Frights and Bites: How To Keep Your Pet Safe This Halloween

Halloween is creeping right around the corner, and you know what that means. Tricks and treats are soon to fill entire streets all across the country. While this fun and imaginative holiday is widely enjoyed by children, teens, and even adults, it has the ability to pose specific threats and dangers, especially towards our precious furbabies. Whether you have them dressed up in a costume prancing through the streets or they are snuggled up on the couch at home, it’s important to keep an eye out for these Halloween pet threats.

Chocolate

This one should be a no-brainer, but it’s always good to be reminded of how toxic chocolate is to dogs. This delicious treat that we love to indulge upon contains methylxanthines, chemicals that are very similar to caffeine. As many dog owners already know, these chemicals can cause your pet to become very ill if ingested and the darker the chocolate, the more toxic it is. Luckily, the majority of chocolate handed out on Halloween is milk chocolate, but it is still incredibly important to make sure that any and all of these sweet treats are out of your furbaby’s paw and tongue reach.

Candy Wrappers

Chocolate isn’t the only treat that’s handed out throughout this spooky night, and this time we aren’t talking about the candy itself as a threat. After you and your kiddos inevitably stuff your faces with candies of all tastes, shapes and sizes, there is surely to be a pile of colorful wrappers lying around the house. These bright and noisy remnants of the candy you enjoyed can be extremely enticing to the pets in your home. What may start out as your pet simply playing with wrappers can quickly turn into a late-night feast. Ingestion of foil and cellophane can lead to bowel obstructions that can become life threatening and require surgical intervention. Moral of the story, please throw out your candy wrappers.

Glow Sticks & Jewelry

If your dog doesn’t love having something in its mouth at all times, is it really a dog? And if your cat doesn’t love to bat things across the floor, is it really a cat? The simple fact of the matter is that you should never leave objects not intended for ingestion within your cat or dog’s reach. However, this fact is even more applicable on a holiday like Halloween. Costumes have several tiny and intricate pieces and children often wear and wave around glow sticks as they roam the streets searching for candy. Your pets can and will get their paws onto these things and when they do, they pose the threat of becoming both choking and poison hazards. Always make sure that your child’s costume is completely intact and that any Halloween related props are up and out of the way.