Owning pets is an amazing experience. The relationship you develop with your dog is one you’ll remember for life, and so will they! However, there will be a few bumps in the road. Your pets aren’t perfect creatures, and will sometimes be mischievous.
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A casual exploration of the house, or getting in places where they shouldn’t be is all fun and games for them. We as owners usually don’t share that sentiment. Especially when our favorite shoes get chewed out or if we’re left with a massive mess to take care of. Here’s how you can avoid such situations!
How To Pet Proof Your Home
Pets, especially small puppies, are like kids – they have to touch everything, taste everything, and get inside everywhere. Their behavior changes as they grow, but that takes time. Preventing them from doing is a matter of their safety and your peace of mind. However, there are different ways to pet-proof your home.
Some owners tend to go overboard, which leads to them subjecting their entire home to their pets. Being efficient with your pet-proofing job is a much better idea. As it turns out, it doesn’t take much to get the job done!
Make Food Hard to Reach
Dogs are suckers for food. Some dogs just love to eat and will go to great lengths to get food. That drive for a tasty snack usually leads them to be where they’re not supposed to be, doing things they shouldn’t be doing.
The easy and efficient way to deal with this is to stove away any food that’s lying around. Put fresh food in the fridge. Anything that goes into cupboards, such as snacks or cereals, should be placed in hanging elements or lockable cupboards. Dogs can and will open doors on various kitchen furniture if they smell food on the other side.
Groom Your Pup
A massive part of pet-proofing a home is due to people having issues with their dogs shedding fur all over the place. Different types of dogs shed more than others. That’s just how they are. If you own such a breed, you need to be ready for the high maintenance that goes with it.
Instead of putting barricades all over the place to protect your furniture from hair, do yourself a favor and groom your dog as necessary. That will solve 90% of your problem. The other 10% comes down to owning a good vacuum that can handle pet hair. Pros over at this website have put together a decent guide on what such a vacuum looks like. Pet-friendly vacuum cleaners are a bit different from your regular Hoover, so make sure to do your research.
Take Out the Trash
Dogs as well as cats, love to go through trash. Even though we can’t smell it or sense it, trash can stimulate a dog’s sense of smell from far away. Having the trash lying around the house in trash bags is just asking for trouble. It needs to either be thrown out or placed in an indoor trash can.
That being said, some puppies have shown an uncanny ability to open various trash cans and create a massive mess.
Use a Shoe Organizer
Young dogs love to chew on shoes. It’s their favorite thing to do. We can’t be mad at them for acting on their impulses, but we can make the shoes harder to reach. Shoe organizers are a great way to get the job done. They can be simple and inexpensive, allowing you to get your shoes out of your dog’s reach without breaking the bank.
We suggest getting an organizer that allows you to either store the shoes out of reach or high enough where your pup can’t get to them.
There’s a good chance that your dog will find something else to chew instead of shoes. Try to recognize this pattern of behavior on time and then remove the items they love to chew out of reach.
Cable Management
Another thing puppies and kittens are fascinated with are cables. For whatever reason, they love chewing on them. Depending on how much your pet likes to play with cables, you might need to do some cable management.
There are various ways to get this done. You can tuck the cables out of sight and remove all the exposed wiring from reach. If that’s not feasible, there’s tubing you can get that will hide the cables and make them impossible to gnaw on. Granted, this isn’t always the easiest route, but it provides guaranteed results.
Remove Choking Hazards
Dogs love to chew on everything, including things that can be a choking hazard. Small items such as kids’ toys or similar can put your dog at risk. Again, the best course of action is to keep track of these items and store them away when your kids are done playing.
The same applies to any hobby items you might have lying around. Anything small enough for the animal to choke on should be out of reach. You don’t have to look at this process as a chore. You can use the opportunity to better organize your home and make it less cluttered.
Don’t Go Overboard
It’s easy to get carried away with pet-proofing a home. A gate here, a ramp there, and you’re done. However, placing physical barricades around the house doesn’t always work, and when it does, it can seriously restrict your pet’s range of motion within the house.
But isn’t that kind of the idea? Sure, however going too far will make the pet’s available space into a prison cell. Don’t do that.
One more thing to keep in mind is that pets, especially dogs, tend to outgrow these measures fairly quickly. No gate is going to prevent a determined dog from jumping over if the dog is big enough. That’s just how it is.
Everything we’ve mentioned so far is the passive or reactionary solution to the overly curious dog issue. Training the dog is the more difficult, but also the most efficient way of handling this. Dogs are smart and it doesn’t take long for them to establish patterns of behavior, however, it will take some work on your part.
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