The fact that some dogs can tolerate thunderous fireworks doesn’t mean others can.  We can’t reasonably expect this tolerance even in animals that have been specifically bred to stay calm in the presence of gunfire.  The differing reactions of my two German short-haired pointers are a good case in point:

As most people might expect of a dog born to hunt, Dirk (my male) isn’t fazed in the slightest by fireworks.  On our first Fourth of July in our current house, we returned home after nightfall to find fireworks going off all around us—including some exploding directly above us.  Dirk’s reaction?  He just danced around our front yard with his little stub of a tail waggling at the rate of a metronome overdosing on meth, his gaze fixed intently on the emerging bursts of vivid color overhead, in an absolute delirium of happiness at what he seemed to regard as the wildest-looking birds he’d ever seen.

His sister Eva didn’t do as well.  She quickly scooted behind the trash cans, and cowered there until we went inside the house. She continued to shake there, and nothing I did could comfort her.

As the years have gone by, Eva’s reactions have become more intense. Among other things, I’ve tried a product called the Thundershirt—meant to calm a dog by creating a feeling of being hugged—as well as prescription meds from the vet.  None of these have done much good.

I assumed Eva would be a washout at hunting, even though she’s got keen instincts along those lines in every other way.  But one day I took her and her brother for a pleasure outing at a 500-acre facility where people train hunting dogs.  Not too long after we got out of the car, someone fired a shotgun.  Eva looked briefly over at me, and I told her everything was okay.  She immediately accepted that, and went back to something that interested her far more—stalking waterfowl in a pond.

She heard many other gunshots that afternoon, and never so much as flinched.  Later in the day, I watched with amazement as she and Dirk trotted happily down a gravel road straight toward an area where so many shotgun blasts were roaring out that I assumed it had to be a firing range.