welcome to healthy pets healthy owners i'm dr insel koski and i'd like to welcome my dil two buddies over here abby rate here and tucker right here you seen them before there have been with me for a number of years and they're just the best dogs th rescued from angels for animals and jesse club sick and they are absolutely the best you know with the holidays coming up and winter comes setting in i think was thirty degrees this morning when i got up i wanted to do a special show on holiday safety in winter safety so let's start off with winter you know just like us these guys get cold and a lot of people take their dogs out in the morning and it's cold or there's snow on the ground or ice and they need a layer of protection as much as we do so they need a winter coat and they need something on their paws i know my guys never liked to go out when it was cold rainy so we never really went far but  a good protection they actually make today some pretty neat boots for these animals and they're able to be put on the front paws and back pause although i think there's a learning curve for them some dogs take it right away and are able to walk and other dogs look like they're walking on ice and they can't walk so i would go to your local pet store quality pet store and investigate to see what they have to protect their paws from from the from the salt especially and also from the bitter cold you know they can get frostbite just like we can you know we've adapted and we wear shoes they can't do that from the cells we have to do it for them so they have ones that actually look like boots and have a fur lining and they also have ones that are just basically a rubber shield sort of like a little booty that you slide over and protect the protect the paws so look at that if that doesn't work a light layer of petroleum jelly actually will work to do the same thing to give it a quick coat that and it's important then to to protect them from that layer of salt that we all put so that we don't fall in slip on the ice and that salt can actually corrode the pads so what you want to do is layer that protect that and then when you get him back in the house wash that off i mean they're actually using another chemical brine type of thing a liquid there's a picture of tucker they're using this brian to to protect it to actually melt the ice and it is extremely corrosive for your dog and then you don't want your dogs licking that off their paws you know little petroleum jelly is not going to hurt them but you don't want them looking that salt and that brine because it's a toxic chemical to them so that's one of the first things having a coat made to keep them there but to protect or keep them warm is wonderful even in the house when you leave for the day and you kind of turn down the temperature a little bit have a nice warm pad or a blanket for them to go be able to curl up on there because they need it as i say they have fur we don't so much and but they do get cold so that's one of the most important things i think for winter inside a car you know in  summer time i think it's generally unknown although we have cases all the time where people walk their dogs in the summer in the heat and think they crack a window and that's fine in the wintertime that car gets extremely cold inside and so you don't want to lock your car for dogs in a car in the wintertime as well as specially for any let the time you know a couple minutes running into a store not so much a problem and you think wally the heater on well you know what that heater does that heater produces toxic gases coming up from your exhaust pipe when  removing that's being blown away but when that car sits idle and you're letting the car run for twenty minutes and the dogs in the car they actually have their inhaling these these gases carbon carbon monoxide for example so you've got to be conscious of doing that you know another thing that we have to be concerned about is separation anxiety and separation anxiety actually  what happens with separation anxiety is that we we end up having we have to go do something and we leave our dogs and they get upset that we're not with them because they are our companion animals and their lives depend on what we're doing and that's pretty much how they look at us so you have to protect them you have to keep things that they may get into like garbage and such out of the way you have to have a nice comfortable safe zone for them some dogs like to be crated mine never did and i think that had to be due to the fact that that they were you know rescue dogs that were kept in cages they never like to be in the cages so i never did that but they like a safe zone abby for example likes to be under a blanket all the time so she she the typical docs on that likes to bury herself and keep herself covered under a blanket tucker not so much you know he's comfortable having is his like is right now his head on my knee but they love a safe zone and they like to have something they're familiar with you know i had a little sugar i had a lot of anxiety and what i used to do when i'd leave to go out of town and it really only applied at that time when she saw  my suitcase and she knew i was leaving i would take some of my dirty shirts and just throw on her bed and that was enough to make her realize that i was i was still kind of around the network so little things like that  help i know stories of people that have left their dogs in the car and we were just talking about not doing that they've left their dogs in the car and they've actually chewed the upholstery and chewed up the seatbelts of the car so that anxiety they have to relieve that stress somewhere along the line and sometimes it could be in a form of aggression like like destruction or even biting so you want to be cautious of that so give them a nice safe you know generally that they like a one room in particular and so kind of set  your house because during the holiday seasons we're we're visiting people we're traveling we're going places and you can always take your dog with you so separation anxiety is something to be concerned about the nice thing are is that there are some some natural supplements that you can go to your pet store box anxiety remedy flower remedies a good one i like that one and it