Run an animation at button click

Question

Im developing a game and this is the concept:
A target is moving at a constant speed (i used a thread which sleeps for a number of milli.sec )
Once the FIRE button is clicked a stick moves to a particular distance ans hits the target
(For stick ,I used a sprite which performs an animation which is 10 frames long ) I want this animation to occur once ,every time the user click the fire button.
The problem is that stick animation does not always run smoothly, sometimes it runs for 3 or 4 frames and stops.
I have given part of the code below. please tell me how to run 2 threads without one depending on the other.
  public void keyPressed(int keyCode) {
    int action = getGameAction(keyCode);
    if (action == UP) {
    else if (action == RIGHT) {
    else if (action == DOWN) {
    else if (action == LEFT) {
    else if (action == FIRE) {
      isHit = true;
      repaint();
  public void keyReleased(int keyCode) {
    isHit = false;
public void run() {
    int i = 0;
    while (true) {
      try {
        repaint();
        sprite_target.nextFrame();
        thread_target.sleep(200);
        if (isHit) {
          int k = 0;
          while(k<11){
            repaint();
            sprite_stick.nextFrame();
            thread_stick.sleep(20);
            k++;
            if(k==10){
              isHit = false;
              break;
      catch (InterruptedException ex) {
  }

Answer 1

on Fire event, start a new Thread or call a new class who implements Runnable and
start this thread
public class AnimationHandler implements Runnable{
  // don't forget try and catch
  // you can also put a MAX_PRIORITY to this thread !
  public void startAnim(){
    thread.start();
  // the animation will be stopped when it is finished
  // you can do it in the run() method
  public void run(){
    while(playing){
public void keyPressed(int keyCode) {
  else if (action == FIRE) {
    AnimationHandler ah=new AnimationHandler();
    ah.startAnim();  
}