Keeping Pets Safe This Halloween
Darren J. Prior
A
well-known vet has spoken to Dublin People to offer advice to pet
owners on how they can help their pets avoid traumatic experiences at
Halloween this year and every year.
Pete
Wedderburn, better known as Pete the Vet from his many television and
media appearances, told Dublin People that animals in general
“evolved to be familiar with certain loud sounds and flashes like
thunderstorms and so on”.
However,
according to Pete, they have not evolved to be “familiar with what
fireworks cause, which is extremely loud bangs and squeals and whines
and very bright flashes”.
This means
that animals can find Halloween “highly stressful because as far as
they are concerned it could be the end of the world. It is not
anything they have witnessed before and so it causes a great deal of
fear and the fear can lead to panic and animals behaving in kind of
wild ways as they try to find safety”.
Many people
in Ireland and around the world are unaware of the range of
strategies available to pet owners to help their animals cope with
fireworks.
According
to Pete, there are several measures that pet owners can take to help
ensure that their pets, particularly dogs and cats, get through the
Halloween period, which can extend throughout October, with as little
distress as possible.
Some of
these strategies may be well known to many people, while others may
not.
The first
is to make sure that your pet is microchipped. While it is a legal
requirement for all dogs in Ireland to be microchipped, this
requirement does not currently apply to cats.
The “reason
I say this is is that very commonly around Halloween vets are faced
with loads of animals that have strayed because they have been
frightened by a firework and they run out of their own territory and
they get lost”.
If a pet is
microchipped and its owner's contact details are correct and up to
date on the database, the animal can be quickly identified and
returned to its owner if it is brought to a veterinary practice.
Pete also
recommends that dog owners avoid walking their dogs at night during
the Halloween period. Crucially, he also advises cat owners not to
allow their cats to roam outdoors after 3pm.
“You can
take your dogs for walks alright but it would be better to take them
out for walks during daylight hours, so that probably means kind of
9.00am-3.00 pm”.
Pete also
recommends playing music at a reasonably high volume in the home to
help mask the sounds of bangers and fireworks outside.
This can
help many animals indoors. However, he also emphasises the importance
of pet owners remaining calm when their animals become distressed.
If “you
get yourself into a state of high anxiety worrying about your dog and
sort of frantically petting them and reassuring them you can actually
give them a heightened sense of anxiety”.
There is
also a form of dog “sound therapy and firework training”
available to download from the Dogs Trust website. Dog owners can
play these recordings gradually over the months leading up to
Halloween to help their dogs become accustomed to the sounds of
fireworks while indoors.
In relation
to the deliberate cruelty to animals that can sometimes occur
involving fireworks around Halloween, Pete points out that if “you
see anything like that – take photos, take videos and then you can
report that to the authorities such as the NSPCA and action will then
be taken against such people.”
