Loving Your Four Legged Kids (Pets)

It's true many pet lovers view pets as their kids and definitely part of the family. Sometimes the pets are the favorite kids among all the kids in the house because your pets are always happy to see you come home, they don't talk back to you, they don't need $500 toys to be happy and your pets are usually the only ones who want to hear about your day. Most of all, they show you love at times when you need to feel love the most.

While we love all types of pets; we're focusing on dogs because our kids are little dachshunds who are full of energy and mischief. They act like the biggest dogs on the block until a bigger dog gets after them then they are the fastest dogs on the block.

People love to make their pets happy in many different ways.

They buy them toys, give them their favorite treats sometimes more than they should and even dress them up.

Vacations are planned as pet friendly vacations where pet friendly hotels, pet friendly beachfront rentals and even pet friendly cabin rentals are researched and utilized to make sure the pets can be part of the family vacation.

Pets are taken to a pet playground to allow them to socialize with other dogs.

Some people even buy doghouses that look like little houses complete with air conditioning and heat to make sure their kids stay healthy. Actually the prices are not that bad to have a custom dog house built and designed to where the little heat/cooling unit in the doghouse plugs into an outside receptacle. The alternative is to let the dogs suffer, pen them up in the house or give them free run in the house where boredom usually means something is destroyed.

I know this one pet owner who takes his Labrador Retriever dog to the drive through at a fast food place just to buy the dog his favorite off the diet snack, two double patty hamburgers. I'm sure the worker at the drive through window takes a step back when he sees that dog's big head hanging out the back window anxiously waiting for his snack.

Pets are smart. This same dog knows instantly what is happening when they pull into the fast food outlet's parking lot. He starts drooling and becomes excited as he looks at the hamburger pictures on the outside menu board. Just like he knows what to expect when they pull into the teller lane at the local bank; the teller smiles at the excited big headed dog hanging his head out the car window as she sends out a doggie treat via the teller window to him.

Don't worry! This dog gets the best dog food on the market on a daily basis. The owner like all pet owners wants to spoil his baby.

Another dog owner I know has spoiled his pet by allowing the dog to ride on the golf cart with him at the lake. If that golf cart is moving, his dog thinks he is supposed to be right there next to him on the seat. If the dog is not on the golf cart, you'll find him whining at home because he didn't get to go.

We spoil our pets in different ways because we do indeed love them. Some people may think pet lovers are strange with how we act with our pets. All I can say is get a pet and show some love to a pet of any kind. It will make you a better and more caring pe

While we love our pets; there are the moments that will test your patience:

The accidental, or sometimes you will swear they did it on purpose, urine flood on the carpet. What you can see is not the only urine a visitor to your house smells way before you start smelling the urine stench holding your house hostage. It is the urine spots all over the house that you don't even know exist.

Fortunately with a black light you can find the urine spots you missed because they dried invisible to the eye but not to the nose. With a good urine pooling agent such as ProKlean%u2122 Urine Pooling, you can get this house emptying odor under control by removing the catastrophic, extreme or super pet urine.

Your dogs can create several headaches for you in the backyard which usually happens at the most inopportune time for you. They love to dig holes especially under the fence to do what they naturally want to do, Be Free to Roam. Yes, this one will usually happen when you are in the bathroom and someone rings the doorbell repeatedly to inform you that your dogs are running down the street.

The second headache, your dogs love to run the fence line barking at the dogs next door. Allowing your dogs to do what at first seems like a harmless exercise can increase the aggressiveness in your dogs' behavior, create irritation with your neighbors over the barking noise generated by your dogs and may even make the larger dog next door decide to get into your backyard to answer their barks. The chances of a little kid getting bit if they stick their hand in between the fence boards are increased as well by allowing your dogs to participate in this aggressiveness generating activity that whips them into an excited frenzy.
How do you solve these problems?

For the digging under the fence problem, you can install a wire fence system designed to be installed below ground that is attached or butts up to the bottom of the wood fence. You can also use a Radio Dog Fence and Underground Pet Containment System to stop the below the fence hole digging habit which also stops the fence line running habit.

Or you can do what I decided was my best option.

Create a inexpensive temporary fenced in area that encloses the area at your back door (if you are lazy like me and just want to let them out in the backyard without having to go outside) that gives them enough room to move about, have a daily poop area and encloses their dog house. Daily poop clean up to control the flies that love to show up when you are grilling is a lot easier instead of having to walk the entire backyard. While they may still bark at the dog(s) on the other side of the fence, the intensity level will be decreased.

