Things change when holidays come around, and Easter is no exception. New people come to your house with strange things, routines change, you get more tired, and pay less attention, and your animal companion may be exposed to a wider age range of people companions.All these things can confuse your animal companion causing them to do things they ordinarily wouldn’t do, and also bring harm to themselves.
Since it has been my fate to learn from experience, sometimes vicariously, sometimes straight-on, I’ll include examples which I hope this article will keep you from having to experience.
1.Keep careful track of visitors’ possessions.
People bring all sorts of things in their suitcases and purses, like nitroglycerine and sleeping pills. Keep purses and luggage up off floor, and in case of cats, closed and latched.
Or you’ll end up at vet’s, as I did one year, when Thisbe smelled chocolate (Ex Lax) in my mother’s suitcase and ingested enough to kill her, said vet, who was surprised she survived. 2.Pay close attention to Easter candy and other gifts.
CHOCOLATE IS A SPECIAL DANGER. IT CONTAINS THEOBROMINE WHICH IS POISONOUS TO ANIMALS. People wrap food dogs can smell that you can’t, but then again it doesn’t have to be food. Chucky tore open packages of bath powder, perfume and bath salts as well. If you catch Fido nosing around, remove package to somewhere safe.
3. Keep your animal companion on their regular regime and diet.
Don’t, like me, carve lamb roast tossing fat down to Shy Nell, then carry it in to table, begin feast, and have Shy Nell enter dining room and proceed to vomit it all up, sending one of your guests to restroom. Try working that into dinner table conversation!
4.Protect your animal companion from new people and vice versa.
Guests can agitate and excite your pet so they get in trouble, do bizarre things, and also harm people.
There are people like me who don’t know what they’re doing, stick their hand in bird cage to acquaint themselves with your Macaw, and … “the Macaw uses its bill to score and then, in steel-cutter fashion, shear nuts in two so cleanly that cut surfaces resemble work of a metal-cutting saw or laser …” and it’s ho-ho-ho, off to emergency room we go.