Decorating For Your Dog

Keeping Your Dog and Your Decorations Safe During the Holidays

       With the holidays fast approaching people all over are putting up trees, lights, ornaments, garland and many other holiday decorating options. It is important to keep your pets in mind when decorating because all of the exiting new shapes, bright lights, and fun new "toys" are often captivating for your dog. Here are a few tips to keep everything in one piece and keep your pet safe over the holidays. 

Tips For Your Tree

        Many ornaments have similar shapes, sizes and colours as your dog's toys do. This can be very confusing for your dog, especially for those that it's their first holiday season. Be smart when decorating your tree. 

1. Keep the bottom of your tree decoration free! This will avoid the temptation for your dog to tare down tree ornaments.  
2. Avoid breakable ornaments! When decorating make sure that if you have multiple dogs or a rambunctious dog that you avoid the disaster before it happens. Keep your breakable ornaments off the tree or up high (and very secured). 
3. Secure your ornaments and your tree! Make sure that you secure your tree into place. This will help to prevent it from falling over. Also, use the wire ornament hangers rather than the ribbon ones that often come with them. This will help keep them in place, off the ground and out of your dog's mouth. 

Lights

       Lights are beautiful and fun to look at for us, but for dogs its another story. Sure, the lights are fun, but they see them as something to chew or tug on, which can be very dangerous! Here are a few thing that could happen:

1. Broken bulbs and ingested glass. Make sure that you firmly establish that the lights are not chew toys! 
2. Electrocution or possible fires. Chewing on the lights and wires can result in electrocution or shocking of your dog, or it could cause sparks, which could catch fire. 
3. Getting tangled up. Keep your wires hidden or secured to the ground so that your dog does not get tangled up in them. This will save you the hassle of fallen trees, broken ornaments or even a trip to the vet. 

Overall, enjoy the holidays with all the members of your family! Your four-legged family member wants to be apart of your life and enjoy it with you. Just make sure that you keep breakables out of reach, decorations secure, and make sure that temptations are stopped before they've begun. These tips will save you lots of headaches!

Tail Wags and Happy Holidays

From the CompleteK9 team:)