Get all your Seasonal prep guidance in one place…here!
Check out our Christmas Bites for the 2024 festivities. Get ’em all in one go here and follow along on our socials for guidance, one day at a time.
Start practicing now to set your dog up for Seasonal success!
‘Tis the Season for Christmas Bites to help get you and your dog ready for the Howlidays 
Calm & comfortable canine behaviour doesn’t happen by Christmas magic…it happens with sensible management, realistic expectations & meeting your dog’s needs.
We can all find the Season stressful & overwhelming, including our dogs. As part of planning for the celebrations, incorporate ways to manage your dog’s behavioural health.
The festivities bring lots of hazards including forbidden foods & other dangerous ingestibles, lots of changes, novelty, guests & activity, lots of comings & goings, on top of disrupted routines & distracted humans.
That means we need to step up management, provide more distance & relief, and meeting your dog’s needs.
All this stress & chaos leads to lowering of behavioural inhibitions so your dog is less well able to resist temptation. That means they be more likely to grab a tasty morsel, more likely to ingest and/or guard access to valuable stuff, and more care with supervision of dogs + kids and guests.
Realign your expectations with reality…the reality of the preparation you’ve provided, the stressors your dog is experiencing & the conditions on the day.
Take the pressure off yourself too! When you feel under stress, you might be shorter with your dog. Realign your expectations with reality & ask, “does my dog need to take part in this, right now?”.
Check out our Christmas Bites program to help bust the Seasonal stress, support you & your dog & keep everyone safe.
Disrupted routines and distracted humans means that accidents can happen quite easily, particularly as there are so many harmful hazards all around during the festivities.
More about…
Chocolate
More cases of chocolate toxicity are presented to veterinary hospitals during December, than any other time of year (Noble et al, 2017).
The Christmas Season is full of chocolate and dogs will be able to sniff out our hidden gifts and chew through containers. Dogs might hunt down chocolate in bars, boxes, Advent Calendars, decorations, toy components, and in parcels or wrapped gifts.
Chocolate often accompanies other dangerous foods such as raisins.
Chocolate contains the methylxanthines theobromine and caffeine, that can cause CNS stimulation when ingested by dogs. The greater the cocoa solids in the chocolate, the greater the risk of toxicity, with smaller amounts ingested (Bates 2015).
Even though theobromine toxicity is not a risk with white chocolate, VPIS, 2019, warn that with its high fat content ingesting white chocolate may lead to pancreatitis.
Check out this helpful Chocolate Toxicity Calculator from Vets Now.
In Noble, 2017, most dogs were presented at the veterinary clinic 1-6 hours after ingestion with vomiting, increased heart rate, agitation, and restlessness.
Spotting chocolate toxicity can be tricky. Many dogs will eat the evidence, chocolate and wrappers, so keen observation of your dog’s behaviour may contribute to getting timely help.
Beyond Chocolate
There are plenty of other festive foods that our pets might access accidentally or be fed unknowingly.
Cooked bones and fatty leftovers will be sought after by dogs and cats alike. But with our usual routines disrupted, left over foods may be discarded in unusual places, meaning easier and unsupervised access by pets of all species.
With an abundance of food, waste bins and compost bins may be overflowing, and many pets will seek out mouldy and spoiled foods which may leave them susceptible to Mycotoxins and similar.
Coffee, alcohols, and other psychoactive substances are readily associated with party-time and may become easily available to our pets via half-empty glasses left within reach, spills, in desserts and rising bread dough that may be left unattended or discarded.
Seasonal nuts, such as macadamias, and dried fruits such as grapes and dried grapes, e.g., raisins, currents, sultanas, are dangerous and may be in lots of foods like cakes, pudding, mince pies, stuffings & fillings.
Avocado, raw potatoes, fruit pits/seeds, fruit plant parts, and Allum species such as onions and garlic can be dangerous too.
Christmas brings many changes to family life and households including routine and physical disruptions, such as moving furniture and setting up spare rooms. These changes may increase risk of ingestion of human or pet medications; remember, dogs may chew through “child-proof” lids and containers with ease. Medications that people might believe are relatively benign, such as cold and ‘flu preparations, will feature in most homes at this time of year so take care!
While we humans may choose to gorge on high fat, high salt, and high sugar snacks and treats, these are not safe for pets of all kinds.
And be aware that “sugar free” foods may contain xylitol, which is poisonous to dogs, and probably other pets too.
Beyond foodstuffs, the same seasonal disruptions may contribute to increased risks relating to environmental hazards.
