It was at this point that I began to fully comprehend the enormity of the difference between guns used for hunting, and fireworks—especially the deep-booming ones that in my part of the country, we once called “ashcans,” and are now more commonly referred to as M-80s.  I learned from a bit of online research that M-80s were developed by the US military—for the specific purpose of getting new recruits used to sounds that were so inherently terrifying that they would otherwise cause many new soldiers to simply freeze up uselessly in combat.

When I thought about how many times more sensitive a dog’s ears are than a human’s, it became joltingly clear how unbearably threatening these particular fireworks must be to most canines—especially considering that even Eva, one of the lucky minority of dogs that aren’t spooked by ordinary gunfire, was reduced to uncontrollable quivering not only by the M-80s themselves, but later, also by ordinary firecrackers that wouldn’t normally have bothered her at all, but had become triggers for panic attacks simply because of their association with M-80s.