As stated earlier, July 4 is rough on the one of my dogs that hates fireworks. He gets anxious and trembles all the time, he follows us around. Only now July 4 is over and he continues to follow us everywhere. I was painting a room; he moved from one side to the other as I did. My sister’s a vet and I asked her how to get him out of it. She said, “Did you coddle him?” Well, yes. When the fireworks were going bigtime, my wife took the dog in her arms, etc. “You shouldn’t have coddled him,” my sister went on. “He likes being coddled, he wants more of that, he’s a smart dog.”
Now my sister’s saying we can uncoddle him by playing CDs of thunder a lot, on low volume, and acting like it’s normal. Also by rewarding him for being macho.
(Did I mention: We don’t have kids? Oh you figured that out…)
