Effing fireworks.

Jaxjacky

PECS I love them too, always have done. I don’t remember, years ago, there being so many objections?

Perhaps because they weren't used all year round, like they are round here. We've already had two weeks of constant bangs through the evening, and it will go on for another two weeks, then over Christmas and New Year, and after that I think for every celebration in the area.

I love firework displays, have very happy memories of the ones in Sydney over New Year, and every year we attend the local Scouts bonfire and firework display. Despite having been hit smack between the eyes last year by a spent rocket - no real damage, just a lump and bruising, but very painful! But I wish they could be restricted to public displays, at least the big, noisy ones.

Be prepared for lots on Wednesday evening.
One big venue fairly locally has been changed to a drive in display.Folks stay in a marked square around the car to watch!

Fanny Cornforth - it was probably my reply that told you about the thundercoat - well worth the investment. A few other hints...

deliberately OVERFEED your dog a good hour before you think the fireworks are going to start (usually, that will be after dark). Overfeeding makes them sluggish and sleepy. Use the thundershirt but also, build him/her a den.

With my dog (Polly, sadly passed now) who had the dreadful fear of fw's I did all the above plus turning the tv up as high as I could and making her a den.

This ended up being the corner between the sofa and a cupboard, over which I'd drape a thick blanket. I'd then sit on the sofa with my hand under the blanket so that I could touch her and she me, to get further reassurance.

It's really just about all you can do. My thoughts are with you - not that that will be muchconsolation!

Not sure anyone else has mentioned this, but the worst I've heard was when we lived in Singapore, at Chinese new Year. But at least it was only one day.
They had long strips of bangers, each ignited the next one so it went on nonstop. Frightening away the evil spirits.
Hopefully the locals here won't find out about them and try to scare Covid away.

I'm sure the idiot who's setting the late ones off spends all day emptying the powder out of a few bangers into a solid explosion as I jumped out of my skin last night and the cat leapt out of the chair. It was loud ! Loud enough to set a car alarm off as well. God help us on the 5th.

Italy have silent fireworks, why can’t we. No need for the loud bangs. No need for fireworks either really but am I being bah humbug!!!

I don't like fireworks either. They make a pretty pattern in the sky for a brief moment but do they have to be so damn loud? I understand that a quiet variety has been advertised - it's about time they caught on and the noisy ones went out of fashion.

I enjoy fireworks, all the colours and patterns in the sky but I hate the noise. They are getting louder every year. I too would enjoy them so much more if they were silent but that’s not what these morons who set them off at midnight and during the day want. It’s the disruption and fear they instill they get off on. Sad people really. Fireworks should be only sold the day before 5th November and on the day and not after. At least then we wouldn’t have to endure prolonged bursts of noise every night from early October. It’s not just animals that are frightened. My DGD hates loud noises and gets herself into a real state. Sometimes they are so loud you can literally feel them.

I love organised firework displays and as a kid enjoyed the small display Mum and Dad used to put on in the garden (a joint venture with a neighbour with kids). However I do think that they should not be sold to the general public unless they have had some sort of training (maybe from the Fire Service?) and given a licence to purchase and use them? Might be a way of regulating the safe use of them.
I also spent some while as a patient in a plastic surgery ward as a child (not because of getting burned) but there were children in there on long-haul plastic surgery treatments to mend awful burns from domestic firework party mishaps. Maybe publicity of those sorts of injuries would make people think.

I have PTSD and fireworks reduce me to a quivering wreck. I live in Vancouver, and am overjoyed that this is the last year firework sales are legal here!

So, here I am, yet again, with a frightened dog and cat - just brilliant.

I can't even go to the loo without taking the dog with me, can't move around the house freely, can't cook dinner so just had a salad instead.

Happy days enjoying Halloween everybody!

(I'm so glad we're in lockdown for Guy Fawkes.)

hulahoop and we ate them, with no problems!

Oh PECS I can’t accept that dogs are “more pampered” nowadays. Their hearing is so much more Acute than ours we can’t imagine what they are hearing but I imagine It could be like the sound of the blitz or warfare without knowing that it is harmless.
And apart from working dogs, they didn’t all live in kennels
out of doors, not in my lifetime anyway.
We also had a Labrador, from working stock who was terrified of gunshot and would jump at the crack of a log in the fire!

Our lodger cat went missing last year around fireworks time after loads of notes dropped through letterboxes the last road I tried turned up trumps as one thinner ginger Tom with No nails and bedraggled appeared who was covered in cobwebs which looks like his diet for a week My other cat went loopy on Feliway.

I can remember a jumping back following me into the kitchen and my mum saying get out and take that thing with you .I think it's sad that children of today can't have the same bonfire night's that we had even potatoes cooked in bonfire which were burnt on outside and cold in middle ?

-------waiting for the 11pm depth charge before I can go to bed.

They weren't Tweedle, as far as I remember.

Jaxjackie and Callistemon, the bangers around when I was growing up, were nowhere near as noisy as some of the current ones.

Does anyone remember jumping jacks?

The boys would throw them and they moved around, making you jump out of the way.

I have hugely happy memories of playing with fireworks, especially bangers, when I was a child. One could buy small, very narrow ones, about the diameter of a pencil, complete with a reinforced end (much like a real detonator) - which were ideal for inserting into large field mushrooms or dried piles of cow poo, and blowing them to smithereens. When not committing fungicide and pooicide, we would decant the explosive powder into lengths of copper tubing stopped at one end and with a small touch-hole bored through - and fire marbles for miles! I say miles, because we never subsequently found any of the marbles afterwards... My most vivid memory of that period was the "Atomic Bomb" firework my father bought in Inverness and produced as a surprise to mark the finale of our family bonfire night - on an evening which was clear, calm and cold. I was permitted to light the blue touch paper and retire. After a bit of spluttering, the very expensive "Bomb" belched a few sparks and then appeared to go out. Just as Dad was contemplating the chances of getting a refund, his prize purchase shot a single projectile several hundred feet into the air before bursting in a blaze of stars which lit up the countryside below. The bang - or should I say BANG - reached ground level shortly afterwards, and it was by far the loudest noise I had ever heard. There followed a short period of awed silence, before the air was filled with the noise of hooves and trotters as every bit of livestock for miles around stampeded! Given that record, I find it difficult in my dotage to criticise others' pyrotechnic indiscretions.

Dogs in a kennel outside? Not where I grew up.

I loved fireworks.

On November 5th.

Not Halloween. Not on the Saturday/Sunday, before/after Halloween.

Not at Christmas

Not at NYE

I have a 7 year old JR who is still trembling after an onslaught this evening

Cold, wet Halloween

People are quite inane at times

Jaxjacky I guess when I was a kid there was no social media. The dog was often in a kennel outside and not as pampered as many pets are now.. so maybe more robust? Also far fewer dogs around generally.

So combo of increased firework use over prolonged periods and growth of dog ownership means the argument has grown !

I think that, years ago, they were let off on 5th November and possibly NYE.

PECS I love them too, always have done. I don’t remember, years ago, there being so many objections?

I have no objection to fireworks as long as they don’t sound like a nuclear explosion. They have been going off every evening here for the last two weeks. My poor cats are developing PTSD.

My personal opinion is that they should only be allowed in organised displays (without the ‘bombs’!) and the organiser should be trained and licensed. They are, after all, dealing with explosives.