Whether you’re celebrating New Year’s eve or New Year’s day, if you’re going to have people around, you need to keep certain pet safety tips in mind. Like Fourth of July with fireworks and Halloweens with strangers at the door, New Years is a time when my dogs and yours could find themselves in trouble, missing or, worse, hurt.
Pet safety tips for New Years
Two things come to mind when thinking about keeping your dog safe at New Years: what you’re drinking and what you’re eating. Chances are neither are good for your pets.
Macadamia nuts and walnuts
Most nuts do not fall into the category of dangerous human food for dogs. For example, we know peanuts are fine because peanut butter is fine. Assuming the peanut butter does not include xylitol, a sugar alcohol. Now that is toxic for dogs.
However, certain nuts could kill your pup. That would be macadamia nuts and certain walnuts.
Since I’m not 100% sure which kind of walnuts are bad for them, just keep them all away from your dog. So, if you’re placing nuts out for your holiday guests, keep them up high where dogs can’t get them.
Keep onion and garlic safely away from dogs
Many menus served on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day include onions and garlic, both toxic to dogs. They can cause kidney failure and kill your dog.
Mushrooms are dangerous
Passing around hors d’oeuvres are great for a party. However, if you’re serving stuffed mushrooms, don’t let your dog partake of them. While some mushrooms are not toxic to dogs, many are. So, just don’t risk it.
Many of these foods are on the list of what can dogs not eat.
Avoid alcohol, including champagne
Never ever give your dog alcohol or anything with alcohol in it. This includes some sweeteners that use sugar alcohol like xylitol, which is dangerous for dogs.
Alcohol causes a host of toxicity issues for dogs from diarrhea to difficulty breathing to death. While it may look cute on TikTok to share a drink with your dog, the outcome from doing that will be less than cute. So, please don’t.
Keep your pup safely indoors
When the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve, there’s bound to be plenty of noise that can spook your dog. So, if you step outside to watch the fireworks or bang pots and pans, have your pup stay inside. These loud noises may make your dog bolt.
Instead, set up a quiet space inside. If your dog is crate trained, put him away in his crate. Turn on a bathroom fan or a white noise machine to drown out the scary sounds.
Strange sounds spook my dog Oscar. So on nights when the neighbors are being loud or we have a passing thunderstorm, I’ll turn on a white noise app on my phone. This helps to drown out the scary sounds outside so he can settle down and go to sleep.
Exercise your dog before your party
An exercised dog is a calmer dog. So help your dog get to a more relaxed state by giving her lots of exercise in the hours before your guests arrive. It’s the same advice I offer in this article about road trips with dogs.
This could be a long walk, a romp at the dog park or simply playing fetch in the backyard. Your dog may end up being so tired that she settles down in her crate to go to sleep on her own.
For additional pet safety tips on New Years, the folks at Pupford can help.