Month: May 2015

A dog that loves everyone is certainly a wonderful thing, but sometimes that enthusiasm leads to a little too much excitement. Do you find your dog jumping on friends instead of greeting them politely? If you answered yes, this video training tip from our friends at Wagfield is for you!

 

As you’ll see, we need to first train in easier, low-key situations on leash with family so we can set your dog up for success and reward the behavior we want before taking it up a notch to more challenging, exciting moments with new friends.

 

When training, build in baby steps, having several successful repetitions before moving up in difficulty. It takes practice, but building a foundation of learning how to be cool, calm and collected will pay off greatly as your pup matures.

 

Follow these “Paw by Paw” instructions for exactly how to train this behavior first on leash and then with guests coming into your home. With a little practice every day, your dog will be greeting strangers like a gentleman in no time!

Contributed by Wagfield Academy, the online dog training school. For more info on Wagfield Academy, please visit https://www.wagfield.com.

Kittens love forts! They also love new things, so DYI kitten forts that you can reconfigure easily and for free are not only tons of fun for kittens, they’re fun for you and your family too! This is going to be one of the easiest DIY projects you’ve ever done, or a great one to take on as your first Do It Yourself project. All you need are a few simple items that you may have in your home already, and some creativity.

Basic Kitten Fort Supply list:

1. Cardboard boxes. Avoid boxes that held anything that might be toxic to kittens. Sizes that work best are small to medium, think of cat carrier sizes. Big enough to hide inside, not too big that they can jump up or down safely.

2. Towel.

3. Optional: Strong scissors or a utility knife.

4. Essential: Creativity.

That’s all you need! I personally like using three different size boxes.

To construct the fort, arrange boxes next to each other. I put my three boxes, turned on their sides, with the openings turned towards each other, like tents around a campfire. Then I drape a towel over the top of the boxes, to make a roof over the open space between them. If I’m feeling crafty, up on a table out of kitten reach I’ll cut some kitten doors and “mouse” holes into the cardboard so the kittens can stick their paw through. Make them big enough so they wont get stuck, but not so big they’ll try to put their head through the paw openings.

Last step: release the kittehs! But really, they’ve been helping you all along, right?

PS. photos are my foster kittens! You can offer to be a volunteer foster home at http://www.adoptapet.com/volunteer/signup

The mission (and passion) of Adopt-a-Pet.com is to help get homeless pets out of the shelters and into loving homes. One way we do that is by helping Adopt-a-Pet.com approved shelters & rescues through grant programs. In 2015, the Adopt-a-Pet.com Veterinary Care Fund will be giving away grants to shelters and rescues of up to $2,000 each! Grants are to help pets in shelters and rescues get the veterinary care they need to go from homeless to adopted.

If you are a representative of a shelter or rescue organization and do not yet have an approved Adopt-a-Pet.com account, you can apply for an account here. Once approved, your organization will be eligible to apply for any of our open grant opportunities.

The 2015 Adopt-a-Pet.com Veterinary Care Fund is now OPEN for new applications – click here to apply. Thank you for to all the shelters and rescues for their wonderful applications and all they do helping homeless pets!

You may have heard that kittens get a “kitten pass” when introduced to other cats. Is that true? Yes and no – it depends on their personalities and experiences. It’s true that some adult cats who do not get along with other adult cats will be less upset when they first meet a kitten. Here are some reasons why:

• Size. Kittens or cats that are smaller than the resident adult cat are perceived as less of a threat, even when they hiss or growl.
• Height. Adult cats can jump up on top of a table or chair and easily be higher than a kitten. That vertical hierarchy reassures the adult cat.
• Play. Kittens like other animal babies have a strong instinct to play. This means they will often make friendly playful overtures to an adult cat, once they’ve settled in to a new space.
• Short attention spans. Kittens can be hissing and poofing up at the adult cat (who’s sitting on a chair looking down his nose at them) but then… ohhh a feather toy! Must pounce! Happy distractions like games and food are great tools to make positive associations about each other.