it actually helps calm them down and  drop or two or that before you leave works pretty well and that some dogs just don't want to go from place to place you know tucker loves that abby always did as she's gotten older she's kind of a little more reluctant to want to go do that so have something you know talk to your veterinarian talk to your health food store person and they they may be able to lead you down the right track and giving something that naturally that may help with their anxiety for this for separation you know holidays a time about visiting people and eating and we tend to do things during the holiday season that people don't really think that can impact the dogs so you have foods in your house that you normally don't need don't normally have around and you have in them an abundance and dogs can become very ill at times by eating foods that that they shouldn't be eating or they're not familiar and they're enticed by these new odors and these and these these new aromas that are floating around so let's talk about chocolate for one thanksgiving christmas is a season for forgiving chocolate the everybody box of the chocolate and you know you know what they say never know what you're getting a box of chocolate right well that box of chocolate chocolate has ingredients that can actually kill your dog and it depending on on the breed it's actually more toxic and that's the old bromine which is a hundred times more powerful than caffeine so what it ends up doing for your dog if they consume too much of it is it causes your dog to go into respiratory actually heart failure respiratory distress and heart failure and so you end up you can come home you leave a box of chocolate in a place where you don't think that your dog can get to it but you know they're pretty innovative dogs and they they are able to get in there and open that box tear the box open and get in that box of chocolates and you can come home to a very sick very day very dead dog and what that's certainly in the void that so what you need to do is keep that box of chocolates away and if you have a box of chocolates keep it locked up you know they're not so great at opening up a  rd or getting into a cabinet so that chocolate is a big deal and we need we need to avoid that plus there are a lot of lot of foods like we had a dog growing up named named duchess who is a miniature docs and  she was a jumper and one thanksgiving my mother made a turkey and she had it on the table and it was calling and we left or i don't know no one was home for a short time and we came home to find duchess on the table eating the turkey and so what happens is she she devoured a good portion that turkey because they don't like to eat so the biggest concern with that is a dog can develop bloat and bloat can take your dog down in five minutes and so what happens is the dog can end up with a twisted stomach and actually die before while you're away or all of a sudden you have an emergency and that's a life threatening situation and what blo is as you actually see the belly expand and you can see the whole body expand so it's something you have to be concerned about what you leave around the house so you know it's our turkey season our ham season  don't don't basically leave food where your dog can get into it because they will that's their sense of smell is a hundred times more powerful than ours and so they're drawn to that and it does smell good plus there are you know a lot of these foods are high fat foods and thus cannot process high fat so what we need to do is be very cautious what we're leaving and then there are there are other types of foods that we leave out the hard candies that we could we could actually choke on on the hard candy they can choke on a hard candy they can break their teeth on the hard candy and these are things that sometimes we don't necessarily have laying around the house but in that holiday season they are and something that a lot of people don't think about you're having a get together and you have orders and you use use those little toothpicks for told orders together well that is a choking device for them it's a ball perforation device for them and they're not going to grasp that hors d'oeuvre off your coffee table and proceed to pick the toothpick out and then swallow the the pepperoni that you have there or the piece of cheese they're going to swallow that whole and that can end up their small bowel which is a light in again another life threatening situation and a situation that requires immediate medical attention and and most likely surgery so the best thing to do is to avoid it so those are those are really important factors in the well being of your your pet and you know when you look at your tats they are heck of a climber and so they're able to get into locations that your dogs might not even not even be able to get to you know my dogs i don't have to worry about them so much getting them but on a coffee table the people that have dogs that are larger their coffee table height they can even reach up to the to the counter tops and grab things right off the off the counter tops so you really want to be aware of what you have laying around the house during the season and and what they're able to get into and i know we get busy and we're running here and running there and we forget that we leave things out but those are important things to be concerned and then we have people coming back and forth out in and out of the house stopping in the visit stopping to do this you know say hi bring over food whatever you're having a party and your dogs walking around well you know what happens these these animals that's not the customary action in your house most likely to have so many people coming and going in a short amount of time and they're not used to that so they can become aggressive to your to your people even though you don't have an aggressive dog because it's a little bit strange mode for them so when somebody comes to your your house you know i've noticed this with abby tucker's not so much a barker but abby's a barker in if somebody walks in excited i'm happy to see you are gives a quick bark and then she's done she realizes everything is ok so my suggestion is when you have company coming over you know that's a lot of people