Christmas trees, decorations, wires, lights, candles, oils, ribbons and wrapping paper and packaging can be irresistible to pets who explore and even ingest these novelties.
Putting decorations and seasonal plants, like holly, mistletoe and poinsettia, out of reach may not reduce risks to cats particularly.
Winter hazards like rodenticides, anti-freeze and carbon monoxide poisoning may be more dangerous given the distractions of the celebrations and often inadequate supervision of pets.
The extra excitement and background increased stress of the run-up to the celebrations lowers behaviour inhibitions, meaning your dog may do behaviours they wouldn’t normally. They may be more likely to ‘steal’, grab, ingest, guard, jump up, bark, and so on.
Disrupted routines, distracted humans, doors opening and closing, lots of activity and excitement, can leave pets unsupervised and unattended more than usual. It’s on us to step up our management game to keep our pets safe this Season!
While it’s important to prevent our dogs getting forbidden and dangerous festive foods, we can include our dogs in our celebrations with safe and suitable foods too.
Know your dog! Some dogs can tolerate certain extras better than others – if that’s not your dog, stick to their regular diet and make it interesting by incorporating food puzzles and fun food games instead.
Adding small amounts of fresh food extras can be a great way to boost palatability and nutrition. Our dogs should find pleasure in their food, just like we do.
Consider adding lean components so as not to upset their tummies with extra fat and to keep calorie content under control. Account for extras by carefully adjusting the amount of their regular diet, to maintain balance.
Feed the rainbow! Consider the addition of safe and suitably prepared fruits and vegetables in an array of colours to capture the benefits of a range of phytochemicals that act as pigments in plants.
You might even bake special Seasonal cookies or treats for your dog. There are lots of recipes online often incorporating banana, oat flours, peanut butter and other dog-safe ingredients.
Our human celebrations generally incorporate food; we share food with loved ones, and are sharing love in doing so. Of course we want to include our dogs, whom we love as part of our families. Of course, keep them safe and away from harmful foods, but make sure to look at ways to share the celebrations with them, and share the love!
Our last From Paper to Practice webinar of 2024…and it’s free!
We are talking about trauma-informed care and this paper, Potential Benefits of a ‘Trauma-Informed Care’ Approach to Improve the Assessment and Management of Dogs Presented with Anxiety Disorders, with one of the authors, Dr Claire Corridan.
Join us on Monday 25th November at 8pm, via Zoom.
Email me at IVBAed@gmail.com to book your spot!
I post about it pretty much every year and that’s because every year the same signs are there that the effects of seasonal fireworks, on the behaviour & health of dogs (and other animals), have become normalised.
Rather than posting videos of terribly distressed pets and commenting how awful fireworks are, we need to have a structured plan in place, with pretty diligent implication. And to really help these dogs we will most likely need to work with the dog’s vet-team and start our work in February. Yep, the February before Halloween.
I can understand some apathy…noise fears are challenging and it requires lots of time and planning to help improve dogs’ comfort. And the nature of pre-Halloween fireworks make it even more difficult for pets and their people.
Get all the info:
Quick survival guide:
Survive the night:
Download the guides from here or share on our socials @aniedireland (Facebook) (Instagram). Spread the word!
We’ve officially come to the end of this years enormously successful series of Pay-What-You-Can webinars so I’m definitely going to run another series in 2025.
Our Think Enrichment…for Puppies webinar was postponed as I developed laryngitis and lost my voice so there was no way I could present on that day.
So I’ve reschedule this one for Sunday 17th November at 3pm so we can really delve into puppy behavioural development and look at how we can apply an enrichment model to supporting appropriate social and environmental exposure.
It’s going to be another big one so come along and join us! Register here.
Bringing you more goodies!
Join IVBA and Dr Eduardo Fernandez to discuss LIFE!
In our From Paper to Practice series, we take an informal but in-depth look at the literature and how best to apply it in our day-to-day interactions with animals.
This time we are looking at this paper: Fernandez, E. J. (2024). The least inhibitive, functionally effective model: A new framework for ethical animal training practices. Journal of Veterinary Behavior, 71, 63-68.
This FREE webinar is an important one to attend for our community and is on Sunday 29th September at 11am (Irish time). You can book your spot by emailing me IVBAed@gmail.com
Lucky for me I get to share a new project that’s very important to me, at the same time as I lament that such a project is needed.
Dogs In Society is a new stakeholder group made up of experienced dog behaviour professionals and educators. I and some colleagues have been brought together on this because of the Irish government’s plans to enact breed-banning legislation…starting next month.
