Tito is a strange dog, he doesn’t bark and is very anxious.
He doesn’t like, you ready for this;
Wind, rain, thunder, loud noises, musical toys, screaming, shouting, lightening, clapping too loudly and fireworks.
Fireworks and thunder are especially a problem for him. From Halloween we are usually housebound for roughly fifteen days, incase fireworks go off.
It is really distressing to see and you feel for Tito so much. He shakes from the first bang he hears, and runs around. He wont go out in the garden once he has heard a bang, which usually results in a mess on the floor. We have to stay with him because if he happens to be on his own when the fireworks start he will chew. In the past he has chewed the whole of the top of the hallway carpet, all because he was left and we didn’t realise fireworks were going off! It is a really difficult time of the year with him and we are always looking for things to try with him.
We have tried everything we can think of with him, drawing the curtains, putting curtains up at doors, leaving the TV on, closing all the windows allowing him places to hide and nothing has made a difference.
So we jumped at the chance when offered to review the D.A.P Dog Appeasing Pheromone. this is a discreet plug-in that releases an odourless synthetic copy of the natural dog appeasing pheromone. It has been proven to help puppies and dogs cope in a range of stressful situations.
When it arrived I was expecting something that would be complicated and was proved very wrong. The box was very clear, it had clear instructions on the side telling you how to put the vial together. Which worked first time.
It clearly states that this can be used to stop or prevent fear and stress in dogs, such as Destructiveness, Vocalisation, House Soiling and Excessive Licking. Now Tito suffers with three of these items so we were hoping it would do something.
We plugged it in seven days beforehand like the instructions say and waited to see how it worked.
You don’t know it is there, it is totally odourless, and when you plug it in it doesn’t leave any smell on your hand. You have to put it in the room most used by the dog in the day, so we put ours in the hallway. Tito lives in the hallway, it is his room. So it seemed silly to go anywhere else.
The fireworks started as we predicted the night before Halloween. They were very quiet, you could hear them but not almighty bangs. Tito laid on the back of the sofa that whole night, he didn’t move. Mr L actually checked his ears after as he thought they may have been dirty, they weren’t. So we were very impressed.
But the big firework night was still to come.
There is big firework display near us and you can hear it clearly from our house. It always is the worst for setting Tito off. So the firework night came round and we braised ourselves for it.
There was the initial loud bang, the first one starting the display off. Tito jumped up from where he was, run around the house, and jumped onto the back of the sofa. There he lay, he didn’t move for the rest of the fireworks. He kept putting his head up and looking and you could tell that he was hearing them. But he wasn’t frantic, he wasn’t shaking, he seemed anxious, but nothing like he used to. The best thing was that he went out later in the evening, which before he wouldn’t do not till the morning. That was a massive improvement!
It was amazing he was as calm as I think he will ever be on fireworks night! Both Mr L and I were really impressed, and we will be recommending it to anyone who has problems with their dog on fireworks night.
I think it is worth its money at £25.49 it isn’t cheap, but to go from the shaking nervous dog that he usually is to what he was is to me fantastic and I would pay for that! That includes a plug-in diffuser and a 48ml DAP vial which covers 50 to 70 square metres and lasts for approximately four weeks.
And Then All I Thought About Was You 