Keeping pets safe and happy during the holidays 🐶🐱

[Marjo]

Hi guys, how are you doing today?

Christmas time can be a fun celebration for us humans, but if we're not careful, it can be dangerous for our pets. 😞 There are some obvious and some not-so-obvious treats that we normally have during the holidays that can actually be harmful to our cats and dogs if they happen to eat them. Apart from foods, there are also items that are potentially dangerous that pet owners should take into account to minimise risks.

These foods are bad for dogs, cats or both:

• Chocolate is poisonous to both cats and dogs
• All grapes and raisins are poisonous to dogs (mince pies and Christmas puddings!)
• Blue cheese is bad for dogs
• So are macadamia nuts
• Garlic, chives and onion
• Alcohol

 

These items should be used with caution around pets:

• Tinsel if ingested can cause blockages
• Snow globes - if a cat breaks it and licks the liquid, it can be fatal (it can contain anti-freeze)
• Candles left unmonitored can cause a fire if a cat or dog gets curious, and can of course burn their little paws or whiskers
• Fairy lights when chewed on or played with can burn and even electrocute a pet
• Some Christmas time plants/flowers are poisonous to cats and dogs, such as poinsettia and mistletoe. 
• Lilies can be fatal to cats
• As Cleoriff mentioned in another topic (thanks for the tip!), Christmas trees can also be a risk if your pet chews the branches (can cause obstruction)

 

Were any of these surprising to you guys? I wasn't aware of the blue cheese one. Do you know of any other foods or items we often use at Christmas time that we should be careful with around pets?

I found some instruction videos on the RSPCA website on how to make DIY cat and dog treats for Christmas, if you'd like your pets to have their own, safe, Christmas treats and want some inspiration! 🐶🐱

• Some more tips on the PDSA website on keeping pets calm during the busy holiday period
• Tips on the Pets at Home website for keeping pets safe during Christmas time
• List of 10 hazards for pets at Christmas time here

[Cleoriff]

All of the above.

Riding bikes without crash helmets, knee and elbow pads. (not recommended at all) as I still have the scars to prove it.

Walking across the Canal in the winter when frozen, ice cracking and falling in....(been there done that)

Horse riding without helmets, Climbing through bombed buildings which hadn't been made safe..(I lived in Coventry which was pretty well decimated) and bombsites remained unattended for years.

Swimming in canals and rivers. Climbing trees and swinging from branch to branch.

In fact doing all the things which we then stopped our children doing...

[pgn]

Riding down the steepest hill in the area, also a public roadway, on an old storm-shutter bolted to two halves of a pram chassis, with a wooden crate as a seat...

A bit like the picture in this article, but with a 1 in 5 or steeper road beneath the kartie and riders.

Off-Topic again 

[Cleoriff]

Oh yes @pgn . I had one of those, built by my dad and the neighbour. Not something you normally saw girls on but I was the only girl in a street full of boys, so we all survived together.

My dad once said to mum, 'I thought girls were supposed to like bloody dolls??'

PS, I don't suppose for one minute @Marjo  minds us going off topic on a Christmas thread. It's great to reminisce

[Mi-Amigo]

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@Cleoriff wrote:

PS, I don't suppose for one minute @Marjo  minds us going off topic on a Christmas thread. It's great to reminisce

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continuing the theme... I remember

- making "a trolley" [as we called it] with a plank of wood and wheels off an old pram, cadged from a scrap yard [given with no questions asked]

- "free-wheeling" down a hill on a trike without brakes, trying to use my foot to stop it before trike reached the road at the bottom]

- playing "cowboys and indians" [non-pc name] with bow and arrows without rubber tips

- conker contests in the school playground with no eyeshields

- climbing trees, falling off branches int nettles and using dockleaves to take away the sting...

No health-and-safety rules. It was called FUN!! Anyone remember "FUN"? or was that abolished???    

[Cleoriff]

Rat a Tat Ginger, Running Leavo, British Bulldog, Dinky Dinky Shine Your Light, Sound Your Holler,

Stag, Stag, Stag and loads of other games you played out in the street or over the fields with torches at night. Plenty of rough dangerous games you played with your mates.

You came home when it was dark and no-one worried.

That's wrong.... I expect parents did worry, we just didn't know about it...

[pgn]

Just been googling our karting hill, it's still there, but much more cars around now than back then.

Aerial view:

View from the dark blue outlined area, looking down the hill - we'd push-off from where the red car is parked... 

Surprised we survived some of the antics, come to think on it, the pavement and wall on the right did not exist, just a drop down rocks to the lower road.😎

[Mi-Amigo]

Getting - literally - a clip round the ear from the landowner for scrumping for apples; telling him "I`m gonna tell my day", and then getting a "smacked botty" from dad when I told him what I`d done 

Walking half a mile to school in the morning and half a mile home after school [in the dark in winter] - no mamsy-pamsy school run for me or the other kids in my road...

The "nit nurse" checking our hair. The head telling me to get my hair cut [so I did - and was the first kid in school to have a Beatle haircut - oh the fame ]

[jonsie]

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@Anonymous wrote:
Did anyone else set fire to the gas taps in the science lab? (Off topic - don’t care)

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we certainly did

[jonsie]

Not to forget the bogey carts made from old pram wheels and bits of planks, firing roman candles at each other whilst holding them, going walks along the river banks, balancing and walking across the pipes over the river, making rafts that would float with 2 people on board but would be partially underwater with 3 or more standing on it. walking on frozen ponds and listening to the wonderful sound that cracking ice made.

....and still here to tell the tales

[pgn]

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@jonsie wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:
Did anyone else set fire to the gas taps in the science lab? (Off topic - don’t care)

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we certainly did

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Thankfully, suck-back was not thusly demonstrated. 😁