Fireworks and Moodswings

Prada does not like fireworks.
Yes, I have had her over two 4th of July holidays now, and yes, I am just learning this fact. The first 4th I had her we stayed home and abstained from brightly colored explosives. This year, however, I tried taking her out to a show. I assumed that since she had slept through loud flashbangy movies before in both regular theatres and IMAX dome theatres that she would be quite alright with flashbangies up in the sky. I was wrong. Prada does not like flashbangies in the sky. My friends and I drove down to Bridgestreet Mall, an outdoor mall around a couple of manmade lakes, and set ourselves up at a reasonable distance from the launch point where we could see and hear the explosions without damaging our necks by craning them backwards but close enough with a good view. Prada jumped into my lap, then my boyfriend’s lap, and then tried to dive behind us and become one with the dirt. So my boyfriend and I abandoned the rest of our party and took Prada back through the mall to another of the manmade lakes and discovered we could still see the fireworks from there. The thing with dogs and fireworks is that the noises and lights are so dissociated from each other the dog just hears this horrendous loud bang and boom concert but can’t figure out where it’s coming from so reacts with a fight/flight response. Fear of the unknown. Prada was very, very clingy for the rest of that evening and the next day. Poor baby.

So apparently dogs have mood swings. Yeah, weird, but it’s true. I called it a “willful phase”, my roommate called it “being moody”, and all the resources I searched through referred to it as “a phase”. Basically, the dog gets moody, a bit lackluster, temperamental, and willful (sounds like a teenager!) for about a week, week and a half. Usually wears off, or the dog can be snapped out of it by an unusually sharp correction followed by intense praise. I noticed Prada wasn’t as excited about working, not as playful as usual, and kind of shunned a couple of her favorite people most of last week. She was a bit slack in her work and in general a bit ornery. After a particularly sharp correction, though, she perked up a considerable amount, and when that correction and an appropriate reperformance of the act (I think we were coming to a downcurb) she literally jumped into my lap she was so thrilled she’d done it right. When we stopped in a building to wait for an appointment I had I took a knee and started petting and praising her and all of a sudden she was in my lap again and then ensued an intense PDA session with lots of kissing and cuddling 