There is very little information available about how this legislation will be applied and we are troubled by the bringing forth of legislation based on flawed rationales. Our concerns include:
– Reactionary response and haste with which breed-banning legislation has been considered and written:
-Lacking clarity in rationale for decision making, that is clearly ignoring the valid evidence:
–Questions about the integrity of the conclusions and guidance provided by the working group
In short, BSL is based on erroneous rationale, that behaviour and safety can be predicted via morphological characteristics, and, despite being enacted here since 1998, the rate of bite incidents continues to rise. It is a blunt instrument that provides an all but superficial pretence that action is being taken, while deflecting from the complexity and nuance of the issues at hand.
As such, breed specific legislation blinds stakeholders to meaningful alternatives that are evidence based, and suggests that only the behaviour of targeted dog-types warrants care. With effective legislation and community supports in place, alternatives to breed-focused mandates can facilitate ongoing data collection to enable appropriate adjustments in response to evolving societal trends.
Download our fully referenced and evidence based Position on BSL (Breed Specific Legislation) and please share with others, including policy makers. Please share!!
While we have been working for months contacting politicians, councillors, professionals and rescues, we understand that this ban is happening. Our energy must be devoted to helping and supporting those affected by this short-sighted legislation.
Although no process has been made public, we do know that exempted dogs will need to be muzzled. This is already the current state of legislation for dogs who look like this but, just in case, we want to support guardians in preparing their dogs.
Muzzle training is an important skill for all dogs and can be a fun teaching project for you and your dog.
Download our Muzzle Love tutorial handout and please do share with others too!
Here’s a quick video demo tutorial (linked from the handout too, along with other resources):
How you can help us help more dogs:
Let me just start this piece with a brief disclaimer. At no time here or anywhere else am I making light of or downplaying the trauma, the terror, the pain, the fear relating to dog bites or “attacks”. I work with people who have experienced just that, usually in interactions with their own dogs, every day. I am devastated and upset when I hear of any serious injuries or injuries leading to death caused by dogs.
I don’t wish injury on any person and hope that any person injured by a cow or a dog fully recovers.
Today marks 33 years since BSL (breed specific legislation) was enacted in the UK resulting in the banning of “pit bulls” and other breeds. That quickly led to BSL in Ireland and following this pattern, after the UK government, against expert advice, expanded DDA last year, Minister Humphreys, in her role with DRCD, has announced a similar expansion here too.
Agriculture is associated with more occupational deaths than any other job-area. This is despite only a small proportion of the workforce being employed in the sector and despite ongoing education and campaigns, farm related deaths continue to rise.
About a fifth of those deaths relate to cattle. Sadly, during the ten years, 2011-2020, 39 people have been killed in cattle related incidents, with many more injured, often seriously.
More from HSA here.
Certainly anecdotally, docility is a cow-trait, presumably more widespread across populations via selection, with cattle who are harder to handle culled.
Cattle generally have limited contact with people, particularly with untrained or inexperienced people, and are handled in environments equipped with tools and set-ups to manage their behaviour.
Despite regularly reported cattle related incidents on farms, I could not find one article asking about the breed of cow involved. Not one. I did find a couple who mentioned the type of cattle, dairy breeds, beef breeds etc.
But not one mention of speculation surrounding the breed of cow, her past (was she fighting other cows?, how was she raised?), or questions about what might have happened (what if this were a child?) and zero suggestion that these cows should be banned.
Indeed there is little mention of any sort of blame, shame or declarations that there are “no bad cows, only bad farmers” despite there being hundred of recent articles, across media, reporting on cow related incidents.
I am hard-pressed to find even one media article without speculation relating to ‘breed’ of dog, without mentions of presumed “breed-traits”, with out references to “dangerous”, without discussion of banning dogs in some context.
Four people, since records began, have been killed by a dog or dogs in Ireland.
Concerns about measures to reduce animal related injuries and fatalities are absolutely worthy of discussion. But, in understanding those concerns, we need to critically assess the reporting biases created in how these concerns are raised and the implications of these biases.
A decades long campaign to demonise dogs who look like “bull breeds” has resulted in culturally ingrained attitudes toward dogs and their humans. Because BSL has always been about discriminating against the people part of the equation…who would own “these dogs”? People like me.
I was in school when DDA was enacted in the UK and when the “Restricted Breeds” list was enacted here. I was a kid but was ‘in’ dogs even then and I wrote letters and articles, and interviewed people with targeted dogs, in an attempt, along with dog-sports colleagues, to turn the tide. 33 years later BSL is still a tool and continues to show how ineffective it is at preserving safety or welfare.
