Delightful Discoveries for Gift Givers with Great Taste
Pets underfoot during the festive season are not so different from toddlers when you’re trying to wrap, decorate, and host. You move cocktails left on the coffee table; put scissors right back in the drawer after wrapping; scour the floor for stray ornament hooks; and instinctively look around before opening the oven. With Thanksgiving upon me and no little kids on hand for now, I’m trying to be mindful of the hazards specific to my floofy family members. Chocolate is toxic to dogs and cats, so the Compartés gourmet chocolate Advent calendar is well secured. But here’s what pet parents should think about beyond the well-known danger of chocolate.
Dr. Zac Pilossoph, a Healthy Paws Pet Insurance consulting veterinarian, emphasizes the importance of strategic decorating. While the plants and flower arrangements we tend to have around our homes at the holidays can range from perfectly safe to highly toxic, remembering which ones and how much your pet would have to chew on to get sick is a losing game. Make it easy on yourself and just keep all plants well out of reach.
We still cherish the ornaments our kids made, of course. I myself continue to hang 10–20 year old ornaments that are faded and just about to shed the last of their glitter or the final piece of gold-painted farfalle. The fragility of those cherished decorations is what makes it easier and more tempting for your pet to swat (or chew) them off the tree. Dr. Pilossoph urges simple fixes like placing homemade ornaments high on the tree to mitigate that danger. (I’ve actually hung some of those special ornaments in the kitchen window or over my dresser primarily to be better able to appreciate them throughout the season, but that move also kept them out of reach of my pets.) Cats especially tend to be fixated on the Christmas tree. Pilossoph recommends anchoring your tree to a wall if you have a climbing kitty, or surrounding it with a baby safety fence. (In all honesty, I would just forgo the tree before I surrounded one with baby gates, but that’s me.)
Dr. Pilossoph also advises being careful with holiday trappings even after they’ve been discarded. “A Healthy Paws customer has a cat named Billie who had to have emergency surgery to remove six inches of her intestines after she chewed and swallowed part of a Christmas ribbon she dug out of the trash,” he recalls. Make it a point to take the trash out to the can immediately, every time. I can tell you that last Thanksgiving, Peach got into a (tied) trash bag I’d put in the corner of the kitchen while I loaded the dishwasher. In less than 10 minutes, she quietly exhumed greasy tin foil, kitchen twine that inexplicably wound up in Chungie’s litter pan , and every last turkey bone.
While a nice piece of turkey can seem like a completely innocuous treat, giving your pet the skin or the dark meat is a bad idea. “Turkey skin is very high in fat, which is something that is hard for dogs to digest even in small amounts,” notes Dr. Amber Karwacki of Heart + Paw veterinary centers. A small amount of plain, white meat turkey without the skin is fine, though, according to the American Kennel Club. “If you want your dog to join in on the feast, consider baking a plain chicken breast without the skin and a sweet potato. Add in some baby carrots for a pup-pleasing crunch,” says Dr. Karwacki.
In my experience, cats and small dogs (the only kind I’ve ever had) tend to be less than thrilled when we have a party. Dr. Karwacki suggests preparing a room with your pet’s bed and favorite toys to keep them sequestered from all the hub-bub. “If your pet is really anxious in such situations, ask your veterinarian if anxiety medication or pheromone therapy would help your pet during the holidays,” she says.
Dr. Karwacki has shared her favorite recipe for a safe and yummy holiday treat for your dog. I don’t even make holiday cookies for humans from scratch, but for those of you so inclined, have fun spoiling that fur baby.
As an aside, I suggest resisting the temptation to give your dog a spoonful of peanut butter while you’re making these. I recently gave peach a (small, I swear) piece of peeled apple with peanut butter on it, and she proceeded to hack, gag, yack, and cough for 20 minutes. In a panic, I called the vet, who said that happens sometimes with peanut butter. They get the sensation that they’re choking when they’re not. He advised keeping an eye on her, but was confident it would pass. It did.
