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Preparing Your Home for a New Dog

March 15, 2018 by Mandy

It is always an exciting prospect to welcome a new dog into the family. However, it also takes a lot of preparation and commitment in making sure that your home is safe and comfortable for your new pet. There are a few things to take into consideration in preparing your abode for a new four-legged resident, especially for first-time dog owners.

Pet-proof your surroundings. Dogs are just like little children – they are extremely active, curious, and energetic. They explore their surroundings with enthusiasm, sometimes to their detriment. That is why you need to keep them safe by preventing potential hazards and accidents.

Just as you would childproof a home, review your home’s layout and anticipate possible danger zones. These are places where your dog may get stuck or injured, such as doorways and cabinets. Keep fragile items out of reach and stow away poisonous materials and chemicals. If needed, cover electrical outlets and place bump guards on sharp corners.

Prepare your pet’s personal belongings. Welcome your new pet by establishing his own little place within the home. You can choose to give him a soft bed, pillow, or an indoor cage. Of course, don’t forget to get a dog collar and other stuff like their own food bowl, water feeder, toys, etc. A great idea is to personalize these items with their very own name. You’d be surprised just how your dog will take to these things well.

Depending on your dog’s breed and the kind of lifestyle you live, you might also need to get him other accessories like a dog stroller or carrier especially if you plan on going out often. If you are bringing in a puppy, you will need additional items particularly suited for rearing and training him.

Stock up on supplies. Part of your new dog’s personal belongings is a reliable supply of food, snacks, and other consumables such as medicine, vitamins, supplements, and the like. You wouldn’t want to run out of these items in the middle of an emergency. It’s best to stock up on at least a week’s worth of consumables.

To prepare your dog in case of calamities such as earthquakes, typhoons, flooding, and similar disasters, it would be wise to come up with an emergency grab bag that contains essential items and supplies. Include copies of important documents and identification papers, as well as your personal information so that you can be located in case he gets lost.

Keep clean and organized. Sanitized surroundings are beneficial not only for a house’s human occupants but for pets as well. If you are bringing home a dog for the first time, especially a puppy, you will need to step up the cleanliness of your environment. This helps prevent diseases and parasites from afflicting your dog.

Assign a place where all pet-related items can be located and kept, such as a dedicated cupboard in the kitchen or a large, covered bin. Regularly wash and sanitize pet items such as toys, beds, pillows, blankets, and the like. Make sure to housebreak your pet as soon as possible so that he also learns his part in keeping the home clean. If he does pee or poop indoors, clean it up well and immediately – don’t let such waste fester.

New dog, new life

For many, a new dog in the home really means a new lifestyle. It takes adjustment not only on the part of the animal, but mostly on your part as his human. Having a pet is not all fun and games, but also serious dedication to the welfare of your companion. By ensuring that your home is pet-friendly and ready, you will see that your relationship with your dog will deepen and develop into a truly satisfying and fulfilling one.

How You Can Be a Great Pet Owner for a Small Dog

February 23, 2018 by Mandy

Small dogs require a little more attention and some different care techniques than some larger breeds. Be aware of what they can and cannot eat, special attention to exercise is important for small dogs, and watching for health issues in your little partner is very important. The following tips will help your small dog to have a long, healthy and happy life.

Feeding a Small Breed Dog

Smaller dogs are cute and can be a lot of fun to play with and care for. Dachshund puppies are some of the most fun pets to have. A puppy from a smaller breed needs to be fed about three to four times a day with a calorie rich food. If you are not sure which brand to feed your new puppy, call and ask your veterinarian (the puppy’s breeder is a good resource too.) The reason behind your need to feed them this way, is their fast metabolism. When they are adults, they will need to be fed more calories per pound than larger dogs because of how their metabolism works.

If your dog is not getting enough calories, they can develop hypoglycemia (a drop in blood sugar.) Toy breed puppies that are 6-12 weeks old, can develop this potentially fatal condition. This is why proper nutrition for small dogs are so important.

Dog food that contains antioxidants (zinc, lycopene, beta-carotene, and vitamins,) will help your dog lives healthier as they grow older. It is especially important to feed small breeds food with antioxidants because they live longer than bigger dogs. Anyone who is going to be around your dog needs to know what foods should not be fed to them. Chocolate, coffee, grapes, and mushrooms can make your dog sick.

