Things that go bang

 

Forgive me if I look a bit puzzled here, but I'd just had this scarf thing tied round my neck and I had no idea what it was for or why it was there.

Something to do with going out for the day and getting the trembles and shakes, I think.

It all started last November in my garden when the world around me suddenly erupted into loud bangs and flashes. I was very scared because this happened when I'd just gone outside to do you-know-what. I managed to hide and lodged myself behind the water butt and some garden canes and I got stuck. The humans came to find me and I was a mass of shaky, quivering jelly when I got in and needed a fair bit of TLC to calm me down.

Blooming fireworks. [Ed. the nearby fireworks were let off way ahead of Bonfire night.]

Now I pant and get quite wobbly and shaky if there are sudden strange bumps and noises on the TV. I sit near or on one of my humans laps and that helps. I do notice there's a lot of this noise in some TV programmes and my human's have noticed it too so they turn the sound down and I usually go to a safe place behind the sofa.

Blooming fireworks again. That's where it all began.

Then I started getting anxious when we were going out in the car, and worst of all, when we were setting off or an adventure in my campervan. My humans have got something to help with this though - some tablets to help me stay calm and a calming spray.

The human who feeds me sprays the bed I travel in when we go out in my campervan, and Dave the Vet told her to spray this special stuff on a scarf and put it round my neck so it would be really close to my exquisitely sensitive nose. That's why I look a bit... well... miffed in that photo.

The humans have also given me some calming tablets to help - must have been on that day earlier in the week when I was so relaxed I felt blissed out and nothing bothered me. The human who feeds me was making jokes about dogs on drugs (what are they?). Anyway, they made me feel heaps better and I've not been getting the collywobbles very much since then.

[Ed. Bosworth has symptoms which are common in many dogs who react to the sound of fireworks, but this has extended to noises from builders working on houses and he sound of guns being fired by shooting of wildlife in the surrounding countryside - not something I or anyone I know would condone. Dave the Vet has suggested Bosworth has a form of separation anxiety and to use the medication and spray when needed. Bosworth's tolerance of unexpected noises is slowly improving, with a lot of TLC to go with the meds and spray. As yet there is nothing we can do about unexpected scenes on TV, such as the singing hump-backed whales on an Attenborough programme which completely freaked him out.....]