coming over for a large party or so forth or little kids put put your dog in another room for a while and introduce them later on into the into the party if you'd like to don't have them greeting to the visitors at the door or when these people are coming in have them be a little more mellow just just a nice nice greeting  and you'll have a dog that's much more well behaved and and not so intimidated they get into this protective fear mode so they think that you're a potential person that may harm them or harm their own or the guardian and then they want to protect and so you what you want to do is prevent that and that's the most that's probably the best way to do that is just a calm entrance into the house because then you're not intimidating you're not threatening so kind of pay attention to that and i know that's difficult because you're excited to see the people coming to the house and you've been all day running around doing things you have to do to prepare for your party because i think that if you can so that that's one way to do it i know i had a large forty one time and i think i think we had seventy people in the right and i think one hundred fifty showed up and but i had my dogs locked up in one of the bedrooms and i had to the door to the bedroom gated and i knew they were saved because people were coming and going through the whole time for the party and i didn't have to worry about my dogs walking out and a lot of people lose their animals over the holiday season because they are so focused on what they're doing for the day's events and people are coming and going and that your dog or cat just walks out and then walks away and they're lost and you know we certainly want to prevent that so the best way to protect them is to put them in a safe room somewhere and throughout the party at that particular party people wanted to see the dogs and i had six of them at that time so that that that party was or people going up stairs and seeing the dogs going down and it just worked out really well so i kind of think of that when you're having a big function at your house because you know we're going to happen in this cold weather they can go out there and freeze to death literally freeze to death in this cold weather or they can develop pneumonia  like we can so or they can get hit by a car so we need to protect them and i know i know a lot of people tell me one when my dogs see snow they love their on it and i have a lot of people telling my dog see snow they turn around and walk back in the house that's why these guys are they the north on the snow so because this when you're having a get together at your house that's probably the best advice that i can give you protect your animals keep them in your mind all the time one of the things that we do of course of the holiday season is decorate and decorating is a problem for your dogs because all of us sudden they have stimulation of people of things coming you know in their in their view and in their smell so it's a very it's very easy for them to walk up to a christmas tree in grab a b the christmas tree and the problem being that a lot of these bulbs are made from a very thin glass and so they they think it's a ball and they break it and then before you know it they're swallowing glass or cutting all the internals of their mouth and their intestinal track another issue is a lot of those have lead paint on them or they have things glued to them so so you've got to be careful of all the decorations that you have in the house and on the reaches in places where they can grab that tree grab that that bulb off that tree you've got to careful by knocking over the tree that happens as well you know they go they pull on a branch of the it's so important not only for your safety but for the safety of your animals so we decorate we use a lot of electrical lighting and so we don't have electrical saw all outlets everywhere and so we tend to use a lot of electrical cord electric cords there lies a big function problem for both cats and dogs because dogs like to chew cats like to chew and what ends up happening is they chew through that very thin coating that protects them from the wire and you have electrical current going through those electrical cords and all of a sudden it's exposed and now that your dog can get electrocuted not only can your dog get electrocuted cue to a trick q did it can burn the tissues but if it  doesn't die from the electric you ssion and then you have an issue there it can start a fire but one of the things that we don't think about is a dog can actually get tangled in the electrical cord and strangulate itself because what happens is they're playing they're biting they're moving around and that cord can get wrapped around their necks and actually strangle them so these are like just some harsh things but there are things that we don't we don't discuss or think about because we're overwhelmed by the holiday season we're overwhelmed by by company coming entertaining and so forth you know that bright light bulb it's on your christmas tree these days they used to be  big and so forth now they're small and they're mostly l e b and these it's easy for those dogs to grasp bows and pull them off and even choke on them so a good idea is to is to keep these things higher areas on your tree so that they're unable to reach them we like to travel during during these holiday seasons and we talked a little bit about the trouble with your dog you know nobody thinks about it but you're traveling on the roads are icy there's snow on the roads in the traffic is heavier and and people are distracted they're looking at decorations they're looking at thinking about what's on their mind of the stores they have to go to where the people they have to see we don't think about sometimes how fast we have to hit the brakes or we're going to lose control the car and so in that car your dog your seatbelt and generally speaking most of the time dogs are not and so when you hit the brakes and on that car those dogs go flying and they become missiles within the car and it's easy for them to go flying from the back seat of that car or the front see the car right into the windshield it's easy for them to go flying right into you so give some consideration in buying a strap that