Shooting and the effects on a Dog's hearing?

suzysparkle

suzysparkle

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Hi.

I'm hoping any of the shooting people can answer this. Not so long ago the farmer next to us and a few of the neighbours clubbed together and bought some clay pigeon shooting equipment. They shoot on the farmland next to the house. Initially, they used the field across the road and that was fine, we barely noticed, but more recently they have been shooting in the field next to our house.

This is tricky as the farm is right next to us and we have actually been invited shooting a couple of times which we did. They are very good to us, giving us free straw etc for the dogs so we can't really complain (although their farm collies crapping on our grass all the time really annoys me, especially as they feed them utterly rubbish food....yuck).

My question is this, if it's happening once a week is this likely to damage a Dog's hearing?? Ours all live outside and there are times when they are shooting about 100 yards away. It tends to go on for say an hour. Other than 2 of them (our eldest girl and one of the Collies) who I bring into the house, the dogs don't appear to be bothered by the noise. Oddly, the couple of times we have been shooting with them we were the only people wearing ear defenders. Given they clearly don't care about protecting their own ears they would probably fall about laughing if I said I was concerned about our Dogs. It would be very very hard to mention this to them and there is no way I am causing bad feeling with the neighbours by asking them not to shoot in that field.

Thanks for any thoughts / experiences people may have. Bringing them all into the house isn't an option.
 
Tbh I've never though about it! I suppose they have inbuilt ear defenders, their ears :p

Unless a gundog is a peg dog they are never that close to gunshot. Beating dogs are not close at all, and picking-up dogs stand back away from the guns.

I don't use ear defenders, even when standing next to my husband when he is shooting, however I am a bit deaf :rolleyes: I could use this argument when my dogs are having a selective hearing moment though ;)
 
We have a clay shoot almost next door to us and they can shoot all day and up to 4 days a week in summer. Luckily the ponies take no notice of the noise, but the dog goes mad, he barks runs and is generally unable to understand he can not stop the noise. He is however a dog that is very noise sensitive and the first one to react this way.

As we have put up with this through a series of dogs, and my sister with her dogs lives opposite, non of us have noticed it affecting anyone or animals hearing.

There is a limit to how loud legally the noise can be, and our local council after pressure for local community took the shoot to court where it was declared a statutory nuisance and time limits were put on how often they can shoot and how much shot they can use as this apparently can affect the level of noise.
 
Our dogs are shot over in training and in competition (for gun sureness) and also have switches going off around them in training and I can't recall anyone's dogs experiencing a hearing issue. The switch does my head in though!!!
 
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