Month: December 2014

Tips for a happy New Year's Eve with your pets

Dog-Cat-fireworksHappy New Year! New Year’s Eve is tonight. Are you and your pets ready? If you’re having a party at your house, consider safely containing even the most social party animal for his and her safety. You may think your pets seem happy, but cats, dogs and other pets are excellent at hiding stress (a survival instinct). Make a quiet party for your pets in a separate room with their favorite music, toys, and if you can’t lock it, a sign on the door reminding guests not to enter. Going out? Our tips can still help your pets ring the new year in with style. Read on for our NYE countdown of tips for you and your pets.

5. Up-to-date ID
Parties mean doors getting opened a lot. Even if you’ve thoughtfully hung a sign on your bedroom door saying do not open, or if you have your pets safely contained in a crate inside the bedroom (wearing safety breakaway collars only in a crate), accidents happen.  Make sure your pet ID tags and microchip information has your current address and phone numbers.

4. Exercise
For dogs and even cats, giving them plenty of exercise on New Year’s Eve day will help them to rest more peacefully that night. Plus a good long walk or hike with your dog will help you burn off those extra holiday calories too!

3. No human food
If your pet is going to be out loose in your home during a party, make sure every single guest agrees NO HUMAN FOOD FOR PETS. The #1 reason pet owners end up at the emergency vet on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day is because a pet is sick from too much people food, or the wrong people food. Even human foods you think are “safe” for pets can cause pancreatisis, which can be fatal.

2. White noise
Loud music and fireworks can upset even the calmest of pets. If you don’t have a white noise machine, putting classical music on where the pet can hear it can help cover up outside upsetting noises. If you have an anxious sound-sensitive dog, many pet owners find relief using a Thundershirt pet wrap, available at most pet supply stores.

1. Happy New Year!

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A free gift for new puppy parents!

Puppies can be a popular holiday item! While of course we support adopting a puppy from a local rescue or shelter, even if you or someone you know is buying a puppy from a breeder or pet store, we want to help those puppies stay happily in their new families too. The Puppy Manual is for all puppies everywhere!

The Puppy Manual from Adopt-a-Pet.com is not a comprehensive guide to raising a puppy – there are entire books devoted to that topic! However it is a super-helpful and concise 21 pages covering the basics, to help new puppy parents prepare for the arrival and first few months with a new puppy.  The basic training, socialization, and guidelines explained simply with many easy-to-follow steps can be used starting at the age of 8 weeks, the earliest age at which most people would be bringing a puppy into their home. If your puppy is slightly older, as long as they are under 6 months old, these steps can still be helpful! For puppies older than 6 months, many of these tips still apply, but you’ll want to look at the other articles we have in our blog that are for older puppy & dogs too. We have several formats of The Puppy Manual for you to choose from, click any of them to download and start reading:

1. PDF free download, two sizes:

2. Tablets/e-readers free download: http://bit.ly/1jrjsSu

3. Kindle download: http://amzn.to/19Dr7a8 — this version costs 99 cents, the lowest we could make it available on Amazon.

We’d really appreciate your time if you’d post an honest review on Amazon, no matter what format you choose! Reviews will help it be seen by even more people, helping more puppies.

If you need any assistance with the PDF download, please email Jennifer at blog@cms.adoptapet.com

The highest percentage of dogs surrendered to shelters are adolescents – thorough puppy training and socialization can prevent many puppies and dogs from becoming homeless. Help puppies everywhere by sharing The Puppy Manual a free download from Adopt-a-Pet.com with everyone you know who has or will soon be adding a new puppy to their home! Click the icons below for easy sharing.

What I did when a stray dog attacked

dog-attackI’ve been out walking my dog and been attacked by a stray dog. Thanks to being prepared and a good dose of luck, all of us escaped without any permanent harm. The first time I witnessed a loose dog attack a person was in New York City’s Central Park, when from far away I watched as two off-leash dogs, no owner in sight, stalked and then attacked a person and their little dog. Fortunately people rushed in to help, likely saving the life of the little dog and possibly the person too. When I moved to Los Angeles many years ago, I lived in a not-so-great part of town. I was terrified by the number of unfriendly stray and off-leash dogs I was suddenly fending off from my dogs on our daily walks. Fellow dog-walking neighbors told me to carry a walking stick to swing at them to keep them away, but the coordination needed to manage that and my two dogs on leashes was more than I could manage. I also really didn’t want to have to hit and potentially permanently harm any dog! I asked an animal control officer I knew for advice and he showed me what he carried on his police-like belt…

Pepper spray gel. I got exactly the type he used from a local self-defense store. I’d seen a few dogs come in to the shelter who’d been pepper sprayed, and although they often had red eyes (and were wet from the officers hosing them off to help reduce the spray’s effect more quickly) they all recovered without any permanent damage.

Having the pepper spray made me more confident, which is another important tool officers also use when handing stray aggressive dogs: stand big and tall, don’t run, try not to act afraid but also don’t antagonize or threaten them, and many dogs will posture by circling, hackling, and growling, but will then retreat instead of attacking. For the next few years, though my dogs and I saw and were approached by at least a dozen stray dogs, many unfriendly ones, they never got close enough where I had to use the pepper spray. I was so relieved!

Then came the day. I was out walking when I saw a dog that I thought I knew – a big fairly rare-breed purebred dog, easy to recognize. He’d been loose just a few weeks before and badly bitten a neighbor. I tried to hide myself and my dogs behind a parked SUV as he ran by on the other side of the four lane street, but he caught our scent – and circled around until he saw us. We were lucky. That had given me the time to pull out the pepper spray from it’s holster and have it ready in my hand.

If I hadn’t, what happened next happened so fast, there’s no way I would have had time to use it. When he saw us, he didn’t hesitate. He charged full speed at us. Silent and terrifying. Totally different than the other stray dogs who’d approached us slowly hackling and growling. I only had time to yell one “No!!” before he was on us. He barreled into my 70 pound dog with his mouth open. He was going so fast the force of the impact rolled them both over, and so he didn’t get a grip.

The two dogs somehow ended up a few feet apart right next to me as they sprung to their feet. I sprayed the pepper spray right at the stray as I yanked my dog’s leash to pull him away. Adrenaline kicked in and I felt laser focused, making my aim better than I would have expected in such a situation. The spray came out in a stream of gel that hit his shoulder, causing him to turn away from my dog and he actually bit at the stream with his mouth, causing the spray to go all over his face! At the same time I was stepping away from him I kept spraying his side, and he moved in a half circle around us, then he bolted back across the street! There he started rolling in the grass, rubbing his face which I imagine at this point was burning. Fortunately, someone who I think was his owner came out of the house. I yelled “hose him off!” and then hightailed it out of there just in case the dog decided to come back for another attack.

This is just my experience using pepper spray to ward off an attacking dog. I do not in any way endorse or advise any one to try what I did. I’ve heard that pepper spray can blow back into your eyes, so along with my other luck I am lucky there was no wind that day. I am lucky the dog decided to bolt away from us, and I am very thankful a person was there to care for the dog after he’d been sprayed. (I heard later he was just fine.)

It’s been more than a decade since that attack, and I am still grateful for the advice of the animal control officer and all the luck that kept me and my dog safe from a dog attack that day.

Photo credit: http://www.freeimages.com/photo/956788