Fireworks
Its a worrying time of the year for dogs and cats with many getting into accidents due to the loud bangs scaring them away from home. With firework season getting closer, dog owners will be asking how do I keep my dog calm and stop him or her being scared? There are many ways to help our four legged friends, with simple preparation you can take the stress and anxiety away from fireworks.
Symptoms of Anxiety in Dogs
For noise anxiety, Dogs will show many symptoms of fear and stress including:
- Shaking
- Panting
- Drooling
- Yawning
- Barking/whining
- Hyperactivity
- Clawing
- Digging
- Hiding
- Clinging to owners
How Do I Help?
It’s important to keep your pets inside and calm – try and minimise the noise from the explosions by shutting curtains and keeping doors and windows shut, as well as providing a white noise like a radio. Walking pets during day light is also advisable to avoid being out during any firework displays.
Thundershirt
One way is a thundershirt, with its gentle, constant pressure having a dramatic calming effect for most dogs if they are anxious, fearful or over-excited. Based on surveys completed by over two thousand customers, over 80% of dogs show significant improvement in symptoms when using Thundershirt. It is already helping tens of thousands of dogs around the world, and is recommended by thousands of veterinarians and dog trainers.
Hiding
Dogs have many ways of dealing with being fearful, In most cases, when it comes to Fireworks, they just want to hide until it goes away. Therefore, if you create a nice cosy den in the corner of the room you are in then they can feel safe. This can be under a chair with blankets over the top of it, in an actual dog cage, under the table. Put their favourite toy and perhaps even a filled Kong in it too.
Exercise
Do a lot of mental and physical exercise during the day before it gets dark. If you have a well balanced dog, that is happy mentally and physically, they can cope more easily when the noise anxiety kicks in. Take them for a long walk, hide toys in bushes for them to sniff out, play agility, do some obedience training – anything that will relax them ready for the night before.
Herbal Remedies
If all else fails, then you could look at the number of herbal remedies on the market, these include herbal tablets, plug in diffusers and calming sprays, most take a few days to be most effective as they don’t work in a matter of seconds so if you need any of these products preparation is key, make sure you have and use them 24/48 hours in advance.
Team Shanklinpets