I let my four legged kids out in the larger part of the yard when I have the time to be out there to supervise and work on modifying their behavior.

If you stay in the preventative mode, you can use the two prong attack instead of using the three prong attack.

The two prong attack consists of using a monthly topical treatment directly on your pets and treatments for the lawn area such as IGR concentrates.

If you don't stay in a preventative mode, you will be in the defensive mode which now will be a three prong attack. The three prong attack will still include the monthly topical pet treatment, lawn area pesticide application and now unfortunately an indoors flea pesticide as well. You will have to spray the carpet, upholstered furniture, rugs and pet sleeping areas.

As you can see, it is much easier to do a two prong attack. Even if you didn't have pets, fleas and ticks can find their way into your house.

A lawn treatment for fleas and ticks several times a year is recommended to keep a barrier between you and them. A good thing is that some of the outdoor pesticides that kill fleas and ticks such as IGR concentrate also kill roaches, ants, spiders, lice, crickets, centipedes and silverfish as well.

There are three stages of chewing you have to watch out for with your pet: Teething, exploratory and the final stage that your dog may always enjoy doing, the stress and calming chewing.

If you modified and re-directed their natural behavior in the teething and exploratory stages to items acceptable to chew, your pet will know what are acceptable things to chew on to stay relaxed.

It doesn't matter if it's your favorite shoes; the wood on the furniture, the rugs or even the doors, dogs will chew the heck out of them if given the opportunity because you failed to give them the guidance to what is acceptable to chew. Your dog doesn't care if it's a dollar chew toy or a thousand dollar couch, he wants to chew.

While there are products on the market such as Johnston's Anti-Chew, constant vigilance on your part to correct their bad behavior when they start to chew the wrong items, making sure you do not leave them in areas unmonitored where they are tempted by the array of things to chew, and securing your pet in a crate / pen area or chew proof area of your house if you have one when you are not home are your best options.

Don't forget dogs will also try to claw their way free from the room they are secured in while you are gone. Yes, right through the sheetrock wall. Love your pets but don't underestimate their determination.

Keeping our pets healthy is not cheap. While we don't mind spending the money on our pets, we are always looking for ways to not waste our money.

Ordering our pets' medicines online and taking advantage of specials we find on line for flea and tick topical treatments as well as comparing prices at our local stores allow us the opportunity to spend more on their dog food and treats.

With more dogs getting diabetes these days which bring a high monthly medical expense, many pet owners who don't want to give their pet shots and deal with the urination problem associated with pet diabetes are turning to Pet Remedy (Pet Diabetes) "Glucose Support Formula" to help their pets.

Exercise is important for the health of your pets. Taking them for a walk is good for them and you too! Many people take advantage of pet playgrounds in their city for their pets to get exercise and to socialize with other dogs.

Pet insurance is being used more frequently now to keep a pet lover from having to make the decision whether to help their beloved pet at a high cost or to have them euthanized.

It actually hurts when you lose a pet. For those who don't understand the friend, relative or co-worker saddened by the loss of their pet, their feeling of traumatic loss is genuine. It was their kid, their baby, their pet who died.

Your kindness of sending them a pet loss e card will always be remembered as something special you did for them in their time of personal grief.

Some pet owners cope with their loss by making or ordering an urn for their pet. Other pet owners bury them in a pet cemetery complete with a pet tombstone.

Regardless of how you grieve, only time will take the edge off of the hurt. Hopefully, the time will come when you want to again feel the love of a new addition to the family.

Many forms of dog animal abuse take place every minute of the day somewhere in the world.

The most common forms of dog animal abuse are leaving them without adequate shelter from the rain, cold or heat, not giving them an adequate amount of food and water and finally, failing to make sure the dogs are vaccinated and medicated for preventable diseases and protection from fleas and ticks.

Two very serious forms of dog animal abuse are the intentional bodily injury to animals and the one that goes mostly unnoticed until a child or person is injured or killed, the intentional training and/or conditioning of dogs, to make them vicious and predatory.

Any and all abuse should be reported to your local animal abuse department or shelter.

Suspected vicious dogs should be reported as well to allow the animal control officers the opportunity to make the determination before it is found out too late due to an attack on a human being that results in serious injuries or death to the attacked victim.