That said, usually a kitten is NOT the kindest choice for a sedate adult or senior cat. Kittens are full of energy and still learning how hard to bite, scratch, and pounce on feline friends. If you have a sedate adult or senior cat, a kitten can be years of torture. Great-grandpa might struggle as a full-time playmate for a baby then teenager kitten. If you have a choice, consider the unhappiness of an older cat who just wants to nap most of the time, and the frustration and boredom for the youngster, before you bring a new kitten home.

While a new kitten may not get a kitten pass, taking the time to pick a good potential match and doing a slow cat to cat introduction is well-worth the resulting harmony.

Here is the scoop: Dog-capturer extraordinaire Eldad from HopeForPaws.org received an urgent call from the City of Los Angeles Waste Management that a Pit Bull was living in a dangerous pile of trash at their Los Angeles Facility. This rescue ended up being one of the trickiest Eldad has ever had to perform!

Watch the amazing rescue video:

Photos published with permission. Photo credit: Diana Lundin www.dianalundin.com

 

Having a dog or cat, like having a child, means your flooring stands to see increased traffic and possibly some stains over time. You can take steps to prevent stains, like house-training your animals from the time they arrive home, but even that is not a foolproof plan. So when accidents happen — and they will — you need to know how to remove the stain quickly and efficiently before it irreparably harms the flooring. Here are some tips on getting stains out of common flooring types:

#1 Fabrics (carpets and upholstery)
If you can catch the accident early on (while it’s warm), start by using towels that can absorb liquid from the fabric. Replace them with dry ones, if needed, to get as much of the stain out as possible. Once you’ve done that, start using a commercial pet stain cleaner with enzymes. Enzymes are good at removing the bacteria that causes stain to give off a bad odor. Enzyme-based cleaners also have detergents that help to get the stain out without hurting the coloring of the fabric.
If you don’t want to use a commercial cleaner, you can make your own with:
● 1 ⅓ cup water
● 1 cup vinegar
Pour cleaner over the stain, just enough to get the surface wet without oversaturating it. Then place a waterproof material over it to give the cleaner time to sit and get into the carpet to remove the stain completely. If you don’t get to the stain before it settles, you can always have a carpet cleaning professional get it out for $100 to $250.

#2 Laminate flooring
If you happen to find a pet stain on your laminate flooring — old or new — there are ways to remove the stain from the flooring. It depends on whether your flooring still has the protective coating. With older stains, you’ll need to take extra steps to remove the stain in addition to cleaning it off with a solution. Follow these steps:
1. Wipe with a damp cloth until dry.
2. Sprinkle baking soda and gently scrub with a stiff-bristled brush. Let sit for a few minutes.
3. Spray with white vinegar and watch it foam.
4. Wipe the area with a cold cloth to remove remaining vinegar.
5. Blow dry to dry floor and subfloor.
6. Refinish the floor to avoid letting the stain destroy the laminate.

If you don’t have a protective coating over your laminate floor, you will need to apply one after cleaning off the stain. You can hire a flooring professional to re-stain your laminate floor which will help protect against future stains.

#3 Hardwood floors
With hardwood floors, you’ll need to treat pet stains with a specialized wood bleach. Make sure the bleach you use is specially designed for wood flooring. If you don’t want to invest in wood bleach, you can also use two-part peroxide bleach.
When treating your hardwood flooring with bleach, be sure to keep pets away and use rubber gloves and goggles to protect yourself because it can cause serious injury. However, it shouldn’t harm your hardwood flooring if used correctly. If you’re worried about the potential damage, you can use a mixture of vinegar and baking soda.

#4 Wall cleaning
Cleaning pet stains off your walls depends on whether you catch it early or late. If you see it happen, you can use a wet cloth to wipe it off the wall.
For older stains, you might need to use a mixture of bleach and warm water. You’ll need to keep the pets away to prevent them from licking the wall. However bleach can damage paint or wallpaper, so try the enzyme-based cleaner for stains in such cases. Just read the label to make sure ahead of time.

