Holiday Safety for Your Pets
While you prepare to celebrate the holidays with friends and family, you can’t forget your furry companions. If you plan to have a Christmas tree or light your Christmas decorations, you should keep a watchful eye on your pets during the holiday to prevent accidents.
- Allow them to enjoy their alone time
Your home will get busy during the holiday, with friends and family exchanging food and gifts, so you should remember that strangers can easily stress your pets. Besides dealing with strangers, your pets also have to navigate through the holiday decorations that seem to invade their living area.
Whether your pets are sociable or not, they can easily become anxious or overexcited when your home has a stream of guests. You can keep them in one of the rooms so that they can enjoy their alone time away from the strangers. The garage is a safe place where they can escape from all the activities happening around your home. For cats, you can store them in a cardboard box.
- Keep holiday decorations away from their reach
Remember that holiday decorations are likely to pose a threat to your pets. Lightening decorations can potentially break inside your cat’s or dog’s mouth when they ingest it. On the other hand, chew-happy pets can easily get electrocuted, and ornaments fallen from the tree, can cut the pets feet. As an alternative, you can use plastic bulbs and place decorations at the top of the Christmas tree where pets can’t reach.
Since most ornaments are small enough, they might pose choking hazards and may lead to internal damage if swallowed. For that reason, you should keep a watchful eye on your pets as they play around the Christmas displays.
- Keep them away from holiday goodies and treats
One common thing that is abundant during the holidays is food. Your pets will want to get their fair share of the delicacies. However, most human treats are not good for pets. For instance, chocolate can damage your dog’s digestive system, as well as cookies, candies and other artificial treats. Fatty trimmings, grapes, onions and cage are dangerous for pets as well.
- Don’t allow your pets to drink the water tree
As cats are notoriously curious, they will want to taste the sparkling water on the corner of the Christmas tree. The water found in a tree stand can be harmful for pets as it is infested with toxic bacteria that can cause your pets to become ill. You can cover the tree stand when you are out running errands so that pets don’t drink water from the stand.
Conclusion
If you suspect your dog has ingested something toxic during the holiday, you should visit your veterinarian immediately.
References: The dodo, AVMA, Petmd
Copyright: Local Value
