Holly Hosler of Pikesville returned home from the Inner Harbor fireworks last year to find her basset-beagle mix, Leslie, on a closet shelf, still hiding among her husband's T-shirts. "We still don't know how she got up there. It would have been interesting to witness."
Ann Coleman of Hampden tried to tranquilize her pit bull-lab mix, Stella, last year but all that did was make the poor dog stagger clumsily around, trying to escape the noise.
"I felt so bad, I'm not doing that again," says Coleman. Fireworks are frequent in Hampden, so now she simply takes Stella outside to assure her that there is nothing out there her mistress needs to be protected from. "She just wants to know where this thing is so she can tell it to go away."
