Key Strategies to Keep Your Pet Safe During the Winter Holiday Season

The winter holidays are intended to be a festive time of the year. Beginning with Halloween and wrapping up at the New Year, the wintertime holidays truly do form the season to be jolly. If you are like most people with pets in your home, you are inclined to include your companion animals, particularly cats and dogs, in the seasonal celebrations. With this in mind, there is a comprehensive set of safety strategies that you need to implement in order to keep your pet or pets safe during the winter holiday season.

 

In addition to keeping your pets safe, employing these tactics ensure that your home remains in good repair during the holidays. These strategies serve to ensure that the decorations you display during a particular holiday remain intact during the season as well.

 

Anchor the Tree

 

A Christmas tree presents one of the more potentially hazardous holiday decorations when it comes to pets in your home. Cats and dogs both are oftentimes inclined to meddle to a Christmas tree, including climbing on it or knocking it over. In addition, as is discussed more specifically in a moment, pets are also apt to abuse ornaments and lights places about a Christmas tree. This type of conduct can have highly negative consequences, including causing severe or even fatal injuries to pets.

 

Due to the potential dangers presented by a Christmas tree, you must make certain that it is securely anchored to lessen the chance of it being pushed over. You need to take care to place ornaments and even strings of Christmas lights on a tree in a manner that these items remain out of reach of your pets.

 

No Tinsel

 

Tinsel must be avoided at all costs. Tinsel attracts pets, particularly cats. Although a cat or dog may begin by swatting at tinsel, ultimately a pet may chew on and even swallow it. Swallowing tinsel can have devastating health consequences, including blockage within the digestive system that can require surgery.

 

Ornaments Out of Reach

 

As mentioned a moment ago, ornaments need to be kept out of reach of pets. This includes both class and plastic ornaments. The reality is that ornaments made out of glass or plastic both have a propensity for breakage. The shards resulting from ornament breaking can be highly dangerous to pets as well as to human residents of a home as well.

 

No Mistletoe or Holly

 

Mistletoe and holly are poisonous. If a dog or cat, or a child, consumes mistletoe of holly, they can become very ill. Indeed, the potential exists that the consumption of mistletoe or holly can be fatal. If you want to feature these types of decorations in your home, select an artificial derivation. There are other plants that are poisonous as well. Make sure you confirm the safety of a particular plant before you introduce it into your residence during the wintertime holidays.

 

Supervise Candles and Fire

 

Lovely candles and a cozy fire in the fireplace enhance the look and feel of a home during the holiday season. Indeed, candles are an integral part of some seasonal celebrations, including Hanukkah. You do not need to eliminate candles and fireplace use all together but you must be on guard when these things are burning. You must never leave your pets in a room where candles or a fireplace are lit.

 

Electrical Wires and Batteries

 

Electrical wires and batteries must be kept out of reach of pets. Cats and dogs alike have a tendency to want to bite or chew on the thin wires associated with holiday lights. There are also cats and dogs with a propensity to try to chew on batteries. If a pet chews through a plugged-in electrical wire or manages to puncture a battery, the consequences can be life-threatening. In addition to keeping these items out of reach, unplug lights and any other decorative item connected to an outlet when not in use. Consider removing batteries from decorations when left unsupervised.

 

No Sweets

 

The need to prevent a cat or dog from eating chocolate is widely known. You should also avoid allowing your pets to eat other types of sweets during the holiday season. Although consuming many types of sweets will not have fatal consequences for a pet, they can become ill be munching on holiday goodies. The best rule of thumb to ensure a pet’s wellness during the wintertime holidays is to avoid allowing a furry loved one access to any type of confection or sweet.

 

No Cocktails

 

There is nothing funny about giving a pet alcohol. Indeed, even a smaller amount of alcohol ingested by a pet can have serious and even fatal health consequences. Not only must you and your guests not provide a pet even a “taste” of booze.” you need to take care that a companion animal not “sneak a drink” of alcohol.

 

Limit Leftovers and Nibbles

 

Many pets are notorious beggars. Like most people, you may find it hard to deny your pet a leftovers and even nibbles of food from the table. Provided you take care to never feed your pet something known to be dangerous, a taste of “people food” or a limited amount of leftovers is acceptable in most cases. You need to take care to ensure that you don’t overdo in this regard.

 

Limit Noise

 

Holiday celebrations can be noisy experiences. What humans interpret as festive exclamations and be frightening to pets. Holiday celebrations and noise is not something of concern only on Independence Day. You need to take care to minimize noise during the holiday season to limit anxiety and stress on the part of your pet or pets.

 

Pet Rules for Guests

 

If you will have guests in your home during the holiday season, you need to develop a clear set of guidelines or rules they must follow when it comes to your pets. You might even want to consider posting pet guidelines in your home. You can take this step in a friendly manner. For example, you might devise “12 Pet Rules for Christmas” based on the iconic tune “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

 

Private Space for a Pet

 

Pets will better endure the holiday season if you provide them with a private space of their own. For example, you can set aside a room in your residence to which pets can retreat as needed during a seasonal celebration.

