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3 Ways To Protect Your Pets This Thanksgiving

If you are hosting Thanksgiving at your home this year, and you have dogs or cats, you need to make sure that you protect your pets from anything that could harm them. Here are three things that you need to watch out in order to keep your pets safe this Thanksgiving.

#1 Keep Bones Away From Your Pets

The first thing that you need to do is keep bones away from your pets, such as turkey bones and chicken bones. Even though your dog may chew on larger bones that you purchase from the pet store, you don't want to give your dog bird bones. These bones can easily splinter when your dog chews on them because they're hollow. This can cause the bones to splinter inside of your pets' digestive system and injure their digestive tracks, which could be very expensive to fix.

Make sure that all of your guests know that they should not feed your dog any bones and ask your guests to put all bones in a specific container when they are done eating. Seal up the bones and make sure that there is no way that your pet can gain access to them.

#2 Don't Feed Your Dog Any Scraps

Second, it is vital that you don't feed your dogs any scraps and that all of your guests know that your dogs are not to be feed any scraps either. There are numerous ingredients that are typically found in Thanksgiving dishes that could harm your dog and cats, such as garlic, onions, grapes, macadamia nuts, raisins, chocolate and undercooked meat. You don't want to deal with a sick or poisoned cat or dog during Thanksgiving, so be sure that all your guests know not to feed your animals and keep all the food out of there reach. If possible, keep your pets in the garage or room away from your guests until dinner is served and cleaned up.

#3 Keep Poinsettias Up High

Third, if you have a pet that enjoys eating plants, you may want to keep Poinsettias out of your house. Poinsettias are actually toxic to most pets, so you are going to want to keep them out of your house if you have pets that like to nibble on plants or are afraid that your pet might. These plants are very popular from around Thanksgiving through the end of the year, so make sure you are carefully with these bright holiday plants around your pets.

If your pet does get a hold of something they shouldn't reach out to a vet at a place like the Apple Valley Animal Hospital.


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