Make a Safe Home for Your Furbabies
Their soft fur, their puppy dog eyes, and their naughty antics send our hearts into overdrive, but pet ownership is more than just cuddles and playtime. When you bring a dog or cat home, making sure your home is safe for them should be a priority. Here are some common household items that can be poisonous to your four-legged children.
Grapes and Raisins
They’re good for your banana bread, not for your dog. If you have a pack of raisins in your pantry, make sure Bruzo can’t get to it; it could send him into sudden kidney failure.
Onions and Garlic
While onions are an important (and often necessary) aromatic, and garlic has some anti-inflammatory effects on humans, neither of these is good for your pet’s health. They have been known to induce anemia in cats and dogs, and should be avoided at all costs.
Chocolate
This might be familiar even to people who have never had a dog. The reason why it’s said that “Chocolate is like poison to dogs” is that our beloved sweet treat can cause cardiac arrhythmias, muscle tremors, and even seizures in our four-legged friends.
Tulips, Daffodils, and Hyacinths
If you’re a florist (or a flower arrangement enthusiast) with a dog at home, watch out! Chewing on the bulbs of flowers like tulips, hyacinths, and daffodils can be particularly dangerous to dogs. If you’re a cat owner, you can rest slightly at ease knowing that it might not do Mr. Whiskers as much harm.
Aspirin, Ibuprofen, and Acetaminophen
If you have a bottle of Tylenol or Advil at home, here’s your sign to tuck it safely in your medicine cabinet. These common over-the-counter pain relievers are known to cause liver damage to both dogs and cats.
Caffeine
Caffeine is a stimulant. The reason it wakes you up is that it gets your heart pumping, and while it’s harmless to humans (because of our size), to most dogs and cats, who are much smaller than us, your daily morning cup of joe can lead to a serious heart attack.
Fertilizers
If your dog has a habit of playing in the backyard, keep an eye out and make sure that he doesn’t get into the fertilizers you have lying around. The organophosphates found in most fertilizers can cause muscle tremors, difficulty breathing, and even fatal seizures in pets.
Essential Oils
Whether it’s peppermint oil for your bath or tea tree oil for your skin, essential oils of all kinds can be highly toxic to your pets. If you regularly use these oils for anything, keep them stashed in a place you know your pets can not get into.
Antidepressants, ADHD Medications, and Cold Medicines
Prescription drugs for depression, ADHD, and other neurological and psychological disorders are made to stimulate or suppress certain parts of the human brain. Their doses are compatible with our size and volume, but for cats and dogs, who have smaller brains, they can severely disrupt their neural network and cause seizures.
Alcohol
We all like to crack open a cold one at the end of a hard day, but always make sure that your pets don’t get into your stack of IPAs. Alcohol poisoning is bad for humans and worse for animals. It can lower their blood pressure and lead to seizures.
Houseplants
Before you go down to the nursery, look up what plants are safe for your furbabies back home. Common houseplants like philodendron, sago palm, and snake plants are poisonous to pets. If you want to have indoor plants, go for something like a prayer plant, bamboo palm, or spider plant instead.
Nicotine
Smoking (and even vaping and e-cigarettes) is extremely harmful to humans, and even worse for cats and dogs. Even ingesting a single cigarette has enough nicotine to cause nicotine poisoning, leading to vomiting, drooling, tremors, and even seizures in pets (especially smaller breeds).
THC Products
As THC and related products are being legalised in more and more states, finding them in homes is becoming more common. Whether you use it for medical purposes or recreationally, keeping your pets away from such products is extremely important. Even in small doses, THC can put your pet in a coma.
Lilies
Lilies are a beautiful staple of any flower arrangement, but next time you get them, be really careful. These flowers can be hazardous to cats. Even a few small grains of pollen from lilies are enough to cause fatal kidney failure in our feline friends.
Mulch
Another reason to keep your dog out of your backyard—mulch, especially cocoa mulch, contains theobromine. This is the same compound that is found in chocolate and is hazardous to a dog’s cardiac health. Next time your dog goes digging through the yard, make sure to shoo them away.
Antifreeze
Having it is essential to maintaining your car, especially if you live in colder areas. But keep in mind that antifreeze has a sweet smell that can be very attractive to dogs and cats. It’s your responsibility to keep them away from it, as even small amounts of the compound can be deadly to animals.
