Your dog and fireworks – 9 tips for fireworks training

I’m already reading all about it on social media: people who already hear fireworks in their neighborhood. I also heard quite a lot of bangs in our neighborhood already! Many dogs find fireworks (and other loud noises!) very scary, so today a blog about your dog and fireworks: 9 tips for fireworks training!

1 Make sure your home is safe and escape-proof

Some dogs flee when they’re scared, and that doesn’t always have to be to the people in the family. There are also dogs that run outside in their panic, so make sure doors are always closed, and check the yard too!

2 Pair fireworks with something tasty

Is your dog not afraid of fireworks, and would you like to keep it that way? You can start linking loud bangs to something really tasty by giving your dog a little snack every time after there’s been a bang. In the long run, the bang becomes an indicator of the coming treat, and so the bang becomes something positive. In addition, your dog learns to orientate towards you when he hears loud noises, and that is of course only a good thing!
If your dog is scared but still wants to take food, you can do this too.

3 Support your dog

It used to be said that you should ignore your dog when he is afraid, otherwise you confirm and worsen the fear. This is not true! Fear is a negative emotion, and you can’t make a negative emotion worse by countering it with something positive. So feel free to support your dog, and pet or feed him if he wants to at that moment.

4 Create a safe haven

Place a nice pillow in a quiet place in the house (for example, in a quiet corner of the living room, or in a bedroom if your dog is allowed there), and in the run-up to December, regularly put something delicious for your dog on the pillow in the run-up to December. This way your dog not only learns that he can lie there comfortably, but also that he can snack there!

5 Don’t force your dog

Don’t force your dog out of his safe haven while he’s there, and don’t force him outside during fireworks if he doesn’t want to.

6 Don’t leave your dog alone

If fireworks are set off right next to your house during your absence, your dog can link that unpleasant event to being alone, and then separation anxiety might be the result. So try to make sure that there’s always someone at home, especially between Christmas and New Years.

7 Provide entertainment

Brain training can be of great help to your dog during tense times, not only because it provides mental exercise, but also because sniffing is proven to help reduce stress. So put your dog’s kibble in a sniffing mat, and have fun doing puzzles with him.

8 Use Support Products

There are many products on the market that can help with fireworks anxiety. Of course, those products are not the one and only solution, and a targeted training plan (see tip 9 for this) is usually also necessary, but they can certainly support training very well! For example a thundershirt, or an adaptil atomizer/collar. Bach rescue can also offer a solution in some cases.

9 Call in a specialist

Is your dog extremely afraid of loud noises? Then call in a specialist, don’t mess around yourself. A good behaviorist can help you and your dog. Your dog trainer can often also help with a training plan, especially for young dogs who haven’t had their first New Years yet.
Usually such a plan includes a training protocol in which the dog is slowly but surely exposed to increasingly louder sounds of a recording, continuously monitoring whether we are not going beyond the limits of the dog. As long as you remain ‘below threshold’ in your training, you build up desensitization on the chosen sound and you can then get started with bending the negative emotion into a positive/neutral emotion.

PS: the stars in Freyja’s photo above and on the right have been Photoshopped in, of course they weren’t near her face!