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Keep Your Pets Safe During the Holiday Season

With the holiday season around the corner, everybody is busy with getting presents for their loved ones and putting up decorations. The air is filled with warmth and festivity as we look forward to decorating for the holidays. But with these decorations can come a bit of disaster if you own a pet. When your pet looks at the shining lights and ornaments, they might get a little too inquisitive at them. This can end up with the decorations destroyed and your pet at a Kelowna Veterinary Clinic. Here are some tips to ensure the safety of your pets during the holidays and that your decorations survive in one piece:

Keep it out of their sight

The best thing you can do is to keep the decorations out of the pets’ sight and keep your Christmas tree in the corner. In order to warn you of their approach, put a plastic bottle with knick knacks or anything else that creates enough noise near the bottom. This trap like contraption will trigger creating noise, alerting you and possibly scaring the pets away. As well, avoid using tinsel or any ornaments containing food items. An example would be a Styrofoam ornament decorated with mini marshmallows held onto it with straight pins!  In addition to that, keep all the hanging ornaments, decorations and lights out of their reach; if your pet gets their paws on them they can ingest them and choke on them. As well, the wires from the light can short and start a fire. Bring your pet to Kelowna Veterinary Clinic if any these happen.

Poisonous plants

We have the holiday tradition of hanging plants like holly, mistletoe and poinsettia in our houses. While the plants are harmless to us, they are quite poisonous to dogs and cats. When they see the plants they may be tempted to eat them. The best thing you can do is to keep your plants and pets as far away from each other as possible.

Candles

With the holiday season right around the corner, it is common to light up candles to celebrate the occasion. While us humans know not to play with fire and candles, our pets don’t always understand. One little sprint that crashes into those candles may end up with the pet on our fire; even if you don’t have candles up, the same risk is there with the fire place. The best thing to do will be to keep them out of your pet’s reach and to put a screen in front of your fireplace. When there is an open fire about, keep your pets out of range. If your pet somehow bypasses your security measures and ends up on fire, bring them straight to Kelowna Veterinary Clinic where they will get treatment for their burns and injuries.

In case your pet gets their paws on any of the mentioned plants, ornaments, hand-made ornaments with food items, and eats any of them, you can also take them to Pawsitive Veterinary Care. Our qualified staff will take care of your pets to get them back up and running in no time.