Recipe for firework-proofing a very scared dog

This should work fairly well on most dogs.

Buy a 500gram cooked sausage/kookworst (the kind you slice and put on your bread). In fact, buy a few.
Slice into small squares.
Start when the banging is still fairly interspersed: every bang, immediately give the frightened pooch a little piece of sausage.
The dog will figure out this little scheme very quickly! The focus will shift from flinching and rushing off in a panic, to waiting for the noise signal that will get them the treat.

Then graduate to only rewarding the whistlers or big bangs or whatever makes them go into total panic.
Be prepared for your hands to be almost de-fingered at first as the flight/greed combo makes them snap for the treat.
At some point when the focus is entirely on the yummy rewards for that noise, start rewarding intermittently.

Keep doing this the entire day.

By the beginning of the evening you'll have tears in your eyes as, at your feet, your sleeping dog farts toxic fumes in concert with the snoring.

When it's midnight and all hell breaks loose, you might have to feed the dog an entire sausage within the first fifteen minutes!



Fireworks and pets simply don't mix. As far as I'm concerned, they can just get rid of this not-so-charming Dutch custom of greeting the new year with a massive barrage of fireworks and toxic fumes and missing fingers.