Desensitizing Your Pets to Fireworks

The Fourth of July and New Years are always stressful times for those of us with fearful pets. The best thing you can do for your pet is desensitize them to the loud pops and bangs of fireworks before these holidays roll around.

Something I do with my pets (my dogs hate fireworks, my birds and reptiles didn’t care), is play fireworks sounds on YouTube. YouTube is a GREAT resource for finding sounds to desensitize your pets to. If you have a smart TV, pull up YouTube on it and start the video on very low sound so your pet barely reacts to it. Looking around curiously is okay, slinking from the room or hiding is not. Have that video play in the background while you go about your normal activities in your home. As they get more comfortable with the sounds playing, you’ll start to increase the volume on the video.

If you don’t have a smart TV, you can do the same thing on your phone, but you’ll need to keep the phone nearer to your pet while you’re working on this. I will keep my phone in my pocket while it plays the fireworks sounds and just walk around the house while I do chores. You just want to make it clear to your pet that the noise isn’t anything to be afraid of and everything is normal.