Preparing Your Pets for the Howlidays!

The holiday season can be very emotional.

Anticipation and excitement as we put up festive decorations and plan elaborate meals and get-togethers.

Melancholy and nostalgia as we think about "the good old days" and missing loved ones that have passed.

For some, it's outright depression as they are alone and feel left behind when the world around them goes into overdrive.

Eventually, it's exhaustion as we grow tired of the hustle and demands of office parties, bake sales, cookie exchanges, secret Santas, shopping for the perfect gifts, and trying to make everyone around us happy. We start to crave healthy food when we watch the bathroom scale telling us what we already know. All the rich foods give us heartburn. We long for a good night's sleep. By the New Year, we are ready to make a change.

“From a pet’s point of view, their usual routines and environment start going haywire around Halloween and are getting pretty weird by Thanksgiving. By December, they are reaching a breaking point.”

We Easily Forget How the Holiday Season Looks Like to Our Pets

In this chaos, it's easy to forget what all this madness looks like to our pets.

Instead, we feel stressed finding chewed presents and broken ornaments and having our pets constantly under our feet when we are home, and destroying things while we are out.

So let's take a moment to look at the Holiday season through our pets' eyes. Only by understanding them can we make changes to help them and, at the same time, help us survive the season.

From a pet's point of view, their usual routines and environment start going haywire around Halloween and are getting pretty weird by Thanksgiving. By December, they are reaching a breaking point.

Let's start with their environment.

Their Yard

Their yard, where they used to feel safe to do their business and where intruders mostly stayed outside the perimeter, becomes invaded by giant, noisy, moving monsters and crazy amounts of alien flashing lights. (Ever think about how those inflatable and animatronic decorations must look to your pet?)

Your Deliveries

There is a never-ending stream of intruders leaving boxes on the porch. From your pet's point of view, they are all potential home invaders and murderers they must save you from.

The Tree

Their house gets the furniture rearranged, and a tree goes up that they are not supposed to pee on, chew on, climb in, etc. (all normal activities for them with trees). These arbitrary rules make no sense to them. Additionally, the tree and other items in the house are covered in strings, ropes, balls, and other toys — only they aren't supposed to chew on or play with them either, and the hooman gets mad and yells when they do.

Your Presents

Then packages start piling up under that tree, with paper that sounds oh so good when you shred it and strange new toys inside that smell different than anything else in the house and may or may not be fun to chew on. But you won't know until you try. Sure it's satisfying to chew on that cardboard box, though. Only the more fun you have, the more the hoomans yell and do their angry dance. Why don't they just join you? They would surely feel better if they shredded some paper. Perhaps they don't have the time. They are so busy bringing in new bags and boxes and a never-ending stream of food that smells oh so yummy… maybe they need your help.

Your Scent

From their perspective, you smell very weird - all those emotions change your chemical scent, and they can smell it. Dogs can smell a diabetic's blood sugar change before a machine made to do the same thing can. It's said that when a human walks into a bakery, they smell cake. A dog smells flour, sugar, eggs, butter, etc. You bet they can smell your adrenaline and cortisol levels. They don't know what to do about it, so they stay close, clingy close because you don't act, sound, or smell normal, which concerns them.

The Noise

Cats may spend a lot more time hiding (and wouldn't that tree make a great hiding spot to watch the world from up high?).

Add all those noisy people coming and going along with great feasts of food that smell fantastic, and your pet's adrenaline and cortisol levels are way up too. You aren't the only one feeling excited and stressed, and anxious. But you know why you feel that way. Your pet can only react to how he feels.

Your Lack of Attention

With you busy and preoccupied with shopping and planning, your pet isn't getting the attention and exercise he usually does. So when you are gone, he does the only thing he can. He takes his frustrations and excess energy out on his environment, even himself, by chewing, licking and pulling out fur if he can't get to the boxes and couch cushions. If it's his first holiday season, his stress levels are even higher since he's never seen you act this way and has no idea what to expect.

What to Do?

So how do you both survive all this?

Be Willing to Compromise

First, try to be more aware of what it all looks like to your pet and be willing to make some compromises. If your dog is the protective type, it's not the end of the world if you don't decorate your yard with a bunch of blow-up snowmen and animatronic reindeer. But it may reduce his anxiety and thus his barking and frustration that his barking doesn't chase them away. If your cat is fearful, what's more important? A decorated yard or a kitty that feels the need to pee on your bed to tell you he's upset?

Plan Ahead

Accept that puppies and kittens are going to get into the tree. It's just going to happen, so plan ahead. Forget the sparkly, easily broken ornaments this year. Save yourself the anxiety and save your pet a trip to the vet and leave those in the boxes. Instead, decorate with things that won't be an issue if your pet does pull one down and chew on it. We used to use stuffed and handmade ornaments on the bottom half of the tree with jingle bells mixed in so we could hear if someone was messing with them. Lights should never be left on when you aren't home and are safer if they only grace the top half of the tree too. Tinsel and garland that can be chewed and swallowed are a no-no. They can cut the intestines or get caught and pull a section of the intestine inside another section, like a sleeve pulled inside itself. These are surgical emergencies.

