Trick or treat? Halloween tips for pet owners

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Halloween can be a strange time for your pet with strangers knocking at your door in spooky costumes, scary noises and ghouls everywhere, it’s not hard to see how they can get a bit confused. To help you keep your pets safe and worry free, here’s some of our top tips for helping your dog or cat through Halloween.

Trick or treat?

Halloween sweets and chocolates are not for pets. While it can be tempting to throw your dog a few chocolate biscuits that fell out of the trick or treat bag, you shouldn’t as it isn’t nutritious or safe for them.

Chocolate, even in small doses, is poisonous to cats and dogs. Dark chocolate is especially bad, but all chocolate can lead to vomiting, increased breathing and heart-rate and even seizures or death. Not only chocolate artificial sweeteners like xylitol, which is found in loads of sweets, can cause lose of co-ordination and seizures in pets.

Be sure to keep an eye out for litter. Small tin-foil wrappers, drink holder plastic or even bottle lids can be guzzled up by a keen dog pretty quickly causing respiratory problems like choking or just giving them a really bad tummy ache.

Candle cat-astrophe…

Candles and pumpkin lanterns are open flames and dangerous. Pets can become excited by all the commotion and begin jumping about quite a bit, even cats climbing on shelves or around candles are in danger.

A stray wagging tail or a misplaced jump can mean hot wax or naked flame burning a pet. The best way to avoid this is to either hold back on the flames or to keep your pets in a room where they won’t be disturbed and they can do their own thing, away from all the noise, commotion and dangers that are prowling about outside.

Creature comforts

All the spooky visitors may be a bit scary. Some dogs go crazy when the doorbell rings anyway, let alone if the buzzer goes off every 10 minutes. The constant agitation and excitement for a dog can quickly turn to frustration and stress.

Loads of people coming and going is sure to cause upset. Again, with this the best bet is to keep your pet away from the and in their own personal space. Moving your pet into their own room and giving them some comforts of their own like a bed or their toys can really help them get comfortable and allow them to escape all the commotion.

It’s always worthwhile having a pet insurance policy in place. This is in case your furry friend accidentally eats something they shouldn’t or you need help with advertising & reward should your pet get spooked and go missing.