Desensitizing Your Dog: 13 Tips Proposed by Pawrents to Emotionally Prepaw Your Pupper to Deal with Loud Noises

Laurent Shinar • Writer and Editor

Jul 25, 2026 7:30 AM EDT

The world is full of loud and scary noises, and whether your dog is reactive or not, there will almost always be one or two noises that send them for a loop. So before having to handle such a situation live, we wanted to give you stop tips to desensitize your pupper beforehand, thereby hopefully removing the reactivity to noise.

With this being such a serious subject we wanted to make sure we got the best pawssible resources to inform you on what and how to prepaw your pupper for the loud noises you know they cannot stand. So we turned to not only Reddit's r/reactivedogs subreddit but also r/OpenDogTraining and r/Dogtraining. This way we have managed to get pupper pawrent opinions on what has actually worked for them, as well as pawfessional opinions from vets and dog trainers who have all the techniques and tricks the books have to offer.

We won't give you too many spoilers here as there are some seriously special ideas amongst this list but we will say that it is high time that us pawrents start taking a little more responsibility for our doggos. The hooman world we live in is full of loud noises that are out of our control. Whether they happen but once a year or every day. So it is upon our shoulders to do what we can to prepaw our pups and make sure that these sounds no longer hurt them. And with gentle emotional training a lot can be done to turn a pupper who hides from the smallest of ambulance sirens to the dog who sits at a 4th of July display loving his life.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to start your Caturday with the funniest felines on the internet!

Add as a preferred
source on Google

01

via todaysraven

Black and white dog hiding in a box on its side
_{Dog depicted by model}
02

via Forsaken_Tune_7259
03

via Forsaken_Tune_7259
04

via a_naked_molerat
05

via Forsaken_Tune_7259
Ok, these are some great ideas and all point to the fact that exposure to these loud noises is one of the most effective ways to ensure that your doggo is not frightened by them when they happen for real. In the home you have control over the environment and can adjust volume and stop and start whenever. Meaning you can be reactive to your doggo’s reaction and adapt as you go. The goal is not to frighten them, but to show them that these noises are just that noise, and they cannot hurt them.
06

via Forsaken_Tune_7259
07

via a_naked_molerat
08

via Interr0gate
09

via Interr0gate
10

via a_naked_molerat
11

via Interr0gate
Ooooohhh ok this is really interesting. Much like with hooman children, the way that a pawrent reacts to a certain situation very much stipulates how the child or canine will perceive it. After all, the kid or canine's experience is new, they do not know how bad it is and how drastic their reaction should be. Therefore they take cues from their pawrents. If you show them that the situation is stressful, scary or painful that is exactly what they will feel. So a combination of this attitude alongside exposure therapy can make for quite the calm canine.
12

via a_naked_molerat
13

via Interr0gate
14

via todaysraven
15

via a_naked_molerat
16

via todaysraven
17

via todaysraven
18

via a_naked_molerat
19

via todaysraven
20

via todaysraven
21

via a_naked_molerat