How to prevent future accidents
Once you know how to handle accidents, how do you prevent future ones? It comes down to figuring out the why, really. There are a few reasons your pet could be having accidents:
1. They can smell past accidents, which makes it comfortable to continue having accidents.
2. They don’t have a personal space.
3. They’re left alone for too long or get nervous.
4. With older dogs, sometimes their bladders are not functioning as well as they used to.

You should do the best you can to keep an eye on your dogs and take them out for potty breaks regularly to avoid accidents. You can even install a doggy door and train them how to use it. Get your backyard fenced in so they can come in and out as they please. Clean up past accidents thoroughly so they don’t develop bad habits. And of course, the more you train them to know where to go and where not to go, the less likely accidents will happen.

Written contribution by Andrea Davis, Home Advisor

Everyone loves a good game of Jenga – especially this cat who has proven himself to have superior Jenga skills than every one of us! Watch the video below:

 

No one is going to argue about the exponential cute factor of a puppy and kitten together! As illustrated in the photo above, the combination has amazing “aweeeeee” power. That’s is me holding one of my foster kittens and a foster puppy. What you can’t see is my happy but very tired face! Puppies and kittens are babies and like human babies they take a lot of time, energy, and cleanup.  If you’re thinking about adopting or fostering puppies and kittens together, I’ll share my experience and Top 4 Tips so that you can be prepared with lots of paper towels for the poopy moments and your camera for all the adorable moments too.

So, should you adopt a puppy and a kitten at the same time? My advice, after fostering both at the same time, is you should know it is a lot easier to only have one baby in the house at a time. The advantages are if you have the time, energy, and setup, your puppy and kitten(s) will grow up used to each other. “Older” puppies and kittens (like 6 months to 1 year old) are a lot easier than tiny baby kittens, and still young enough to grow up together. Plus many adult cats and dogs can not only learn to get along but love each other too.

I didn’t set out to be fostering both puppies and kittens at the same time, but springtime in many parts of the world means baby animals. Also in many places, like here in Los Angeles, too many babies means not enough cages and foster homes for them all. When a shelter volunteer asked a local rescue to  save two baby kittens that only had until the end of the day, I turned my bedroom into a foster isolation area so they could say yes. That way I could foster them separated from my other pets for a few weeks until everyone was vaccinated and healthy. The kittens got their vet check and kitten treatments and were a happy and healthy little pair.

Then a friend who works long hours was unexpected given this baby puppy at work. First thing puppy went straight to the vet, to make sure the she didn’t have any illnesses or parasites the kittens could catch or vice versa.  She was so tiny — only 1 and a half pounds — just a tiny bit smaller than the kittens! Not knowing how they’d get along, we set up the puppy in a crate in the corner of the kitten room. The kittens were fearless and curious about their new visitor. They spent a day getting to know each other through the crate door, then were fully introduced.

Puppy and kitten introduction tips:

1. If puppy is bigger than kittens, you may want to hold puppy on a leash so kittens can run away and get out or range if puppy is starts playing too rough.
2. Monitor when together! You need to be the “mom” dog/cat and intervene SEE VIDEO BELOW if playing gets too rough. Listen for meows or puppy squeals. Most puppies and kittens can learn to play with each other without biting too hard, but they have to learn to control the force of their bite — that’s called bite inhibition.
3. Introduce slowly by letting puppy and kitten(s) play together as long as they both seem happy. You may need to do many short sessions building up their time together.
4. Keep litter box and kitten food away from puppy. This can require some inventive thinking! If you have a tiny puppy and bigger kittens, a high-sided litterbox that the kittens can get in and out of easily but puppy can’t can work for when you’re there supervising. Use non-clumping litter— ask your vet for a recommendation of the type that is the most safe if puppy accidentally eats some of it, like if kitten jumps out of the box with some stuck to her foot and puppy then eats it.

VIDEO: Video of puppy rough play kitten intervention redirection to toy. Watch this video below to see how to gently intervene and redirect a mouthy puppy on to a toy when puppy is playing too rough with a kitten.

Enjoy your adopted puppies and kittens!

You can download our free puppy help guide The Puppy Manual here.