Exercising Your Puppy

Excessive barking or chewing on anything and everything in your home is two indications that your dog is bored and probably needs more activity. Small breed dogs can have higher energy levels than some larger dogs. The first thing you should do when you get home from work or school is to play with and walk your dog. Some small dogs are not built well for long walks, so playing with another dog or playing a game of fetch is a better exercise for them.

Watch for Potential Health Issues

Make sure you get all recommended vaccinations for your small dog when recommended by the vet. Heartworm prevention is something you should talk over with the health professionals at your vet’s office. They should also give you guidelines about the breed you own and what kind of health problems that breed may develop. It would also be a good idea to find the best dog insurance cost and make sure that your pet stays healthy. Here are some other health tips to think about when caring for your small breed puppy.

Watch the temperature. A small dog will not do well when they get overheated, and extreme cold will drop the temperature of their small bodies. It may be hard to believe, but these conditions can be fatal to your little pup.

Do not let their weight become a problem. If your small dog is carrying extra weight around, this puts stress on their joints and back. Overweight can cause a dog pain.

Joint pain problems are common in small dogs (even ones that are not overweight.) Your dog needs to rest and recover if it is hopping, limping, or having a hard time getting up when they are laying down. If these symptoms do not improve with rest, then the vet may need to help your dog with anti-inflammatory pain medicine. Ask your veterinarian about supplementing your dog’s diet with glucosamine and chondroitin. These two supplements work to lubricate your animal’s joints.

Other health issues you should think about include air quality and breeding your small dog. Keeping your dog away from dust and smoke, protects its lungs. A disease (tracheal collapse,) causes the trachea to flatten and makes it hard for your small dog to breathe, may occur in these conditions. If you want to breed your small dog, or it becomes pregnant, ask your vet about birthing assistance. It is not easy for a small dog to give birth.

4 Reasons Why It’s Important to Play With Your Pets After Work

January 5, 2018 by Mandy

Your dogs or cats are happy to see you after a long day of work. For some pets, this part of the day is their favorite time for playing. They’re excited to see you, so it’s a great time to bring out the toys and start having fun. Here are four benefits to playing with your furry best friends after you get home from work.

Burning off energy

Dogs often spend long hours in their crates while you’re away from the house. They haven’t had the opportunity to burn off any of their energy for the day. If you don’t give them a chance to do this, then they may get out their energy through bad behavior.

Try to stick to a regular schedule, so your pets know exactly when playtime starts. It’s okay to take some time to decompress after work, but it’s important to set the appropriate expectations for an excited dog or cat.

Healthy exercise

Exercise is an important part of keeping your best friend around for as long as possible. Highly active dogs need the most exercise, although you don’t want to overlook pets that aren’t as high-energy.

As with humans, the benefits of exercise for your dog or cat include better cardiovascular health, improved metabolism, a healthy appetite and more. Make time for your pet to run around the house or yard once you get in from your commute. If you have a dog park nearby, you can also improve your pet’s socialization skills.

Mental stimulation

Sitting alone in the house all day can get pretty boring. Your pets need mental stimulation through enriching activities and toys. While they may be able to entertain themselves while you’re at work, it’s not as engaging as playing with you.

Try to mix up the play style and toys that you use when you’re having fun with your dog or cat. Cycle new items into the toy box on a regular basis, so your pets are getting new experiences. Older toys can get passed on to friends with pets or to animal shelters. If you have animals that destroy their toys through rough play, try getting toys made of tougher material or subscribing to a pet toy box service that delivers monthly.

Bonding opportunities

You’re one of the most important people in your pets’ lives. You care for them, pick up their poop, keep them fed and love them unconditionally. Playing with your pet gives you a chance to reinforce the bond between you, which is particularly important if you need to give them a pill, like a flea medicine for dogs.

Cats are fairly independent and may act more like they grudgingly tolerate you rather than viewing you as the head of the pack. Dogs, on the other hand, need leadership.

Adding in positive reinforcement during after-work playtime helps strengthen your bond and build trust. It takes time before a dog accepts you as the head of the pack, and a consistent playtime shows your companion that you’re reliable and friendly.

Playtime is more than just a chance for your pets to have fun. They’re improving their health, staying mentally stimulated, developing a closer bond with you, and going through their endless stores of energy. Take a look at your post-work schedule and figure out when you’ll have the time every day to play with your pets.

How to soothe an anxious dog

December 14, 2017 by Mandy

From changes in their environment and separation anxiety, to long car journeys or the sound of fireworks, pets can become distressed and anxious for a wide range of reasons. Dogs in particular are highly sensitive creatures and will often respond to extreme stress by displaying bouts of disturbing or even destructive behavior.