While thousands of dogs’ welfare is currently suffering and will continue to suffer, not one person on this island will be safer so long as breed-based approaches are relied upon.
Breed based approaches are fundamentally flawed given the difficulties with ‘breed’ ID and the complexity with predicting safety/danger via morphological characteristics.
The solution is obviously not banning cows or certain types of cows. Instead, multi-layered approaches surrounding improved handling and awareness training, increased investment in resources and programs to improve farm safety, use of appropriate tools to improve safety and publicity that provides advice about environmental adjustments that make it easier to be safe.
This becomes particularly important as farming continues to intensify.
Breed-based approaches, in dogs, have been shown not to improve safety. And that’s likely because dog-safety requires multi-layered approaches at community and society levels.
But breed bans, as blunt political tools, present the illusion of action being taken, of something being done.
For these past 33 years, I’ve been continuing to work on improving dog safety and welfare. Depressingly, this isn’t getting better.
I’m so lucky to still be surrounded by awesome dog-peeps and we are continuing to work on this, continuing to develop community focused resources and supports.
Look out for our launching a whole new project next week.
Our focus at this time is BSL and the impending ban on XL Bully dogs in Ireland, from October. But we recognise that to improve dog welfare and human safety, everyone needs help in understanding how behaviour works.
With that level of education in place, BSL will be more widely recognised as the ineffective tool that it is, and dog safety and welfare has a chance to improve.
Dogs In Society is here to support communities in nurturing human-dog relationships to maintain safety, to maintain welfare, via education, supports, resources targeting societal reform. Not useless bans and more poorly enforced legislation.
When faced with a loved one’s mortality, perhaps they are getting on in years or perhaps there’s been a particularly damming diagnosis, it’s pretty natural to think of all the things we might want to pack into the limited time we have left together.
Bucket lists for dogs have become a social media staple. Videos and photos of guardians, and their truly loved dogs, sharing their last moments together, bring me to tears.
Finding ways to cope with our dogs’ aging is certainly something that’s important for the support of senior-dogs’ humans. The changes relating to canine aging can put significant pressures on our relationships, as well as pressures on resources and finances.
Care-giver burden is very real for those caring for senior dogs, particularly where chronic conditions are confounding aging (Spitznagel et al, 2019). This care we devote to our aging dogs intensifies our attachment (Martens et al, 2016) and can blind us in making the best decisions for our dogs (Christiansen et al, 2016).
Who are bucket lists for?
When faced with a more imminent ticking clock, our minds naturally drift to all the things we didn’t get to do with our dogs, throughout their lives or perhaps during their more spritely years. Regret is normal and very much a part of anticipatory grief.
Constructing a bucket list seems to provide a solution. We can focus on maximising our time together, no matter how short, and I can see how posting about it might be an important part of processing this journey, of generating a support structure, and of basking in the loveliness of our experiences together.
It’s probably easy enough to devise a list of all the things you might not have had the chance to do together and things that you would like to do now that the chips are down. But are those the right considerations?
I’ve two other questions that I want you to ask…
Does your dog really want to go kayaking or to totally new or overwhelming places? Your older dog, whose health, condition and mentation might not be what it used to be…
All these weird and wonderful places and activities certainly sound amazing, but most dogs, particularly older dogs, just might not enjoy the changes, the new challenges and the pressures.
For sure, novelty and excitement make for great memories, but what might our dogs prefer to do? Your dog wants you, they want to know where you are, have you close to them, for you to be predictable and make all the good things happen.
2. Why wait?
I took Decker’s nose print and paw prints years ago when some offer on a kit came up. When I shared the prints, there was much panic about whether we might be preparing for the end.
So why do we wait until it’s almost too late, until our hands are forced by time, to do all the last minute things?
Dogs are just about the best living representation of “live every moment to the fullest”, or some other similar motivational poster.
They appear to be lucky enough not to have the cognitive powers to worry about their mortality, to lay awake reflecting on what might have been.
But regardless, dogs are in it for NOW and TODAY. They are not considering what life might be like in two years time; dogs are their current life and experiences. As I always say, dogs are here for a good time, not for a long time.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot more lately because Decker has just recently got an all clear after a cancer scare.
F**K CANCER
Since the beginning of this year, Decker’s aging has become more pronounced. He’s 12.5 and that’s pretty ancient for an AmStaff.
