It’s Thanksgiving and we have a lot of food out. It’s real easy for our pets to get into some of these common food items you may leave on the countertops and cause issues. Dr. Lucas Kandefer says really often the things that cause most of the problems for our dogs are typically fatty salty foods. Anything we leave out on the counter for, the most part, that we are having on Thanksgiving does fit the bill of running the risk of causing some real upset to our dog’s stomachs and potentially even some fatal consequences when we are talking about eating large amounts of these. Dr. Kandefer says other common thing we come across is chocolate which is around all the time at this time of year. Make sure not to keep it out. He says it doesn’t take a lot; especially dark chocolate can cause some real problems for dogs and cats. It can be as small as 2-3 ounces of dark chocolate for some size dogs that can be fatal so, keep your chocolate up in safe locations. Artificial sweeteners do cause a lot of issues.
This year we are not having as many people over for the holidays, but Dr. Kanderfer says it can be easy for young children to startle or scare your dogs and cats and we should always use safety. We should never have young children around a dog unsupervised. Let them know the appropriate way to interact with new pets, as well with cats who sometimes don’t always give out a whole lot of warning on what’s going on.
