Pet Dangers to Avoid for Their Safety

 

Whether you’re a dog person or cat parent, you want to keep your beloved pet safe at home from possibly ingesting something dangerous. Unlike humans, our furry friends can also get gravely ill or die just from eating some of our common foods to other unexpected threats around the home that you may think are harmless. Therefore, it is always better to be prepared in safeguarding your fur babies from avoidable pet dangers before they can occur.

Human Foods That Are Not Meant to Be Shared With Pets

How many of us feel guilty when we stare into those pathetic eyes as we attempt to enjoy some treats like chocolates or some candy to baked goods? The only problem instead of helping our dog or cat, we are only putting their health at serious risk.

Chocolate of any variety is not a good idea to share, especially dark chocolate. The reason is its theobromine, which can cause vomiting and diarrhea and even worse with heart problems, seizures, tremors to death. Death is more likely especially if that chocolate has nuts.

Commercial baked goods, candies to some diet foods often can be sweetened with an ingredient called xylitol to mark it as one of those pet dangers to be watchful of. For dogs, this can cause the blood sugar to plummet enough to bring on liver failure to seizures.

Even if you bake your own cakes, cookies, pies at home, you don’t want to feed your pets any. You may have heard that feeding your cat or dog raw eggs would help their coat shine. For one, raw dough usually has eggs that can pass on disease from salmonella or E. coli. Feeding them your own baked goods also adds pounds, which is not good for their health and hurts their teeth. Of course, it is a good idea to brush your pets teeth with special formulated pet toothpaste, but it is only a challenge especially for cat owners.

Feeding your dog or cat some leftover cooked onions or garlic or even chopping some raw into their food can cause anemia and build up in their system to poison them. Instead, if you want to give them safer vegetable alternatives ones such as green beans, spinach and broccoli florets are fine for both cats and dogs. Cats can also eat peas and carrots. Dogs can also be given pumpkin, sweet potatoes and apples.

Milk and dairy products are other foods to avoid serving dogs and cats. Dogs can suffer from digestion issues and get diarrhea or a food allergy. Cats, on the other hand, are fine drinking milk as kittens but become lactose-intolerant later on as cats. I always thought it was odd that one of my cats never touched his milk until I was ready to toss it after it sat most of the day to sour. Now I understand the reason for his reluctance to sweet milk.

Rethink grapes and raisins for giving your dogs since it can lead to kidney failure. Other dangerous fruits for your pup are peaches and plums because the animals could swallow one with seeds that contain cyanide.

Table scraps such as bones and fat should go into the trash instead of your dog or cat. Despite how well cooked, pieces of bone can linger in the fat or the bone can splinter. This could lead to the animal choking.

Raw meat and poultry can contain bacteria and parasites that can spell big trouble with vomiting, fever, etc.  This is yet another of these menacing pet dangers that your pet need not encounter.

Tuna for cats is simply bad. I had a picky eater that hardly would touch her food. Therefore, I gave her a little canned tuna in hopes to get her to eat something. When I took her to the vet for her shots, he immediately told me that I was feeding her tuna by the condition of loose hanging fur when he held her. He told me our tuna didn’t have the same nutrients as cat tuna, which can cause this “fur rot” as he called it. He also mentioned once you start giving cats people tuna they will refuse cat tuna.

Object Pet Dangers Around the Home to Be Cautious of

Simple things like balloons, rubber bands, strings, thread, and floss are ones that can harm pets once swallowed by causing bowel obstructions. I always had to be careful around one particular rescued cat I had after discovering how she quickly went after a rubber band and ate it before I had the chance to stop her. Fortunately, nothing serious happened, but the incident put me on guard afterwards in the future.

Dropping a penny and your dog or cat happens to beat you to the spot before you have a chance to pick it up can lead to anemia. Though accidents happen, the penny with its zinc is just something better to sort when the animal is out of the room.

Flowers and plants are all not the same for our furry friends. Lilies, aloe vera, jade plants, certain types of ivy, corn plant, and the heartleaf philodendron are just a few toxic potted plants you could have that are extremely dangerous for both dogs and cats.

Batteries should never be kept in the open where your pet might be tempted to swallow it. The poor animal could choke or risk any leaking battery acid from the smaller type of batteries.

Antifreeze is another item that might have leaked from a car in the garage or outdoors that you don’t want your animal near. A friend’s dog licked some antifreeze and needed rushed to the animal hospital. According to one vet, it has a sweetness to it that animals can seek out.  At the same time, any antifreeze has the potential to kill them.

These are just a few pet dangers to watch out for and correct to keep your home safe.  Pets bring us tremendous happiness so let’s do our part to return that love through these tips for their well-being.