PSA for the holidays

With the holidays coming up, many people think that as they are celebrating, Fido should too. Unfortunately, holiday fare is just not healthy food for dogs. You may already know that cooked bones of any type are dangerous for your dog to eat, but when your focus is on the holiday and not on the dog, it's easy for Grandma to slip a turkey bone from her plate to Fido waiting below, or as you're clearing the plates into the trash, you turn your back for a moment and the remains are gone. Dogs can be very sly little creatures when they want something so badly and they don't want you to see them steal it!

Make it a household policy not to feed your dogs cooked bones of any type. Don't throw the leftover turkey carcass in any trash can accessible by pets. Don't leave food on the plates where a dog could counter surf and grab a bone.

Below are photos of a dog who ate a steak bone. A chip from this bone embedded in it's intestines. I've heard about cooked chicken and turkey bones splintering, but not so much about steak bones. The owner of this dog caught it quickly and rushed the dog to the vet who got it into emergency surgery before any real damage was done – except for the sizable scar on the dog's belly and an even more sizable hit to the wallet due to the surgery, a night at an emergency vet and a stay at it's regular vet for two following days to make sure he stayed hydrated. Prevention is the key.





And while I'm on my PSA soapbox, be very careful with medications, too. I just recently heard of a young dog getting a bottle of his human's thyroid medication from her purse and downing all 30 pills in the matter of seconds. So much for child-proof packaging. It's definitely not dog proof. For the owner, it was a very scary call to poison control and a trip to the vet.