Easter Safety for Your Animals

While Easter is a happy time, the celebration can present some safety challenges for your animals. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Chocolate: Our love of sweets can make it easy to assume that our pets will enjoy them as well. This is not the case and chocolate can make an animal very sick. Keep an eye on children to make sure they aren’t sharing chocolate with your pets as a gesture of love. 

Candy Wrappers: Treat yourself to some sweets but make sure their wrappers are immediately and safely thrown away. These seemingly innocent wrappers can cause internal damage in dogs and cats. 

Plastic Eggs: These can look like toys to your pets. The danger is if they are chewed and swallowed, the eggs can cause serious intestinal problems. If you use plastic eggs, count how many you have and make it's the same number by the end of the day.

Easter Grass: While pretty to look at, shredded Easter grass is very tempting for cats to eat. Pets are unable to digest the grass, so the threads get stuck in the intestines.

Easter Lilies: These beautiful flowers should be kept away from your animals. They are extremely poisonous to pets, especially cats. Vomiting, low energy, and the loss of appetite are some warning signs. If left untreated in cats, lilies can cause kidney failure.

Easter Toys: It’s common to find these in Easter baskets. They’re fun for your kids and attractive to your animals. But small toys are a choking hazard for dogs and cats. To prevent accidental swallowing, buy larger toys and keep your Easter baskets off the floor.
   
We hope your family has a happy and safe Easter.

Clean!

It's a comment many people make when first visiting our shelter. They say, "It's so clean!"

Cleanliness is a very important value at Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. On average, an animal is with us for up to 35 days (some long term animals have been with us for more than a year) and we want that stay to be as comfortable as possible.

As you can see, every day our dog and cat areas are sprayed, scrubbed, and mopped. We make sure to use cleaning products that safe for the animals.

For our dogs, the morning cleaning time is also the time when they are walked, so they come "home" to a nice, clean place.

We also want to make sure that your visit to our facility is a pleasant one.

Please join us in saluting our many staff members who keep Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. Their dedication is priceless and we know it is appreciated by the animals.

Tips from the Trainer - The Recall Command

Recall is the most valuable command you can teach!  This command can even save your dog’s life! Teaching a recall is easy—just reward your dog for coming to you! 

Start by kneeling a few feet away and making happy noises. Praise when the pup takes her first step toward you and give her a yummy treat when she gets to you. Run a few feet away and repeat the process. Make it a fun game! When she’s reliably coming to you, start using your cue.

Add distance and distractions to the recall. Calling a young puppy from across the yard when she is exploring a new, interesting scent is setting yourself and your pup up to fail. Walk to within a few feet, kneel down, and call her from there—and make sure to reinforce her for abandoning the distraction with something even better.

Success comes from repetition. Don’t increase your distance or distractions until your dog responds immediately and enthusiastically to the recall cue. While you’re training, remember to give a super-good reward every time you call your dog.

Kristi Jackson is the Senior/Lead Trainer at Peggy Adams Animal Rescue League. To find out more about our classes, visit http://www.hspb.org/page.aspx?pid=457

 

Want more training tips? Stay tuned for the next issue of our Shaggy Sheet Newsletter.

Picture Perfect - Thanks to You

We want to remember every moment from the 2013 Walk for the Animals. But as you know, with a walk, a pet wash, contests, a silent auction, and much more, there's lot happening.

That's where you can help us. If during the event, you see something that makes you laugh, smile, or cry tears of joy, take a picture of it with your smartphone.

Then we want you to share the picture through services like Instagram, Twitter, Flickr, and checkin on Foursquare. Here's the important bit.... tag the photos with the hashtag: #walkwithpeggy

This will automatically add your picture (after it receives approval from us) to a special online gallery we've set up. Want to take a look? Visit http://walkwithpeggy.exclaimr.com/

So help us remember all of the special moments from this year's Walk for the Animals. Thank you... you're PAWSOME!