What to do when your dog is frightened of fireworks

If your dog is frightened of fireworks, the most useful thing you can do costs nothing and needs to happen weeks before the night itself. Most of what follows is arranging a room, choosing a time to walk, and deciding in advance how you are going to behave. None of it requires anything from us.

We sell a compression garment and we are not going to tell you it does anything, because the published appraisal of pressure vests concluded that owners should not expect anxiety to be fully alleviated and that a vest may have no benefit at all. That appraisal is reported in full in our dog anxiety wrap guide. Read this article first.

A dog frightened of fireworks is not unusual

Blackwell, Bradshaw and Casey published a study in Applied Animal Behaviour Science in 2013 on fear responses to noises in dogs. In the University of Bristol summary, almost half the owners interviewed reported that their dog showed at least one behavioural sign of fear in response to noises. Only about a quarter described their dog as fearful of noises. And fewer than a third had sought professional advice about treatment.

Three useful things follow. Noise fear is common. Many owners do not recognise what they are looking at as fear. And most people never ask anyone qualified, which is the gap this entire product category sells into.

Build the hiding place now, not on the night

The clearest practical guidance we can point you at is the PDSA's firework advice, published by a veterinary charity and available as a PDF. Its core instruction is to create a den: a wardrobe, a cupboard, the space behind a sofa, lined with old pillows and blankets that muffle sound.

The part people skip is the timing. The guidance is to let your dog use the den freely in the weeks before firework season, and to give treats and praise when they use it. A den introduced on the night is a strange new box. A den introduced in October is already theirs.

The same guidance is explicit that you should not force a dog into a den they do not want. If your dog has already picked a spot, a bathroom, the footwell of a desk, under your bed, that is the den. Make that one comfortable instead of relocating them to your preferred one.

The room itself

From the same guidance, plus ordinary common sense about sound:

• Close doors, windows and any cat or dog flap. This is both a sound measure and an escape-prevention measure. A frightened dog that gets out is the worst outcome of the night.
• Draw the curtains. Flashes are part of the event, not just the bangs.
• Play music with a repetitive beat to mask the sound. A steady, continuous noise floor covers sudden peaks better than something with quiet passages in it.
• Choose an interior room if you have one, away from the street-facing wall.
• Microchip details. The PDSA guidance raises microchipping for exactly the reason above. If your dog is already chipped, this is the week to check the registered details are current.

Walk early, feed early

Walk well before fireworks are likely to start. In practice that means earlier than feels necessary, because the first bangs of the evening are often not the official display.

Feed before the noise starts too, if your dog will eat. A dog that is already frightened may not eat at all, which the 2015 AAHA behaviour management guidelines note in the context of distressed animals. Those guidelines are published in JAAHA.

The one management change that showed up in a survey

Stefanie Riemer's 2020 study in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior surveyed owners on how they manage firework fears. The citation and abstract are held by the University of Bern.

A principal components analysis of 1,225 responses grouped owner behaviour into four strategies: modifying the environment, feeding or playing, giving alternative products, and interacting with the dog. Of those four, only feeding or playing was associated with an improvement in the dog's fear over time.

That is an owner survey rather than a trial, so treat it as a pointer rather than proof. But it points somewhere free, it points away from the product aisle, and it is consistent with what behaviour professionals do, which is pair the frightening thing with something good. If your dog will take food or play a game during the bangs, that is worth doing.

Do not punish fear, and do not ignore it

Two things people get told that are worth addressing directly.

Punishing or scolding a frightened dog. Do not. A dog that is told off for pacing or hiding has learned that the frightening evening also involves being told off. The American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior's position on dog training is that only reward-based methods should be used, including in the treatment of behaviour problems, and that creating positive associations with frightening stimuli is central to easing fear. Their position statements are listed here.

"Don't comfort your dog, you will reinforce the fear." The PDSA guidance says the opposite: do not ignore a dog that comes to you, and comfort them as you normally would. Fear is an emotional state, not a trick your dog is performing for attention. Over the longer term you want your dog to have coping options that do not depend on you being in the room, which is what the den is for, but that is a project for the months in between, not a reason to turn away from a frightened dog tonight.

Where a vest sits in this

Nowhere, until everything above is in place.

If you decide to try one anyway, the appraisal of pressure vests specifically notes that habituating the dog to the vest and checking it is comfortable may matter. Which means the first time your dog wears it cannot be the night of a display. Our article on teaching a dog to wear a vest sets out how to do that over days. And we will say again: the same appraisal concluded the vest may have no benefit at all.

When this is a veterinary conversation

Please book an appointment, and ask about referral to a veterinary behaviourist, if your dog:

• injures itself, or damages doors, windows or crates, trying to escape the noise
• cannot settle for hours after the noise has stopped
• will not eat or soils the house around these episodes
• has become frightened suddenly, or is an older dog whose fear is new, since new behavioural signs can have medical causes
• is becoming frightened of more things over time

The AAHA guidelines are direct about this: clients should consult their veterinarian at the first signs of any problematic behaviour, any change warrants a professional assessment, and profound phobias are among the cases for which referral to a behaviourist is appropriate. There is a treatment route here, and the decisions in it belong to a clinician who has met your dog.

Our longer piece on when a frightened dog needs a vet goes through the red flags properly.

The short version

Build the den in October. Close everything, draw the curtains, put on something with a steady beat, walk and feed early. Have food or a game ready for the bangs. Do not punish fear, and do not refuse comfort to a dog that asks for it. If the fear is severe, the appointment matters more than anything on our shelf.