago so you may think it's smug to mention that and the other info, but actually most dog owners don't have access to recent research.

If you've genuinely tried all of the things I've suggested and are aware of the recently published literature then I assume you've also already consulted a veterinary behaviourist, as it's much more likely your dog has a more complex issue and there are other medications available off license that can address the issue