Christmas Bites

Prepare your pet for the Holiday season, and all the activity and chaos that involves, with our simple tips for Christmas bliss!

1.’Tis the Season – start planning now and build your awareness of forbidden festive foods, and how you can include your dog in the feasting!

2. Seasonal Stressors – forbidden foods & lots of changes can make the celebrations pretty overwhelming for our dogs…

3. The Quickest Fix is Sensible Management
Sensible management helps to keep your dog safe and reduce the overwhelming impacts of the celebrations on their behavioural health.

There is no shame in just managing your dog’s behaviour:

3Ps of Seasonal Success:

4. Entertaining Canines (tutorials for you to practice) – set your dog up for Seasonal success by providing appropriate entertainment, and, where helpful, a Seasonal safe-space established as their entertainment-centre.

5. Howliday Pressures – the celebrations are not a test of your and your dog’s behaviour or training. Realign your expectations of your dog’s behaviour with the reality of the preparation you have provided. And don’t forget to give yourself a break too!

6. Doors, greetings & all that drama (tutorials for you to practice) – there’s lots and lots of extra door activity during the Season and this can lead to increased challenge and stress for all, particularly your dog.

Play the Doorbell Game:

7. Trigger Stacking & Christmas Cracking – the effects of stress are cumulative, they stack, and the Holidays certainly throws many stressors our dogs’ way!

8. Chill Out! (tutorials for you to practice) – think what you would prefer your dog to do during the festivities…I am sure chilling out is high on that wish-list!

9. Cute…but is it worth it? – that costume or pose might be adorable but could be causing our dogs great upset. We can do better!

10. Don’t eat that…don’t chew that…don’t touch that… (tutorials for you to practice) – there is lots of temptation for your dog around this time of year. Management is really your best bet at this stage, and a lot of that is human-training!