It starts at about half past five, before it is even properly dark. One crack, somewhere over the back gardens, too far away to be anything to do with you.
Your dog is up before you have registered it. Not barking. Just standing, in the middle of the room, head slightly tilted, one paw lifted off the carpet as though the floor has become something to be suspicious of. You say their name in the voice you use for nothing else, the one that comes out slightly too bright, and they look at you, and then they look past you, at the window.
Then the second one goes.
By seven o'clock they have made a decision. Not the bed, which cost a fortune and sits in the corner looking expensive. Not the sofa, where they are allowed, and where you are. They have gone behind the sofa, into the gap between its back and the wall, a space roughly four inches wider than they are, and they have folded themselves into it.
You crouch down to look. There is a wedge of dog in there, chin flat to the floorboards, eyes open, watching the skirting board. They are not shaking, particularly. They are just very, very still, in the way that animals go still when they have run out of better ideas.
And this is the bit nobody warns you about
You cannot explain it. That is the whole problem.
You can explain almost everything else, in the rough way that works between the two of you. You can explain that the car means the woods. You can explain that your coat means a walk, and that the other coat means you are going out alone and will be back. You have a sound for dinner and a sound for bed and a sound for get off that, and they have learned all of them, and the two of you have built something that functions remarkably well for a conversation between two species.
But you cannot explain that it is the fifth of November. You cannot explain that someone three streets over has bought a box of fireworks from a supermarket, and that this will go on for about an hour, and that nothing is coming for either of you.
So you sit on the floor with your back against the sofa, which is not where anybody sits, and you put one hand into the gap, and they put their nose against it. And that is the entire extent of what you are able to offer. A hand in a gap, and the fact of being in the room.
It turns out that is not nothing. They stay pressed against your fingers for the whole of it.
What you do the next morning
The next morning they are fine. Insultingly fine. They eat breakfast, they stand at the door with a lead in their mouth, they roll in something on the green, and the whole evening appears to have left them entirely.
It has not left you. You find yourself, a week later, looking at the gap behind the sofa and thinking about it. And then, because this is what people who love a dog actually do, you quietly start making the gap better.
You move the bed. Not into the corner where it looks tidy, but somewhere smaller, lower, with a wall on two sides, because that is clearly what they were asking for. You put something of yours in it, a jumper you were not using. You work out which room is quietest and you leave the door open to it, every evening, from the end of October.
None of that stops the fireworks. It just means that next year, when the first one goes off at half past five, they already have somewhere to go that they chose on a quiet afternoon rather than somewhere they ended up in a panic.
If you want the practical version of all this, written for the week before rather than the night itself, we have a guide to getting a dog through fireworks season. It covers the things that genuinely help, and the timing, which matters more than people expect.
And if the bed is the bit you have been meaning to sort out, our Waterproof Crate Bed starts at £26.95 and is the one that fits into an awkward space beside a wall, which is usually the space they want. The Padded Bed with a Removable Washable Cover starts at £39.95 if you would rather something softer to sink into. Both wash, which on a night like that is not a small consideration.
Mostly, though, it is the hand in the gap. Keep doing that.
Free UK delivery on orders over £30. If your dog's fear of noise is severe, or getting worse each year, please talk to your vet. There is a great deal more help available than most owners realise, and it works best started early.