How To Keep Your Dog Calm During Fireworks 🎆 Pets and Fireworks

Guess what we're doing today? Alright you guys! Fourth of July is fast approaching here in the United States and you all know what that means! Fireworks! That's right! Fireworks and loud explosions! Which also means, scared dogs! Did you know that more dogs run away during the Fourth of July than any other time of the year? Now, we are very fortunate that our dogs are not scared of fireworks or thunder for that matter. Today, we want to give you some tips and tricks on what you can do to help your dogs during the stressful time. Tip number one, calming treats and sprays. Calming treats can really help your dog chill out during fireworks. They work by just taking the edge off and kind of helping them to be a little bit calmer. I'll put some Amazon affiliate links down below for the calming treats and sprays that we've used before. I tend to use the hemp based or the CBD based treats. They have always seemed to work best for our dogs. I used to use them a lot with Oakley during stressful times and we really did see a difference. The adaptable spray can also be really helpful. You can spray their bedding or you can use the plug in sprays. Again, those really worked for Oakley. I use the calming treats when we travel to keep the dogs calm in the back of the car. Tip number two, watch a show with your dogs. Most people who have pets that are afraid of fireworks stay home with them during fireworks to help keep them comfortable. So, while you're there, turn on the TV, play some YouTube videos, find a good show to watch, your favorite movie, turn the volume up a little bit louder than normal. Yeah, dogs have sensitive ears, but a louder TV can kind of drown out the sound of fireworks. Make some popcorn and yeah, that will help keep them distracted. Tip number three, play some music. Again, this works pretty much the same way as watching TV with them. Tip number four, try some enrichment toys. Frozen Kongs are a great distraction. I will actually put a playlist to some of our frozen Kong recipes down below. They are a great enrichment activity to keep your dog's brain busy. Puzzle toys are another really great way to do this. You know, have a bunch of treats or their food and feed them in their puzzle toys. Just really keep them distracted. Those two things work really well for food driven dogs. Tip number five, make a safe space in your house for your pets to hide in. Be a kid again. Build that blanket fort for you and your dog in your living room and crawl underneath it. Pull out your laptop or your phone and watch a show with them. Small areas for them to hide can really help out a lot. Dogs do like dens. If your dog is crate trained, you can also cover their crate with a blanket. Kind of give them that little dark safe space as well. Tip number six, talk to your vet. Now I know by the time you guys are seeing this video, there might not be a whole lot of time to still do that before the fireworks start going off for 4th of July. But talk to your vet about prescription medications. Some dogs do need that extra help to actually stay calm and relaxed. Tip number seven, desensitize your dog to fireworks. Now this is something that can take a considerable amount of time, but it can be done. Talk to a dog behaviorist or a trainer to learn more about this process. One of the ways you can do this is you kind of start off by playing fireworks very softly, like videos of them, so your dog gets used to hearing them. You want the noise to be low enough that they're not showing signs of stress because if they're stressed and overwhelmed, they're not really going to be able to learn and become desensitized. As they get more and more used to the noise, you kind of turn up the volume. This is not done in a matter of minutes. This actually takes hours and hours over months and days, but it is a process that can be done. Again, I'm not a certified trainer or behaviorist, so please talk to one of them before you start that process. Tip number eight, protect your dog. Seems obvious, right? Make sure their tags are up to date and their microchips as well. Make sure that they can't jump the fence and escape. You know, don't take them outside where there's fireworks going off. Make sure you take them out well before. Keeping them in a small room is also a good idea. Build your little blanket fort in the bedroom. You want to make sure that they're not tempted to try to jump out of a window because yes, this has actually happened to people before. So, what other tips do you guys have for pets and fireworks? Leave them down in the comments below. One of the things I forgot to talk about earlier was thunder shirts. Those can be really helpful for dogs. There's also calming collars. There's a lot of things out there, so if you found something that works for your dog, leave it down in the comment below. Let's work together with the rest of our community here and give each other advice on how to keep your dogs safe and happy during the fireworks. We hope that this helps you guys with your dogs and their fireworks phobia. As always, thanks so much for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Stay positive, dream big, and we will see you again soon. Goodbye, guys!