The Christmas holiday season is upon us and can be both a very joyous and stressful time for both us and our furry family.  Here are a few tips to ensure your pets are safe and comfortable and can enjoy the season.

If you are having friends or family come to your home to celebrate ensure that you make them aware how to approach and interact with your pets.  For example, let people know if your pets don’t like certain parts of their bodies touched or if your pets are shy and prefer to approach people when they are ready rather than be approached.

Ensure pets are comfortable by following these tips:

• Exercise your pets before guests arrive
• Set them up a comfortable spot where they can escape the noise of chatter, present unwrapping or popping crackers
• A good safe space for them to escape could be in a quiet room or corner
• Make sure pets always have a way to move to their safe space
• Put their bed in the safe space and give them familiar objects such as toys or treats
• Play soft calming music in this space

If you decorate your house, make sure decorations are pet safe by:

• Making sure you don’t have any poisonous plants such as lilies, poinsettias, and mistletoe in reach
• Avoid glass or breakable ornaments as they can be knocked off and can break in pets’ mouths causing severe injuries
• Keep tinsel, bows, and ribbons out of reach. If ingested by pets they can block intestines
• After unwrapping presents make sure papers, ribbons are put away out of reach
• Anchor Christmas trees so they cannot be knocked over
• Keep electrical lights and cords out of reach so they can’t be chewed and cause an electrical shock

Make sure that pets don’t enjoy too many of your Christmas treats:

• Ask friends/family to let you know if any packages or gifts include chocolates so that you don’t put them under the tree. Dogs have good sense of smell and will try to break into them, and chocolate is poisonous for your dog.
• Don’t feed table scraps of fatty foods to your pets as they may cause upset stoaches or pancreatitis. Some specific dangers foods are alcohol, avocado, chocolate, mince pies, Christmas pudding, coffee, cooked bones, currants, fruit cake, grapes, gravy, ham, lollies, macadamia nuts, marinades, onion, pork, raisins or sugarless gum.
• Don’t hang edible decorations such as popcorn garlands or candy canes on the tree as they provide unnecessary temptations and may cause pets to knock over the tree

Ensure your pets don’t miss out on all the fun by creating some treats especially for them and either create a treat treasure hunt or put some treats in a Kong.  Play special games with them that they enjoy!

Remember that if you have travel plans over Christmas to contact us as soon as possible to make sure we can fit your pets into our schedule.   We are booking up fast so give us a call today!