How do I keep my dog calm during fireworks?

Fireworks displays can be a source of great joy for us, but for our furry friends, the loud bangs and bright lights can be a source of immense stress and anxiety. It's crucial for us to take proactive steps to ensure our dogs feel safe and secure during fireworks. In this blog post, I will explore various strategies to calm your dogs during fireworks.

Some of the information in this post was sourced from a paper published in the journal of veterinary behaviour in 2020, it is an open access article and can be found here.

Behavioural techniques

• Managing the environment

• Desensitisation and counterconditioning 

• Relaxation training

Medical/pharmacological interventions

• Dexmedetomidine

• Imepitoin 

• Trazodone

• Gabapentin

Alternative products

• Pheromone Therapy

• Nutraceuticals

• Pressure vests

---

Behavioural techniques

Managing the environment

The first aspect of this is providing your dog with a safe space to hide in. Often a dog crate can be used for this purpose, a blanket or towel over the back and sides create a den-like feel for your dog and can provide them with somewhere safe to hide if they feel the need. I recommend having this space as a permanent feature in your home, somewhere they associate with sleeping, eating and relaxing. Somewhere they are safe. A place where they have built up many positive interactions and enjoy being in. NOT to be used only when fireworks are around as this would create a negative association with the crate that would only get brought out when the fear inducing event occurs.

Dimming the lights and putting on background noise (TV or radio) can also help block out the sounds of fireworks. Keeping windows shut to help block out the noise of fireworks.

Keep calm yourself. Dogs pick up on their owners emotions in a big way. If you are stressed and showing that in your body language, tone of voice or actions then this will make your dog even more stressed. Keeping calm yourself, speaking in slow soothing tones and generally acting like normal will help your dog by showing there is nothing to be upset about.

Some common advice given out is to ignore your dog but research shows that talking to and petting your dog  is associated with lower behavioural stress, this makes sense, dogs are pack animals and very bonded to their family members. Providing calming comfort by talking to and giving calming strokes can be incredibly helpful for your dog.

Desensitisation training

This technique is the most important point on this entire page. It is the most effective way to help your dog with their firework phobia. What's the catch? It also requires the most input from you. But if you make the time it will pay off in the long term and in the process help build your bond.

This technique is the gradual and controlled exposure to the fearful stimulus so as to eliminate the fearful behavioural response. I would also recommend pairing this fearful stimulus with a positive result. This might look something like the following: every day during your dogs meal time, instead of eating from a bowl, you hold the bowl of food, you search youtube for a ‘fireworks soundtrack’ and play the recording at a very very low sound level and spend 5 minutes dropping their food for them, scattering it across the floor, hand feeding them. You do this once each day. And day by day, week by week, month by month you play the recording one step louder on the volume control. You might at some points spend a few weeks with the sound at the same level as you find the next level up becomes overwhelming for your dog, so take it down a step for a few weeks and then try again. The key here is to take it slowly (this will take months and months and will feel agonisingly slow, but this is good!) and to always make these sessions short and fun.

The above technique will work for most dogs who are food motivated. But you might find your dog is motivated by something else: playing fetch with a tennis ball, playing tuggy with their favourite toy or even something like chasing bubbles. Write a list of the top 3 things your dog LOVES more than anything and these are the activities to do whilst slowly slowly increasing the volume of the fireworks soundtrack.

This technique is best implemented months in advance of fireworks night or new years eve. But if you find yourself on that date with no previous training ‘in the bank’ don’t give up! It is still beneficial on the night itself to try and reward each sound heard. Your dog might be too frightened to eat their normal food (in this scenario you cannot turn down the volume of the fireworks themselves) but you could try something higher value (chicken, ham, cheese etc) to overcome their reluctance and make the experience ever so slightly more positive for them.

Relaxation training

This can be harder to achieve and requires more training input. This technique is about training your dog to be calm. This calmness is triggered by either a cue word or a location (such as their bed or crate for instance). Calming activities such as licking or chewing can also help here: think about providing frozen kongs, frozen lick mats or yak milk chews. 

Absolute dogs have an online training course where they go into more detail on training calm behaviours and would be a good resource if you want to look further into this.

