Every year during the Chinese New Year holiday, many dog owners lost their dogs due to fire crackers. In spite of the ban on fireworks, many still play fireworks during the CNY and the fireworks these days are much more advance and louder.

Many dogs, by nature, fear loud noise such as thunder and fireworks and there is a great tendency that they are runaway whenever they ear these loud noise. Hence it is important to restrain your dog or keep them indoor during these period.

I was just told last week that one of the fellow owner of a protection dog ( a malinois) he recently purchased at RM 26,000 lost his when neighbour play fireworks which is too loud for the dog to handle. Many of these protection dogs are trained to get used to loud noise such as gun shot and yet they run away out of fear. Fireworks these day are so powerful and continue to blast for about a minute and continue blasting surely post a great threat to the dog. No wonder they will run away if they can.

Related article on the STAR

The Star, 4 Feb 2006

KUCHING: The Year of the Dog started badly for dog owners here, with several of them searching anxiously for their lost pets.

They said their dogs had run away from home, frightened by the noise of firecrackers and fireworks.

Some went to the animal shelter run by the Sarawak Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA), off the Kuching-Serian road, to look for their missing pets.

“They came crying, saying they had lost their dogs,” said Elizabeth Lim, who is in charge of the animals at SSPCA.

“They wanted to check if their pets had been caught and sent to the animal shelter by the local authorities or by some good-hearted people.”

She said once dogs panicked, they might hide anywhere – in a drain, a corner of a building or under a bridge.

She advised owners not to limit their search to the immediate neighborhood as there were cases in the past where dogs had taken shelter in the houses of strangers several kilometres away.