Halloween Pet Safety Tips for Your Dog or CatHalloween Safety Tips for Keeping Your Dog or Cat Safe

Even though Halloween can be a fun and festive time for your children and family, in many cases that is not t same for your pet. In fact, for many pets Halloween can be a nightmare for these family members. Stress and danger can be very real for many pets. Please take the time to read this article and hopefully your pet will have a happy Halloween also.

 

Candy and Halloween Treats Safety Tips:

“All forms of chocolate, especially baking or dark chocolate, can be dangerous, even lethal, for dogs and cats.
Symptoms of chocolate poisoning may include vomiting, diarrhea, rapid breathing, increased heart rate, and seizures.
Halloween candies containing the artificial sweetener xylitol can also be poisonous to dogs. Even small amounts of xylitol can cause a sudden drop in blood sugar and subsequent loss of coordination and seizures. And while xylitol toxicity in cats has yet to be established, it’s better to be safe than sorry.”

Halloween Safety Tip – Confine Your Pet – Keep Inside and Away from the Door

Keep your pet inside. Don’t put outside. It has been known that pranksters have teased, injured, stolen, and even killed pets on Halloween night. Be careful and avoid this potential tragedy.

Keep your pet away from the door. Your door be constantly opening and closing on Halloween. Also strangers will be dressed in unusual costumes and yelling loudly for their candy. This could be scary for your pet. Dogs being territorial may become anxious and growl at innocent trick-or-treaters. Putting your dog or cat in a secure room away from the front door will also prevent them from darting outside into the night and who wants to be searching for a lost pet on Halloween?

Especially, If your pet is scared of strangers or has a tendency to bite, be sure to put it in different room when trick-or-treating is occurring or give your pet a safe place to hide.

If you have an outside cat, keep the cat inside a few days before and after Halloween. Do not let cat to be outside on Halloween. Black cats are especially susceptible to pranksters and most humane shelters do not adopt out black cats in October.

Plants and Pumpkins Halloween Pet Safety Tips

All pumpkins, corn and any other Halloween plants need to be out of reach to all pets. Even though these are generally nontoxic, these can induce gastrointestinal upset if your pets should ingest them in large quantities. Also, Intestinal blockage can even occur, especially with corn cobs, if large pieces are ingested.

Also don’t keep lit pumpkins around your pet. They could possibly knock it over, burn themself or even start a house fire. A curious kitten is especially at risk of getting burned or singed by candle flame.

Halloween Decorations Pet Safety Tips for Dogs and Cats

If you have electical decorations be sure wires and electrical cords out of reach. If chewed, your pour pet chews on the decortions it could be cut from shards of glass or plastic. If the electricl cord is chewed the peourt could get possible life-threatening electrical shock.
If you use glow sticks and have glow jewelry, be sure to keep it away from your pets. Even though the liquid material in these products is non-toxic, the taste is really bad and will makes your pet salivate profusely and act weird.

Halloween Pet Costumes Safety Tips

It is best not to put a pet in a costume unless you know that they love being dressed up. Also place the costume on your pet the before Halloween. This will give a chance to see how your pet reacts to the costume. Take the time to get your pet accustomed to the costume before Halloween, and don’t leave your pet without supervision while wearing a costume.

If your pet gets distressed, becomes nervous, or demonstrate other abnormal behavior, just let go in their “birthday suit”. Use a simple festive bandanna instead.

“The ASPCA recommends that you don’t put your dog or cat in a costume unless you know he or she loves it. If you do dress up your pet for Halloween, make sure the costume does not limit his or her movement, sight or ability to breathe, bark or meow. Check the costume carefully for small, dangling or easily chewed-off pieces that could present a choking hazard. Ill-fitting outfits can get twisted on external objects or your pet, leading to injury.”

Pet Halloween Safety Tip – Have Proper ID

While opening and closing the door for trick-or-treaters, be diligent that your dog or cat doesn’t rush out the door. Just in case, be sure your pet is wearing proper identification, a collar with ID tags (be sure that the information is up to date) or a microchip can be your best way of finding a lost pet.


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