Thank you for posting this, Mike. My three were very confident and friendly. They were taken with us from the time they were young and were exposed to different environments and lots of people, which they thrived on. Fireworks really terrified them, though. Ashley loved her walks, but I really had to work past her fears for a couple weeks after the fourth of July. She really didn't want to go on her walks because invariably a firecracker would go off and terrify her. The summer before she died when Ashley was sixteen, my husband and I noticed that her fear had greatly diminished. We thought it was very odd, and we didn't understand why. There had been other behaviors that were a little off that were a concern, but we attributed them to normal aging. Even though she had gone to the vet several times during that period, I didn't mention it to him. We realized at the end of October that she had CCD, which is a dementia like Alzheimers. In hindsight, her behavior change with fireworks should have been a huge indicator for us. When we do get another little one, I think the noise conditioning is an important thing for us to do. |