 

Strive to Maintain Routines

 

The holiday season is a time when many daily and other routines are thrown to the wintry wind. When it comes to your pets, you need to strive to maintain as many of their routines as possible. Pets tend to be creatures of routine and habit. Thus, do your best to keep “normal” feeding, play, and sleep times whenever possible during the wintertime holiday season.

 

Don’t Forget Pets

 

Finally, when it comes to keeping your companion animals safe during the winter holidays, you must not forget about them. This sounds like a basic admonition. However, with shocking regularity people overlook some basic tasks when it comes to their pets during the holidays. For example, a person may let a pet outside to take care of his or her “business” and then forget to let them back into the house in a timely manner.

 

By paying attention to these important strategies, you will keep your pets safe and sound during the holiday season. Indeed, you will be able to structure activities in a manner that can even enhance your pet’s enjoyment of the holiday season.

 

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Jessica Kane is a writer for Handicapped Pets, your most trusted source for dog wheelchairs and harnesses.

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Get In On the World’s Largest Treasure Hunt: Geocaching and Custom Coins

Geocaching is described as an outdoor recreational activity. Participants in geocaching utilized GPS, usually on a mobile device, to hide and seek containers. These containers are called geocaches, or just caches. These geocaches are hidden at specific locations across the globe, and are marked with specific coordinates accessible via GPS.

 

A typical geocache is a small waterproof container. The container has a logbook inside. In some cases, a pen or pencil is also included in the box.

 

The person who finds the geocache, known as a geocacher signs the log. The geocacher signs the logbook with his or her predetermined code name. The logbook is also dated. Every person involved in geocaching is provided with a unique code name.

 

Once the logbook is signed and dated, the geocache must be returned to exactly where it was found. There are instances in which used. These larger containers include items like custom challenge coins.

 

Through this article, more information is provided about geocaching. In addition, an examination is presented as to how challenge coins, or other types of custom coins, can be ideally suited to geocaching.

 

History of Geocaching

 

Geocaching is similar to a game from mover 150 years ago. This historically game was known as letterboxing. Letterboxing used clues together with references to landmarks. These clues and references to landmarks were embedded in stories.

 

The first instance of geocaching occurred in the spring of 2000. It took of at the time that GPS became markedly more accurate. The fist geocache was placed by a man named Dave Ulmer from Beavercreek, Oregon.

 

Ulmer’s message advised that this first ever geocache was a black plastic bucket that was partially buried and contained software, videos, books, money, a can of beans, and a slingshot.

 

Very rarely are geocaches today filled with so many items. As was noted previously, challenge coins are examples of items comprising a geocache. Sometimes, these coins are custom made.

 

Types of Geocaches

 

Geocaches are defined by their size. Specific terms are used to describe the seizes of geocaches to ensure uniformity. These geocache classifications are:

 

Micro or Extra Small: This type of geocache is less than 100 millilitres in volume.

 

Small: Large enough to hold a logbook and small items, like challenge coins or some other type of custom coins. This geocache is up to 1 liter in size.

 

Regular or Medium: This geocache is between 1 and 20 liters in volume. These are about the size of a shoebox.

 

Large: This geocache is over than 20 liters in volume.

 

There are geocaches listed as other because they are of a size that doesn’t fit into any of these specific categories. Finally, there are virtual geocaches for which there is nothing physical located at a point.

 

Benefits of Using Challenge Coins in a Geocache

 

There are a number of benefits that can be realized by using challenge coins in a geocache. The key reason is that they are small in size. As noted earlier in this article, the typical geocache is contained in a small container, sometimes a very small one.

 

Another of the benefits of using challenge coins, or similar types of coins, in a geocache is because you can include more than one in a specific location. This permits the ability to allow a person who finds a geocache the ability to take a challenge coin, or other type of coin, from the location.

 

Custom coins can also be made to be used in a geocache. The coin can be customized to make an association with the specific location of a geocache.

 

A Friendly Geocaching Endeavor

 

Some people involve their friends in geocaching. In other words, they design a geocache search that is designed only for their friends. When only specific individuals will be engaged in a round of geocaching, custom coins can be particularly appropriate. The coins can be designed to match a specific theme for a friendly geocaching endeavor.

 

Confusion Associated with Geocaching

 

From time to time there have been confusion regarding geocaching. Typically this confusion when a geocache is discovered and confused with something nefarious, like a bomb. For example, truly diverse locations like cemeteries and Disneyland have been closed down upon the discovery of a geocache by a person not involved in the game and now knowing what the game is all about.

 

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Jessica Kane is a writer for The Monterey Company, who have been manufacturing custom lapel pins for over 25 years.