[dentstudent (OP)]

Why should this particular thing not associated with their daily life send them into such a frenzy? They don't go for other, more terrestrial oddities, so why ballons in particular? (Or are they actually aliens amongst us who are warning us of an attack by creatures in strangely hovering intergalactic spacecraft?)........

[lyner]

Most dogs are plain loopy.
There's no reason behind most of their behaviour .
They can't be all that daft, though, if they can sucker humans into feeding them every day.

[dentstudent (OP)]

But I suspect that often the humans are dafter than the dogs!

[paul.fr]

Was the dog in the balloons basket at the time?

[dentstudent (OP)]

Yes, it was a Basket Hound  []

[chris]

You're so right; our dog used to have five fits whenever he saw a hot air balloon coming! WE think it was the noise of the burners that set him off.

[alancalverd]

The effect is very species-dependent.

When I flew balloons we kept very high around horses, who got upset if a balloon appeared above the horizon 3 miles away, regardless of ambient traffic and aircraft noise, and were prone to injure themselves in a panic if you got within half a mile.

We mainly encountered dog noise in the evening. Approaching a village, one dog would announce that something odd was happening, and the barking gradually spread around the balloon track with different barks apparently saying "look up" "what's that" and "I can't see anything - what's the fuss about?" 

Sheep and cattle, on the other hand, just retreated to the far corner of a field if you were dumb enough to land in it. Why dumb? Because they eat aircraft! They tend to try various bits of the balloon envelope  and trample over everything, but they will completely demolish a fabric glider by licking the acetate dope. One famous incident in Scotland resulted in the pilot buying the cow and eating it over the following two years - revenge served hot, with onions.

My old balloon had previously been used for filming wild animals in Kenya, where it had no obvious effect on the behavior of herds of wildebeeste, giraffe or their predators - much better platform than a helicopter.

I've resurrected this thread because BBC4 showed "Ballon" last night, based on the true story of an escape from East Germany by a home-made balloon. Strongly recommended for 2 hours of thrills and reasonable technical detail if it's on i-player.