Pet Safety During Christmas
- What to Watch For
The upcoming Holiday Season is an exciting time for
everyone. Parents are turning into machines, capable
of walking for hours without food or water, just to
find that perfect gift. Children are turning into angels,
rarely talking back or getting into trouble for fear
of a giant lump of coal being delivered instead of gifts.
Your pets are also affected as they see things around
them change. No more quiet living room for them to lounge
in, replaced by a big flashing tree with bright lights,
shiny tinsel and boxes covered with ribbons and wrapping
paper. Gone are the tasty chew toys that usually litter
the floor, replaced with carpet fresheners and cleaners
for when guests arrive.
During the holiday season, you'll want to keep an eye
on your pets. Suddenly the house will be filled with
flashy, shiny, tasty, glittery, pine-smelling, bright,
noisy, crackly items, sure to intrigue most pets especially
cats and dogs.
Dogs that are already chewers will find the Holiday
season full of exciting new things to chew on. There's
strings of lights, ornaments on the tree or ones that
have fallen down, nice, new, cool smelling boxes with
wrapping paper. All these things are hard for a curious
dog to pass by.
Cats love Christmas. They especially love ribbons and
bows, tinsel and tree ornaments. There is many a story
of emergency trips to the vet to remove yards of ribbon
from inside a cat. Many cats enjoy the taste of ribbons
and quite a few cats love playing with the tinsel, batting
it around until they can eat it.
In order to avoid any costly and potentially fatal
accidents this Christmas, make sure to take a few precautions
before leaving your pet alone near a tree.
Keep most of your presents put away, unless your dog
has been trained. Maybe this would be a good year to
start that training? Put one fully wrapped present under
the tree and see what happens. A couple of sniffs and
your dog disregards it? Great. If your dog sees this
as another chew toy, then you can step in and sort that
out. You want to make sure your dog can resist temptation
of else you might find yourself at a Vet, trying to
get ribbons and bows and cardboard out of your dog.
No easy task I can assure you!
Try and keep tinsel out of the equation if you have
cats. We all know it looks great on a tree, but it creates
a huge problem when cats ingest it. Try placing it further
up on the tree, so that strings don’t hang down to where
they can paw at it. If you can do without, even better.
Tinsel is easily and readily consumed by cats, the shine
and the glitter is hard to resist for any curious kitty.
Make sure to keep an eye out for any other hazards.
Ornaments are pretty, but some are made of glass and
can shatter into very small pieces when they get broken.
Christmas tree bulbs are enjoyed by some dogs, I personally
know of a dog that ate almost an entire string of Christmas
lights, enjoying the “popping” of the bulbs in his mouth.
Keep an eye out and be diligent. If you see your pet
even thinking about chewing on one of these new “toys”,
make sure you take that as a chance to train your pet
to stay away. Not only will you be able to enjoy your
Christmas without coming home and having your tree all
over the living room, but you won’t have to make expensive
trips to the Vet during holiday season!
Happy Holidays!
Joe Howard
-Proud owner of a dog, two cats and three chickens.
-Check out the Awesome Pets Blog for more tips on Pets.
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