Every time this time of year, I wonder how people will deal with their animals over the 4th of July.
The noisy holiday is a day that has to be planned for. My friend Mabel is having friends visit her from Oakland, with their three dogs! The visitors want to get away from the noise. I'm just hoping that Mabel's German Shepherd won't eat the three dogs, like hot dogs. I know it will be too hot to put them all outside.
I only once went to celebrate the 4th of July with a good looking guy and left my dog Eclipse by himself in the house. I felt guilty for the entire day and actually left the picnic early. Not to mention that my date was as dumb as a post so going home to my dog was definitely more fun.
In Sri Lanka, where I lived for 14years, the 4th of July wasn't celebrated but they had their own Independence Day celebration. On February 4. Fireworks, pots and pans beating, and small crackers snapped away, rolling over the landscape like a blanket of noise. My Rhodesian Ridgeback, Toby, would jump on my four-poster bed and would shiver, lay down, get up, turn in circles, until the noise ceased. Hours of it, until people ran out of crackers and energy for the celebration.
One year in Lake County, my neighbor let off an M80. Boom! It practically shook my house. Both Toby and I jumped. I called my neighbor and scolded him! Pleaded that he not set off another. I wonder what he will do this year and how my cats will react? They'll probably head under the bed. Tough to calm a cat.
I worry about people with horses. One woman told me she uses fly masks on her horses that covers their ears and stuffs cotton in their ears to dull the sound. Plus she uses a tranquilizer that she gets from her vet.
Another woman told me that one of her horses took out a fence a few years back.
Val Sheme Stallings, a certified dog trainer in Lakeport suggested: Stay home with pets if possible. Or have a pet sitter come to care for the pet. Keep pets inside. Use a locating collar. Lock all gates tightly. Play music, a TV or other noise that could drown out the fireworks noise. Get a tranquilizer from vet. A thunder jacket, among other suggestions.
I've been told that some people find fireworks unpopular in Lake County because of the threat of wildfires, Lakeport hasn't banned the sale of fireworks because the money made benefits the swim team at the local high school. Plus a measure adopted by voters to ban fireworks can only be overturned or changed by the voters. A measure needs to be placed on the ballot through the voter initiative process, or the City Council can place a measure on the ballot.
A lot of red tape to get a ban.
According to Lakeport Police Chief, the groups that make the money from fireworks sales are the Channel Cats swim team, Clear Lake High School Booster Club, Lake County Realtors Scholarship Committee and Terrace School PTO.
I tried remembering past Fourth of Julys from childhood…our small Michigan town of 5,000 always had a parade that ended at the town cemetery. There were ice cream bars and bikes with red, white and blue crape paper in the spokes.
Even before then there was the entire family picnics, with aunts and uncles and cousins in the backyard and my mom serving blueberries, sour cream and brown sugar and how delicious it was (of course I'd remember the food!)
I don't ever remember fireworks.
What's a girl to do?…survive the heatwave with my swamp cooler blasting, surrounded by my cats. Maybe eating blueberries, sour cream and brown sugar.
Lucy Llewellyn Byard is currently a columnist for the Record-Bee. To contact her, email lucywgtd@gmail.com
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