If you’re wondering about two things in the intro – Tater and his “Sky Pretties,” and my experience with severe noise aversion – I’ve got you! The tale of Tater and his Sky Pretties, and my experience through work and personally, through the story of Vitaly the Pomeranian, are below for you.

---

Firstly, yes, Tater really does love fireworks!

Tater was one of the boldest, most confident puppies I’ve ever known, but It was still a surprise when he wasn’t merely quickly ambivilent about fireworks, but rather, enamored with them.

His first experience was Independence Day 2024, when he was two days away from being four months old. He was a bit curious about the noise outside, but I waited until all the particularly close and loud activity had died off to take him outside to potty. Of course, I went with him, fully prepared to reward for positive reactions or to turn things around quickly if he was scared.

Imagine my surprise when he wasn’t just thrilled, but also noticed the colorful, bright things appearing in the sky! Dogs don’t often look up at the sky, unless there Is something to look up at, like a perceived danger or prey item (birds and squirrels, the forever enemies). It took Tater no time at all to realize that the sound meant Sky Pretties would appear. An explosion or five would happen, and my little potato-coyote-dingo puppy would immediately stop what he was doing to excitedly peer up at the sky in anticipation. Then, he’d race about excitedly with a toy, sometimes tripping over the toy as he gazed upwards – just in case he missed one.

Tater also loves storms. A good thing given our location in northeastern Oklahoma! And a relieving thing, since we spent over an hour his first night home taking cover in a bath tub from a town-flattening monster of a tornado.

I’m relieved to report that, despite unfortunate genetics expressing that turned on a too typical response of serious wariness found in herding breeds, he still loves both. When Tater hears very distant thunder, a single firecracker somewhere, or a disappointing gunshot, he’s on a singular mission to get outside! He’ll desperately poke the potty bells and repeatedly take me to the back door so that he can frollic gleefully beneath of a sky full of storm, or sit in the middle of the yard watching his Sky Pretties, looking like an awestruck human toddler.

This is, as you must know, absolutely not typical!

Here’s my experience with that:

When I adopted my late Pomeranian, Vitaly, I thought I was prepared for the challenges of his fear. As a petsitter, dog groomer, dog guardian, and daycare and boarding facility manager, as well as my work with fosters and other shelter and rescue pets, I’d seen great variety in canine fears. Including dogs who had similar starts in life to that of my Pom – product of a puppy mill, shuffled about to bad homes as an inferior product, and finally, dumped off at a very rural shelter that still (legally at the time) “euthanized” by gassing that he survived.

Nearly every dog I cared for as a sitter had some degree of noise aversion/phobia. At daycare and boarding, over half were so severely effected by noises that at least an hour a day total was devoted to administering prescribed medications. In New Orleans, storms are frequent, city firework displays were close to the location, and regulations on fireworks in city limits were very loosely enforced. Then, there was the frequent noise of flyovers from Coast Guard, police, news, and Navy (all low) aircraft. Add in an increasingly dangerous city with gunfire and the marching band, parade, and concert noise – you have a continual environment where unexpected, frightening, and loud noises exist.

I dealt with severely impacted dogs more often than any other kind.

That severity was on a spectrum from spending hours inside of a closet (the dog’s personally decided safe space his guardians and I went with) to help a dog maintain calm to redoing a staff breakroom to create a space where an extreme case couldn’t harm himself. The latter dog’s panic was so extreme that his vet prescribed equally extreme sedation, but this medium sized senior gentleman still ripped apart a quite solid doorframe and was finishing the removal of a very heavy door when he had to be physically picked up and carried to the neighboring vet’s office in the hope of different help. That dog had been frighteningly dead to the world, but after a single louder thunderclap, it took him under two minutes to escape a kennel and go at the door in a blind panic to escape the inescapable.

While Vitaly couldn’t do that, I still wasn’t prepared enough. I’m not sure you can be until you witness it, live with it, and spend a decade trying to improve it.

That’s how long it took. Of our sixteen years together, ten were heavily wrapped up in improving his abject terror.

Like most puppy mill dogs, everything was terrifying to him. That’s difficult, trying to build confidence and security while also needing to both manage the environment heavily and simply teach him how to be a normal, loved pet. He wanted to live under my clawfoot bath tub, and simply looking at or speaking directly to him resulted in freezing, quaking, and urinating for a while. It was extremely hard, definitely a learning experience, but the fear of storms and fireworks was on another level.

Vitaly would be so afraid that he would go into seizures.

When we had to relocate to my hometown in NE Oklahoma, all our work was quickly undone; we don’t have such frequent thunderstorms and rainstorms here, but we have extreme, violent, loud thunderstorms. Of course, we’d relocated from a major city to the middle of nowhere as well – most of the time, he enjoyed quiet there, but all neighbors tried to compete with fireworks displays, and those closest to us enjoyed target practice with a whole arsenal of high powered weapons. While I enjoy firearms and own them myself, it was a bit much to abruptly feel as though we were in the midst of a combat zone, complete with shooting explosive tannerite targets. Being unable to prepare for that like the fireworks was something that generated a lot of setbacks!

I delved into increased learning, added more calming support tools, and maintained as much calmly positive vibes and management as possible. For years.

I am extremely, personally, familiar with the pain of being unable to truly comfort a terrified pet, or to find a way to magically fix the problem. It’s uniquely horrible!

Though Vitaly’s additional challenges doubtless made things more challenging, I’m happy to say that we did have real, meaningful progress.

Using the preparation, tools, and techniques in this post, I was first able to significantly reduce his distress.

Once we found the right combination of supports (calming treats and a Thundershirt in his case), things improved rapidly. We went from early application of treats and Thundershirt, with a fan placed on the floor nearer to his comfort spot, to just using the Thundershirt the next storm season. Eventually, he started to associate the shirt with what I assume had to be a calming sensation; when feeling stress, he began to ask for it to be put on!

All of this allowed us to keep working on the situation, as can happen when calm is maintained. He stopped requiring any support aside from the presence of a trusted person somewhere in the same house – even playing, eating, and sleeping (out in the open, comfortably upside down even) during storms and fireworks.

You should never expect the same results for your pet as seen in someone else’s! However, I think it’s as Important as sharing my personal and professional experience to share that unexpectedly amazing progress can be possible.

No one’s pet should ever have to endure the suffering of noise aversion – with proper preparation, knowledge, tools, and management, your pet doesn’t have to!