Oceanna - that is good advice. Unfortunately, some dogs, and cats too (I have one) that are just frightened by thunder, fireworks or any other loud noises that do not regularly occur in their world. While we've tried to do the treats when the storms or fireworks are happening, it doesn't help with the cat or the pup who just become unhinged by these noises. The thing I find strange is that both of my dogs have the same mother in common. That said, their personalities couldn't be different. My younger boy (the one with the noise issues) is already on a prescription medication for anxiety reaction issues, yet when there are storms, he gets freaked out. I can tell when we are going to have the storms long before the sky even darkens. My younger lab starts early in the afternoon with the anxious behavior. I guess he can sense these storms, when even the meteorologists aren't predicting bad weather for our area, lol. My older guy doesn't react at all to any noise and never has. I hope the treat motivation is helpful to more people. We also use the tv or radio (a bit louder than usual) during storms as well. Also, downplaying and/or ignoring the reaction can be helpful too. Our vet definitely suggests that we not get pulled into the anxiety reaction. Thanks for posting this very helpful info.

We always had them when we were kids. Supervised of course, but with Reservation shops in all 4 directions, the only thing limiting what could be bought was the budget. It's been a lot of years since we've done much with fireworks ourselves. Our city would have a display (not this year) that we didn't even have to go out for, we could view it from above and across the river at the living room windows. Current city restrictions are 9 AM until midnight today only for igniting any kind of fireworks and all the 'good stuff' is banned now. I've been hearing fireworks noises for the last three days though, and off and on all day today.

I did not hear from the former member I sent to and nothing was returned to me. Sue, many of us belong to this group and also FOTESS (Friends of the Earth Simple Swaps). You are welcome to sign up to be a member there and swap with us for August if you like. We have games for the month and the swap is just to send a card and a recipe - although you will see there is a specific theme. I'm adding the link here. You can play the games as a member without being required to do the swap and vice versa. Time to sign up is soon so please check it out if you may be interested. https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6291026/august-fotess-swap-fables-fairy-folk-tales-legends-mythology#n=12

I will try to stick a few pictures of the wildlife garden on here. We are just going to let most of it go because there is no way we can keep it watered enough in this heat, plus we are on water rationing.. This is one of the flower beds. You can see that it is about gone. This is along the hwy, I am parked down in the bar ditch. This bed has not had hose water this year. I am surprised how well the zinnias have held up. The sun flowers behind may not live long enough to bloom. There is another bed larger than this one about 50 feet back to the left, but the deer have eaten the sun flowers, in that bed they were not protected by an electric fence. This is some of the peas and tomatoes, their future does not look well either. Peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers, I doubt that we can keep them alive either. Water melons, peas and sweet potatoes. I doubt that they will live. Cantaloupe, we are going to try to save these.