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It might be said that there are two kinds of people in this world: those who put antlers on their tiny dog at holiday time, and those who don't.
I may or may not cop to being in the former category. But if I do, it's only for the occasional five-minute photo op, and nothing more. We're more aware of his safety and comfort than perhaps our own (maybe another post on pet co-dependence should come around at some point?), and this is especially true in the days between the first Halloween candy and New Years Day black-eyed peas. Given that the candy pops up in August these days, that's a good chunk of the year.
Anyway, our dog is a part of our pack, and we're in growing company, because pets are part of more lives and households than ever. According to a 2007 survey by the American Pet Products Manufacturing Association an all-time high of 71.1 million households in the United States, or 63 percent of all homes, house pets as well as people. This means that the animals are around for the holidays just like we are, and the stresses that can impact human beings at this time also affect them.
There is what I find to be an overwhelming amount of information online about pet care and safety. At the risk of repeating some or most of it here, I'll break it down into some broad categories, with a lot of help from my blogging friends.
No Christmas Puppies
First rule - do not bring a new pet into your home or your life during the holiday season. Or, as one of my personal pet blogging heroes, Gina Spadafori, terms her entire category on Pet Connection: "No Christmas Puppies." Scroll back through the archives to November, 2004, for a daily reason why not to purchase puppies at holiday time, specifically from puppy mills, but really from anywhere. She kicked off November this year with a similar post.
A couple years ago I wrote a reason for every day in the month leading up to Christmas why it’s important to not not not support this sick, sick industry with the purchase of a Christmas puppy. By Christmas I was feeling so little goodwill to all that it was scary. Not a good way to start the year, and I cannot repeat this particular endeavor because I have a gun and might use it. Lucky for puppy-millers, it’s really, really hard these days to fly with a gun to Pennsylvania (where the Amish, of all people, run puppy mills) or Kansas/Missouri (where the state governments encourage farmers to get into puppy farming.)
No, No. No. Instead, I will just say this: Don’t buy a pet-store puppy. Heck, don’t buy a Christmas puppy at all. Read the series, and find out more than 30 reasons why.
But what if you're careful? What if the dog or cat is not from a pet store or is even a rescue? The truth is that the holidays are not the best time to bring a new pet into your life, period. As Gina said in her series,
1) Christmas is a bad time to introduce a puppy to your family. Winter is a hard time to house-train, socialize and raise a puppy. Summer, with its longer days and better weather, is much more agreeable to the proper raising of a lifelong companion. As to Christmas Day itself … what a mess! There’s just too much going on this day, and that’s too stressful for a pup to deal with. Sick puppy on Christmas Day? It’s a real possibility. Have you priced emergency veterinary care lately? Do you even know where to go?
This article by Ruth Ginzberg on PetRescue.com gives more reasons why holiday time is a bad time to introduce a new pet to the family, and the Humane Society of the United States says that the best gift you can give is waiting to adopt until after the holidays.
Instead of buying a puppy or kitten as a gift, consider waiting to adopt a pet after the holidays. You could even build some excitement for a post-holiday adoption. You could give a loved one a "gift certificate" from a local shelter, or a snapshot of a shelter pet, or even a stuffed animal representing a shelter pet—all which can be used as "passports" to adopt an animal later. You
