Fourth of July fireworks are a dog’s greatest nightmare, and every year, canines go missing after becoming spooked by the noise.
Normally, it takes days to find these stray dogs, but a dog named Rajah figured out how to return home — and even rang the doorbell to let her mother know she was safe.
Rajah has always struggled with pyrotechnics and thunderstorms. The rescue dog enjoys snuggling with her mother, chasing animals in the backyard, and sunning herself on the deck. “She gets scared easily by loud noises,” Mary Lynn Whitacre told The Dodo. “We don’t know what happened to her before we adopted her from the shelter, but she is a very sensitive girl.”
Rajah was outside in her yard on June 27th when her neighbors blew off a firecracker, scaring her. “Right after I heard the fireworks, I went outside to get her from the backyard and she was gone,” Whitacre told me. “She had climbed our fence and ran off to go somewhere safe.”
For Whitacre, this was the worst-case situation. Whitacre and her family had only recently moved into the house and were concerned that Rajah would become disoriented.
Rajah was outside somewhere, alone and terrified.
“We searched for her for hours and asked people for assistance,” Whitacre explained. “Around 1 a.m., we decided to pull over and assumed that someone had brought her inside their house because none of us had seen her. We planned to phone all of the local shelters in the morning, and we had already posted about her missing on social media and other lost pet websites.”
Whitacre went to bed, worried about her puppy. Then, about 3 a.m., she heard the doorbell ring and scratching on the front door. Rajah had returned and learned out how to press the buzzer.
“She thought she would be in trouble and sulked inside, but we just cleaned her off and let her sleep in the bed with us,” Whitacre recollects. “We don’t know what she did while she was gone… “Who knows what she did!”
While Rajah’s story ended nicely, it serves as a good reminder to think twice before putting off fireworks and to ensure your dogs’ safety during those noisy times of year.