Holidays can be stressful for your pet too!
With the holiday season is here, setting our pets up for success is the key to surviving the guests coming over and the other temptations that abound. Here are some tips to keeping the holiday season peaceful for our four-legged family members.
Avoid Table Scraps
Keeping your pets well fed with the food that they eat the other 364 days of the year will help to avoid unwanted visitors to the dinner table. Making sure children and guests are aware that feeding from the table can cause your pet to forget table manners can be helpful in keeping you and your pet safe.
There are a lot of yummy table foods that can be very harmful to our pets. According to irresistiblepets.com here is a list of other foods to keep our pets away from include:
- Grapes/raisins
- Chocolate
- Onions/Garlic
- Coffee
- Butter
- Bread Dough
- Alcohol
- Corn on the cob
- Sage
- Stuffing
- Mushrooms
- Fat Trimmings or other fatty foods
A few bits of white turkey meat sprinkled in your pet’s dinner is perfectly okay, but avoid turkey skin/drippings and bones in order to keep your family at home instead of in the animal emergency room.
Prepare Your Pet for Visitors
Even if your pet doesn’t have a history of anxiety, a house full of guests and foods that normally don’t come every day of the year can be scary. If you sense that your pet may be nervous while your guests are over, make a quiet place for them. Isolating them to a room or an area where guests won’t be might help make both your guests and your pet more comfortable. Classical music or background noise can also be very helpful in calming your pet. This will also prevent them from running out the front door with so many people entering and exiting.
The holiday season is a very fun time for everyone, and making all family members comfortable can help avoid messy situations and keep everyone in good spirits and safe. As always, if you have any concerns or questions, please give us a call at 773-725-0260!