---

Medical/pharmacological interventions

There are a few prescription medications out there that can be used to help provide mild sedation to ease your dog's anxiety ahead of known fearful stimuli like fireworks night. It is best to speak to your local vet about which medication might suit your dog specifically as there are various factors to be considered when choosing one. It is also important to know that each of the medications we can use have very variable effects depending on the dose used and the individual dog in question. For this reason I often recommend having a trial night (where you give your dog the prescribed medication on a normal evening when there is no fearful event) ahead of trialling the drug for the event in question. This can help you find out how the specific drug has affected your dog, you can then feed this back to your vet who can adjust the dose or choose a different drug instead depending on the effects. It is also incredibly important that if ever given these sedative drugs you remain with your dog and keep them under supervision to monitor the effects and be on hand to soothe them or help them as needed.

Some of the medications commonly used are listed below:

• Dexmedetomidine oral gel (an alpha 2 agonist it reduces levels of noradrenaline - the fight or flight hormone - thereby reducing nerve activity and producing a calming and mild sedative effect)

• Imepitoin (this works by partially activating a specific receptor in the brain - GABA receptor - that helps calm nerve activity. It also blocks certain calcium channels and may enhance the calming effects of other drugs.)

• Trazodone (a human medication that is used ‘off licence’ in dogs. This drug is a human antidepressant medication that increases levels of serotonin and causes sedation)

• Gabapentin (a human medication that is used ‘off licence’ in dogs. It is used to treat epilepsy and nerve pain in humans and causes sedation. The sedation is more profound when used in combination with trazodone)

In veterinary practice medications can be used in an 'off-licence' manner. Acquiring a licence for a drug to address a specific condition in a specific species is a financially demanding process for pharmaceutical companies. It may not always be economically viable for them to pursue licensing, especially when certain drugs are infrequently used for specific conditions in particular animal species. As a result, veterinarians often find themselves resorting to medications that are licensed for different species (including humans) or different conditions. This decision is always carefully evaluated and only used in accordance with the UK's regulation framework of the prescription cascade.

It is important to book an appointment with your local vet and discuss your need for any medication directly with them. It is also important to remember that drugs alone should not replace the desensitisation training discussed above. The best approach is to utilise all of the tactics discussed in this article together.

Alternative techniques

Pheromone Therapy:

In dogs this is the use of plug in diffusers, sprays or infused collars. The two main brands in the UK and USA are Pet remedy and Adaptil. 

Pet remedy contains valerian oil, vetiver, sweet basil and clary sage. It aims to mimic your pets own calming mechanism by producing the same effects as GABA (gamma amino butyric acid) which is an inhibitory neurotransmitter in the brain which lessens excitement and anxiety thereby producing a calming effect.

Adaptil contains ‘Dog - appeasing pheromone’ which mimics a pheromone produced by lactating bitches to calm puppies.

I find the effects of these pheromones incredibly variable from dog to dog. Some owners swear by the effects, others report absolutely no change. Ultimately these plug in diffusers will do no harm to your dog so there is no harm (and a possible gain) in trying them out and seeing if they have a calming effect on your dog. 

Calming Supplements/Nutraceuticals:

There are various calming supplements available and not many of them have good peer reviewed placebo controlled studies to support their use or effectiveness. Nutraceuticals, being a food supplement, rather than a medication do not have to go through the same rigorous testing and approval processes before entering the market for sale. Some commonly used supplements include Zylkene or Calmex. Similar to pheromone therapy I think the effects of these supplements are variable. There is no harm in trying these supplements if you wish but I have never found them to be as game changing as the behavioural work outlined earlier.

Pressure Vests:

In both humans and cattle, deep pressure has a calming effect. Studies have looked at the use of weighted vests and blankets in people and squeeze chutes in cattle and shown this calming effect. It is thought to be induced by oxytocin release which consequently reduces heart rate and blood pressure, although this has not been proven. This known effect has been extrapolated into the use of pressure vests in dogs. There are a few brands out there but the one I have seen most is the Thundershirt (Amazon link here). Again the effectiveness of this varies dog to dog, so feel free to try this out as one of many tools in your arsenal to help with firework phobia.

In conclusion, I would focus your efforts on key strategies like desensitisation and counter-conditioning training, relaxation techniques, Adaptil diffusers and pressure vets. Whilst prescription medication can seem like an undesirable tool it can be incredibly effective when combined with the previous techniques and certainly has a place in helping your dog. Don’t be afraid to discuss this with your local vet. Remember, the most effective approach often involves a combination of these methods, providing you with a variety of tools to navigate fireworks night.