Seeing a cherished pet behaving in this way can be extremely distressing for the owner. Thankfully there are many steps you can take to help reduce the level of anxiety in your dog. Read on to learn more about the symptoms, prevention techniques and options for treatment that can help restore peace of mind for both you and your dog.

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What is making your dog anxious?

The three most common causes of anxiety in dogs are fear, separation and aging. Sources of fear may be obvious, such as the sound of thunder during a storm or explosions from nearby fireworks, but some dogs can also become fearful at the sight of people wearing hats or carrying umbrellas. Your dog may also become extremely anxious during a trip to the vet.

Around 14 per cent of dogs are believed to suffer separation anxiety. If your dog has started destroying the furniture or chewing up shoes, or if your neighbors report long periods of barking or howling during your absence or you return to find your dog has urinated or defecated in your home, this could be the cause. Dogs can also become more anxious as they get older and their mental faculties begin to decline, making it more difficult for them to understand what is going on around them.

Coping strategies

One of the most common ways to treat anxiety is with medication. The over-the-counter antihistamine Benadryl, will make your pooch drowsy so that it can better deal with a stressful situation such as a long car journey, but sedatives are not always the best solution.

In the case of separation anxiety or stress that results from changes in the environment such as moving to a new home, there are several strategies you can employ to help your four-legged friend to cope.

A good starting point is to look into what your dog is eating. If you dog seems hyperactive and behaves as if it has too much excess energy, switching to a high protein but low carbohydrate diet can help. You should also make sure your dog gets plenty of exercise, both indoors and out, and gets to play plenty of games with you and members of your family. The more enjoyment your dog has in all aspects of its life, the less it will focus on the negative emotions that emerge during times of stress.

Dogs love routine and get very flustered if their expectations are not met. Try to take your dog out for walks at roughly the same time each day and establish an order of events for some parts of a pre-walk routine, such as attaching a collar, so that you dog eventually learns that it is only when a collar has been fitted and you reach for you coat that a walk is imminent. This will prevent your dog from getting excited about you putting on your coat, only to realize that you are merely running an errand and leaving your pet at home for a short time.

Pot for pets

If you want try an alternative to traditional sedatives, consider treating your pet using oils that contain CBD, a product derived from marijuana plants. Unlike THC, the main psychoactive component of cannabis, this substance will no produce any kind of high. CBD is widely used to treat a wide range of common ailments and diseases in humans, but it has also been shown to be equally effective when used with pets.

Pets suffering from separation anxiety, seizures and a range of other conditions may benefit from taking doses of CBD oil which is mixed with olive oil and delivered orally. As with its use in humans, medicinal CBD does not create any of the psychotropic affects usually associated with marijuana, so you never have to worry about your dog having hallucinations or feeling even more anxious as a result of CBD treatment.

Swaddle your dog

The key problem with sedatives is that you have to give them to the dog well in advance of the event for them to be fully effective, and you can’t often predict when a storm is going to arrive, or a firework display is going to begin. If you wait until the noises have started before you deliver the sedative, you may have already missed the window of time during which they would be of benefit to your pet.

Some owners attempt to desensitize their dogs to loud sounds by playing recordings of thunder storms or exploding fireworks over a period of weeks or months, starting with small exposure and rewarding the dog for not showing signs of stress. Although this can work with some dogs, not all will respond to such fake sounds the way they do to real ones.

Though some pets may become used to the sound of the recordings, they will still become stressed and anxious during periods of extreme weather. This is partly because the sound of the recordings come from inside the house, which dogs consider to be a relatively safe environment. When similar sounds are heard emanating from outside the house, stress levels rise once again.

One extremely popular, non-medical treatment for fear-related anxiety is the ThunderShirt, a specially designed garment that wraps tightly around your dog’s torso and, in doing so, provides sensations that lead to a great reduction in anxiety.

The device was invented in 2008 by Phil Blizzard to help his dog, Dosi, who would become highly distressed during thunderstorms. One night, along with his wife Patricia, Phil wrapped a t-shirt around Dosi and then covered this with packing tape to increase the pressure on her torso. Almost immediately, Dosi stopped shaking and lay down. It was the start of a business which now enjoys annual revenues in excess of $15 million.

How to ensure your pet doesn’t make you or your family sick

December 13, 2017 by Mandy

Sharing your home, your heart and sometimes your bed with a furry companion can be a source of great companionship and has been shown to have a positive benefit on both emotional and physical health. That said, there are some medical conditions that can be passed to humans from dogs and other animals and it’s important to take the necessary precautions to keep yourself and all the members of your household, as well as your pets, safe and well.