attaches to them or their colors and  allows them to be a lot more secure in the in the car i actually had that happen to me so i was getting on the interstate and somebody made a abrupt stop for no reason whatsoever i guess they panic getting on the interstate and i  on my brakes and my dogs were fortunately tethered to the seat belts in the back and as a result they moved but they got pulled back and they didn't go flying from the back of the car to the from the car so so do give some consideration that i like to put my dogs in their carriers in the car and that way their movements going to be lessened by doing that and then air travel is a is a big deal during the holiday season i think what thanksgiving is the day before thanksgiving is the biggest travel day of the year so how do you travel with your dog well big dogs it's a problem because the airlines will not unless it's a service dog will not allow a dog in the cabin of the plane and you have to put them underneath the cargo hold and frankly that's something that i would never do with with my dog those are unpressurized cabins there they don't have a temperature control in there and i've had some horror stories you know before i went to medical school actually worked for the airline for a short time and there were some some horror stories that that that i was aware of of dogs that didn't have good outcomes by traveling in the cargo hold i mean things from being left on the tarmac to freezing to death to other animal attacks so what you want to do if you can if you can is not travel in an on the in the airlines with in the cargo hold not always possible i understand that but that's something the you want to give some consideration to if your dog is small and you call the airline in you make the arrangements he let them know that you're carrying a dog because they do have the right to refuse your dog toys that it keeps you do have the right to refuse  they have the right to refuse boarding your animal so you need to make prior preparations and they do charge they charge everywhere from seventy five dollars one hundred fifty dollars for travel on that plane and that dog has to fit in a care in a airline approved carrier placed underneath the seat and then you have to leave your dog alone and you know i travel a lot with my dogs and most of the airlines are pretty pretty strict on that some of them were a little bit more nastier than others  southwest and tends to be a little more relaxed a little a little friendlier airline in my opinion and but you're still not allowed to take your dog god unless it's a service dog or an emotional support dog and you have to have you know the certifications to show the airline that but you pay you put your dog underneath your seat and you leave your dog in the carrier and most dogs do well in doing that i mean these guys travel all the time with me and what what what happens is the issue with that is when they're in that carrier on that plane where do you walk them you can't you can't walk them and they are in there and the on the airplane so you need and you have to get the airport sometimes during the holidays even more than two hours behind ahead of time because of security lines and longer lines at check in and so forth so it's sometimes a long distance flights are a problem but you have to  areas at the airports where you can walk your dog try to get it to go to the bathroom and you know my advice to you is try to get the go because it's a long flight and what i always do with my dogs is i lessen their food low the day before and you know i travel a lot and so far we really haven't had a problem you know they they do their their duties we get in that carrier we get on the plane and we go and for the most part it's been wonderful actually i found that with my dogs that humming of the jet engines actually laws than the sleep so i've only been on a couple flights where i've had been where there been other dogs in the dogs didn't do so well and that's where you may want to talk to your veterinarian  about about maybe slightly medicating them or again talking to someone that has a natural approach to to calm your dog down like i say there are some natural products that do that and you start introducing those  days before you travel you don't suddenly go ahead and give it that you travel you know so air air flight travel is pretty good you know i was on one flight where somebody just kept violating the rules  and the airline flight attendant a pretty upset with the person because they had a their coat and they had their little dog underneath a coat and so forth but you know if you follow the follow the guidelines fairly well you're you're ok as i say you have to let them know you're bringing a dog some of them have limits to number of dogs on the flight so kind of pay attention that it is doable you know and then you think about it at the other end of your destination your animals are at an area that they're unfamiliar with everything is new to them the surroundings the smells the people the noise the actions so you have to have that period of time where they integrate you know these guys are so used to traveling with me that i don't have a problem but if you're an occasional trouble with a dog you'll notice that there's a difference because again everything is new to them and you're worried about their safety so because just conscious of what's going on around you know other animals in the parks the lease laws you know those type of things so that's a lot that's a lot to consider a bit as a at a busy time and a busy season so we want to we want to have our animals we want to protect them and we when we want to have a good time with them you know i want to remind everybody that i now have a radio show every saturday morning on twelve fifty am at nine am it's night nine to ten it's a live in call in show called healthy pets healthy people and it's really an extension of healthy pets health healthy owners and i love the ability to be able to talk to people on the on air live and we do kind of the same thing as we do here so it was to listen give us a call remember a healthy pet is a healthy pet happy pet and when you're healthy you're happy as well thank you so much for watching healthy pets healthy owners will see you next t