How To Prepare Your Dog For 🎆 Fireworks On The 4th Of July! 10 Tips

Guess what we're doing today? So, here in the United States, 4th of July is just around the corner, which means... Fireworks! Now, we know many of you guys have dogs that are scared of fireworks. Today, we're going to go over ten tips to help your dogs have a better experience this 4th of July. If you guys have any tips that I don't mention in today's video, please leave them in the comments below so you can help out the rest of the Pawdience. Now, let's get into it! Tip number one, calming treats and sprays. For some dogs, these things work wonders, but for others, not so much. The calming treats that I tend to use are the CBD calming treats. You can also use hemp based calming treats. I have found that using the calming treats in conjunction with the calming sprays and diffusers work the best. The calming spray and diffusers that I use are from Adapto and what they are is they're like a pheromone. So, they kind of calm down your dog's brain a little bit. Remember, as we go through all of these tips, you should be doing as many of these as you can if you want the best results. Calming treats alone might not do the trick, but if you follow all these other tips, it might work out for you. Tip number two, wear them out. Now, I am not talking about a simple walk around the block. A tired dog is a calm and a happy dog. When you know they're going to be shooting fireworks off that night, earlier in the day, take your dogs out for a really long walk as long as it's cool enough. Play with them in the yard with the ball. Take them for a swim. Give them a puzzle toy to give them some extra mental stimulation. Anything you can do to tire your dog out is a good idea. Tip number three, anti-anxiety devices. Now, what the heck is an anti-anxiety device, you might ask? These are things like a thunder shirt or a happy hoodie or dog earmuffs. And yes, they really do make noise canceling earmuffs for dogs, which a lot of people use these during fireworks and have had really good results with them. These types of devices have been known to help many dogs with many stressful situations, such as fireworks. Now, with any wearable type of device, your dogs might need a little bit of time to get used to them, so be patient and hopefully before fireworks night, you can get them nice and used to these devices. Tip number four, Kong toys. Kong toys are a great distraction for dogs. These toys are great as you can stuff them full of food and you can freeze them so they're going to last a really long time for your dogs. You can even do multiples of these so you have a few throughout the night. Always supervise your dog when they have one of these. If your dog can focus on the treat, even when the fireworks are going off, this is also going to give them some positive reinforcement that fireworks mean fun treats. I have a list of some fun recipes down in the video description below for ideas of what to stuff them with. Tip number five, make a safe room. So, a safe room could be a bathroom, a small bedroom, even a large closet. Somewhere where you can take a radio or a tablet to play some music or a TV show. If you can, you want to stuff the room full of like blankets and pillows and dog beds. That way the sound is going to deaden and not be so loud within the safe room. That's why we call it a safe room. You can also build like a blanket fort to hang out with your dog in and again like fill it full of blankets and dog beds and things like that. Basically, you're making an area so that the noise from outside won't be as loud. Tip number six, music and TV. If you can't make a little safe room, playing music or playing your TV can also drown out some of the noises coming from outside. Get a good movie playlist together and just snuggle up and watch some TV. Watch some YouTube with your dog and remember during this time, you yourself needs to also stay calm and act as if everything is perfectly fine. Dogs can feel your fear and anxiety as well. So, remain calm, try to stay chill and that is also going to help your dog. Hey, make it a fun movie night with them. Tip number seven, darken the room. So, whatever room you're in that you're going to be watching movies in with your dog, close all your window shades. Get that room to be a dark calming area. Sometimes this will really help out your pets. If the fireworks are very, very close to your home, then this isn't going to work as well as a safe room. But if they're further away, sometimes this will help your dogs out. Just the dark calmness can really help them out. Tip number eight, go for a drive. So, before the fireworks are set to start in your area, if you live near where they're going to be shot off and you know your dogs are going to freak out, get in the car and go for a drive. Turn the radio on, crack the windows a little bit to kind of let that air noise come through and drive away from where they're shooting off the display. If you're going to do this, remember to safely secure your dog into your car, either in a crate or with a leash so that they can't take off. If you do have to stop and open your door, more dogs end up at animal shelters and at animal controls around 4th of July than any other time of the year. Tip number nine, be prepared. Speaking of dogs escaping, be prepared for this. Make sure that your dog is secured in your house. Make sure they have a proper ID tag and a microchip. And if you have one, put a tracking collar on them or put your air tag on them. These are things you should consider if your dogs are really freaked out by fireworks. Because dogs have been known to escape houses, even breaking through windows during fireworks if you're not home and sometimes even if you are. So being prepared for this is going to give you the best chance of getting your dog back if they do end up getting outside. Tip number 10, stay inside. I know, we just talked about the dogs escaping and things like that and this kind of sounds obvious, but this can actually be a little bit hard. But you want to be prepared to keep your dog inside during fireworks. You don't want to be letting them go outside to go to the bathroom because again that could cause them to want to jump over your fence or dig under your fence. You just don't know. So there are a few things you can do to make staying inside a little bit easier. You can fill a small dog pool with some of your outside grass or turf so that they have a place to go inside the house if they need to use the bathroom during the fireworks. One of the last things you want to do is have your dog be inside and be all nice and calm and then they need to go to the bathroom and you have to take them outside while the fireworks are going off. Then you're restarting all of that work that you've done. So try to let them out before the show starts and then be prepared to have a place for them to go inside the house if needed. A lot of dogs will make it all through the night if they have to but it's nice to have a place for them to go just in case. And bonus tip and you knew this was coming. Start preparing now for next year. You can desensitize your dogs to fireworks. It's a very long process but it can be done. It is best to start as early as possible and you can do this by playing firework videos at a very low level. Reward your dogs so they don't freak out. Use all the same tips here before you start those videos. Play the video, have a lot of treats and toys and really just slowly get them used to it. You want to be able to distract them while the fireworks are going off on your television because they're going to hear it and they're going to react. You don't really want them to react. You want to distract them so they're like, oh well this is going off but something fun is happening over here. I should focus on the something fun. Again this is a very long process for most dogs and it is a lot of work but it can be done. Another thing you can do is you can speak to your vet about medications as well. Some dogs do really well with a bit of extra help from some medication but don't wait until two days before to make that call to your vet. Call early and talk to your vet. Fourth of July is coming soon. You might still have time to at least ask your vet if they can help your dog out but if not plan for this for next year. I am really thankful that I have worked with all of my dogs as puppies to not fear fireworks and then when we had Oakley who was a rescue she could have cared less about fireworks. So we've been very fortunate to not have dogs that are afraid of fireworks. It has made this time of the year a lot easier for us but I know not everyone has done that. Not everyone knows how some rescue dogs you rescue them and they're terrified of fireworks. Some puppies even when you do work with them they're still terrified of fireworks. So hopefully some of these tips are going to help you guys out. And again like I said what tips do you guys have for keeping dogs calm during fireworks? Let us know down in the comments below. Maybe if we all share our tips and tricks we'll have some happier dogs this Fourth of July. At the end of this video and down in the video description below I'll have some links for some of our Fourth of July treat videos that we've done in the past. You can also make those to distract your dogs from fireworks. All right you guys we hope you enjoyed today's video. As always thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Stay positive. Dream big. And we will see you again soon. Happy Fourth of July Pawdience! Turn around and roll over, roll over snow dog. Sing a song with your sweet voice. I know you've been a good little girl, good girl, good girl. Come and join us for a new adventure, come and join our adventure. We'll be selling lots of walks, won't you come into our Siberian world. We're Gone To The Snow Dogs.