How To Keep Your Pets Safe During Christmas

“It’s not what’s under the Christmas tree; it’s who’s around it.” – Charlie Brown

If you don’t know this about me from reading my various stories and poems, my dogs are not just pets; and they are my little fur babies. During the Christmas season, sometimes, in the holiday's excitement, we have had some scary experiences with our dogs getting into things that are not good for them.

Nothing has sent us to the ER, thank god, but enough for my husband and I and our adult children to stop and think of a safe routine for the holidays with the dogs’ safety in mind.

Our personal experience of our dogs has been pulling candy and candy wrappers out of their mouths, eating copious pine needles from under the tree because the tree is dry as a cactus by the time Christmas rolls by, and pulling magnets from their mouth. After all, at one point, we thought it fun to gift a fridge magnet to family members. Then we had bows ripped off gifts that I so carefully wrapped.

We have learned to create a new dog routine during Christmas. Here are some ways we have ensured to keep the dogs safe.

Stockings

Before checking to see what Santa has left in the stockings, take your dog for an extra walk or run around getting tired.

If you have a stocking for your dog, open that up first. With the new toys or dog bones, that will keep your dog occupied for a bit. Have your dog stay in a crate or a gated area.

We have a dog playpen that we put all the dogs into off to the side of our Christmas festivities; that way, they are part of things but safely away from getting into trouble.

Time Between The Stockings And Christmas Gift

Take a break between the stockings and the gift opening. It’s a good idea to check on your dog, offer water, take potty break. In my experience, dog toys are just not made to last. I have had dogs rip through the new toy in seconds! Good idea to make sure that your dog has kept the new toys intact.

It’s Christmas; it goes as fast as a blink of an eye. While one is taking care of the dogs, others can put away their stocking gifts, receive a fresh cup of hot chocolate, coffee, and help themselves to another piece of coffee cake or donuts.

Gifts Time

Return your dogs to the safety area so you can have a relaxing time opening up your gifts without worry.

Keeping the dog or dogs away ensures they will not get into the scotch tape still attached to the wrapping paper, gift bag tissue paper and eating those little preservative packets in the plastic bag with the item of clothing.

There is nothing worse than spending the holiday in the VET ER with your dogs.

Holiday Food

Christmas is when you may have a lot of food items that you may not typically have, so please be careful of dogs getting into any of them. Some toxic foods are:

Chocolate, grapes, raisins, onions, tomato leaves, walnuts, Xylitol (artificial sweetener that’s very toxic to pets), yeast, dough, apple seeds, coffee, gum, macadamia nuts, chives.

Full list is here.

Christmas Decorations

If you have tinsel on your Christmas tree or New Year’s Top Hats, that is dangerous to dogs and cats, so it would be good to keep them away.

If you leave the dining room and you have lit candles, please be mindful that if you have dogs like to jump up to check out what is on the table, they might pull down the tablecloth, which could be dangerous with the lit candles.

Holiday Plants

Sometimes, friends or coworkers gift a plant for the holidays. Please be aware that many holiday plants can be toxic to dogs and cats, and keeping them far out of reach would be good.

Poinsettia, Holly, Mistletoe, Lilies, Yew, Christmas trees, Amaryllis, Christmas Cactus, Ivy, Laurel, Pine Cones

To learn more, click here.

Better safe than sorry, especially if you have a puppy or a dog that gets rambunctious and gets into things, which we certainly do!

We want to keep all our pets safe during the Christmas and New Year.

Happy Holidays!