Keep Things in Perspective

Again, keep things in perspective.

• It's not the end of the world if your tree doesn't look perfect this year. Creative decorating will make for fun stories and memories for future seasons.

• Have a place you can lock packages and baking items away. You wouldn't think a cat would tear open a bag of flour and eat a fist-sized amount that would swell when it absorbed water, causing so much pain that he would end up in the emergency. But I can tell you for a fact it can happen.

• Nothing new and unusual should be accessible to your pet. Place the presents under the tree just before the big event. Or you can purchase an X-pen, a movable foldable fence with which you can encircle the tree to keep pets out of the presents, though these work better with dogs than cats who can jump over them. Never place any kind of food present under the tree until just before it is time to open presents. Don't tempt fate, and don't set your pet up to fail.

• Allow your pets to get lots and lots of exercise. Make time for it!! A tired pet is a well-behaved pet, and exercise reduces cortisol (the stress hormone) and raises endorphins (the feel-good hormones).

• Let your pet have fun shredding some scrap wrapping paper and clean cardboard boxes while you are there to supervise and immediately clean up before they swallow any.

• Keep the real presents behind a secure fence or closed door. However, pets can enjoy this so much that they will turn their attention to those unattended presents.

  I used to have a dog that enjoyed opening presents so much that I let him open mine too. I always get the dogs a bunch of new toys and wrap them so they have something to open (and old toys can be retired). Leo would open everything and then check to make sure everything was opened, and there were no more amongst all the wrapping paper before he would settle on a toy. For him opening the packages and shredding that paper was the most fun.

• Cats need a little extra attention during the holidays. They may not act up by shredding your house but instead hide somewhere and wait for it to all be over. Cats who are too stressed to come out to eat, drink and use the litter box risk becoming very ill. Since you aren't seeing them, you may not notice until it's an emergency.

  Bladder infections, stones, blockages so they can't pee, and kidney damage can happen quickly in cats. Pay attention to Fluffy's behavior.

  Consider making it most comfortable for her when she hides in her room, with all food, water, and litter box moved to that room. Keep the door shut when people are over to reduce the noise level for her. She will find her food and litter box in the dark. She feels safer in the dark. So leave the lights off. Put food, water, and litter box in separate areas of the room. Cats drink more water when it is fresh and not next to their food.

• Cats are unable to tolerate many essential oils. Peppermint, cinnamon, and pine oils are poisonous to cats. You may want to consult your vet before firing up your diffusers, scented candles, and room sprays that may be toxic to them.

• Consider your pet's preference when visiting Santa or wearing holiday outfits. Cats hate strangers and hate being in new places because outside their territory, they risk being in another cat's territory or falling prey to predators. It's how they are wired. Being with you doesn't make them feel any safer. So leave Fluffy at home.

  Dogs who love to meet strangers will probably enjoy a trip to Santa. But dogs who don't like car rides or meeting new people are better left at home.

  Remember, pets have no idea who Santa is. They aren't children who understand our fairy tales. To them, it's just a stranger; worse, this stranger may want to try to hold them (restrain them, like a predator..).

  If your dog is the type who has "never met a stranger" and firmly believes everyone on the planet wants to pet them like my Goldens, they are a good candidate for a photo opp. Similarly, if your pet is used to wearing clothes because you always dress them up, they may not feel attacked by wearing an ugly holiday sweater, antlers, or a Santa hat on their head.

  Most pets, however, are not used to wearing clothes and hats. Being dressed up is like being swallowed by a giant python. It's not fun for them.

  If you must have that holiday photo, get them used to wearing the items and pair them with super yummy treats. If they learn over time that wearing that sweater means they will be fed real chicken pieces, then heck, bring on the sweater!!

Head Off Problems Before They Become One

Try to look at things from your pet's perspective and head off problems before they become one.

Remember that so long as no one gets hurt, little problems can be funny memories later, not the end of the world — like the year you tried a live tree, and your dog thought you bought him an indoor toilet.

Or that time you and your dad didn't listen to your mom's instructions to wait for her to get home from work to find the tree stand. Instead, you found a giant bowl and some bricks to prop up the tree. You decorated it. You were relaxing in a chair talking to mom on the phone when the cat came into the room and crept ever so slowly up to the tree and reached out to just sniff a branch…and...that was when the tree began to fall...in kitty's direction. She never came near a Christmas tree again. But you and dad got into serious trouble when your mom heard the tree hit the floor, shattering all the ornaments...whoopsie!!

Remember to keep it all in perspective.

Someday you will miss that special dog who loved to open presents so much you had to fence off the tree.