During a routine exam, his vet incidentally found a concerning growth in his rectum. Growths of this type in this area in old dogs usually indicate adenosarcoma and all the unpleasantness that brings. With the prospect of maybe 3-6 months left, my anticipatory grief accelerated and my efforts to consciously make sure we didn’t dwell for a second intensified.
After three months of monitoring, biopsies, and finally, surgery, the lump is out and to everyone’s great relief it’s a leiomyoma. A benign growth that’s generally done after surgery. Phew!
But this has been weirdly conflicting. His tentative cancer diagnosis gave me some feelings of control over the timelines and predictability for what I might expect; how the end might look and when it might happen. I’m glad it’s not cancer but I’m left a little bereft.
Aging ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.
We are told to cherish and enjoy our aging dogs, their greying faces and slowing bodies. But I don’t find any of this magical and I’m not particularly enchanted by it.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for every second more we have together. In my mind, our time together has always been limited as he has lived his life at top speed with little concern for the ramifications.
I miss our super-charged, gung-ho lives together, as much eye-rolling and worry as that’s inspired. It’s still full on, just relatively less so. I feel we don’t and wont have enough time to bask in this slower pace. And I’m really grieving for something, not sure what, now that’s he pretty deaf.
From about March, his failing hearing appeared to deteriorate even more and although he can hear some sounds, that’s sure to go soon too. This has been the greatest smack in my face that we are heading toward the end.
I feel almost handicapped in communication and my views toward our relationship have changed. We have worked for years and years to have so many behaviours on verbal cues, under pretty solid stimulus control. He has had so much freedom throughout his life because we worked so hard and built a pretty rock solid reliable recall.
And just like that, it’s gone. It’s redefining every aspect of our lives together and I’m not sure I’m ok.
Let me just say that he has not been affected in any way and I’m working really hard to make sure there’s no outward signs of my internal turmoil.
A small celebration. Just a couple of weeks we figured out that he can hear this Acme whistle. He clearly doesn’t recognise the conditioned sound previously learned over years, but he hears something. And that means I was able to condition it as a new recall cue. After three weeks of practice, and building a solid whistle recall (again), he was able to recall off water…which is pretty much our biggest challenge.
Decker has always been the best reminder that life is short, not because he’s now an old fart, but because, since the day he landed, he has put 110% into every action. If any of his days were to be his last, he would have zero regrets and he would have soaked up the joy from every single second.
We don’t need some end-of-life bucket list. He is living his fullest and best life every single day. He throws himself, full-force, into every thing even the mundane. He seeks and finds the fun in everything and thankfully, his attitude is somewhat contagious.
I can’t possibly live in the wallowing or introspection while he is by my side doing it all. Not reflecting or thinking about it; doing it, living it, feeling it, experiencing it. Every second.
So we are not doing a bucket list, we are doing what we’ve always done. Going to the beach for swimming, walking in the woods, sniffing all the sniffs, playing ball games and tug, having fun with food, chewing and destroying all sorts of things, hanging out and sharing space, sleeping deeply beside one another.
I might seem like just the facilitator, making sure he has all the resources to continue to enjoy all these activities for as long as possible; but I’m also a witness to it, basking in his continuing joy, and if I’m lucky, I’m also a sponge, soaking up his attitude, benefitting from his joie de vivre and hoping that just a little bit rubs off on me.
Interested in learning more about canine aging and supporting our senior dogs? We have a webinar for that! More here.
Because we had a massively popular response to our PWYC webinars last year, we are bringing them back with even more!
We want to get the best education, that’s evidence based and focused in critical evaluation of the status-quo, to as many of you as possible. And the best bit? You can pay what you are able to pay. No questions asked.
Find out more about this webinar program here and register for your chosen events here.
(AniEd is in Ireland and all times are in IST.)
We have six great webinars scheduled for this initial program, with more to come.
Each webinar is 2.5-3 hours long; they are mini-courses really! There will be plenty of time and facility for full participation, questions & discussion.
Slides will be available after each event. It’s recommended that you attend live for most benefit. That’s what these webinars are for!
We are taking deep dives on these topics & will be making careful analyses of the available evidence. This will sometimes challenge your & established practice and we are so thankful for you being open to joining us & confronting our biases.
All professionals, volunteers & dedicated dog lovers are welcome and will benefit from participation. We will explore the complexities of these fascinating topics so be prepared for in-depth coverings & lots of detail.
You can book one at a time or the whole lot! Find out more about this webinar program here and register for your chosen events here.
AniEd Ireland 