Both dogs and cats can transmit diseases to their owners, either directly through bites, scratches and licks or indirectly by bringing pests such as ticks and fleas your home. Ultimately, you’re far more likely to get sick from contact with another person than from your pet, but good basic hygiene habits such as washing your hands after handling or cleaning up after your pets can dramatically reduce the chance of you contracting anything. Read on for a few more tips about how to keep both yourself and your pet in tip top condition.

Mental health

Although there is plenty of research which suggests that owning pets comes with a number of benefits, such as lowered blood pressure and less chance of suffering from a heart attack, this isn’t necessarily the case when a pet is unwell.

With around nine out of ten pet owners thinking of their pet as a member of their family, it is no surprise to learn that when people look after pets that are unwell, they suffer from higher rates of anxiety and depression than the rest of the population. If your pet becomes unwell and requires care, remember to take regular breaks and seek the support of friends and family, the same way you would if you were looking after a sick relative.

Dodge those doggy kisses

The commonly held belief that a dog’s mouth is cleaner than that of a human turns out to be something of myth. According to the American Kennel Club, a dog’s mouth contains around 600 different types of bacteria, a number that is similar to the 615 or so types of bacteria in the average human mouth.

Most of these bacteria are specific to one or other species and therefore cannot be transferred from pet to owner or vice versa. For example, the virus that causes the common cold in humans has no effect on other animals, so you can’t catch the flu from or give it to your dog. Despite this, there are some exceptions that mean you shouldn’t let your dog get its saliva get into your mouth, or into an open wound anywhere on your body.

Although you may love it when you dog shows you how much it loves you by licking your face, if your dog does so after giving its tail end a good clean, you run the risk of accidentally ingesting bacteria such as campylobacter or salmonella. Around 200,000 Americans develop nasty stomach flu each year in this way. Potentially harmful bugs can also end up on the noses of dogs that have been sniffing the behinds of other pets or rummaging through the contents of kitty litter – common in households where both cats and dogs are present.

The greatest danger is to those members of the household whose immune systems are not functioning at their full capacity, such as the very elderly, the very young or anyone suffering from an immune deficiency disorder.

Pests

Fleas and ticks that attach themselves to your pets may end up laying eggs inside your home. Although they prefer to bite dogs or cats, they can and will also bite humans, causing irritations and potentially passing on conditions such as Lyme disease.

The best way to protect yourself and your family from the kind of infections that can be passed on by ticks or fleas is to do everything you can to prevent such parasites from latching on to your pet in the first place.

Fleas begin their lives as eggs and go through the larvae and then pupae stage before emerging as adults. If you find fleas on your pet, around 95 per cent of them will be in the pre-adult stage meaning it’s essential you use a treatment such as Pet-Lock which not only kills adults but also prevents other flea stages from developing.

Even if you are using a preventative product, you should still check your pet for the presence of ticks and fleas on a regular basis. If you discover an infestation, remember to treat your entire home and not just your pet as eggs or larvae may be present and may hatch much later and cause a brand-new infestation that erupts weeks, or even months later.

Hidden dangers

Dogs that groom themselves while suffering from flea infestation often end up ingesting some of the parasites in the process. If the fleas are carrying infections of their own, this can lead to conditions such as dog tapeworm. Severe cases can cause your pet to lose weight or have mild diarrhea but both dogs and people can be affected by tapeworm and show no symptoms.

Dog hookworms live in soil or sand and can worm their way into your pet as they walk around contaminated environments. Young puppies are the most vulnerable and might have dark, bloody stools. In severe cases, it can be fatal. Hookworms can also infect humans where they may appear as a wriggly red line under the skin. No treatment is usually necessary as the worms will die after a few weeks.

Roundworm affects both dogs and people who swallow their eggs that are in the environment. Infected puppies are often underdeveloped and may be pot-bellied. Roundworm can also affect children and have been known to cause blindness as well as damage the central nervous system, the liver or the lung.

In the case of feline companions, studies show that at some point in their lives, four out of ten cats carry the bacteria for a condition known as cat scratch disease. Although such a cat will have no symptoms as a result of the condition, this is not the case with humans who get scratched by an infected animal.

You may get a blister or bump at the scratch site, suffer from headaches, fatigue and a low-grade fever. You may also suffer from loss of appetite and a sore throat. Serious cases may require antibiotics, but most people will get better without any treatment.