Having a Pet-Friendly Fourth of July

But really what I wanted to chat with about today was the 4th of July is coming up and there's a lot of dogs that have noise phobias and fireworks can be a very significant noise phobia, obviously are stimulus to cause a pretty strong reaction in a lot of dogs.

Hey everybody. It's Dr. Michele Drake and I'm here at The Drake Center today with two really cute new patients of ours. This is Lilo and Stitch, and they're here for their first puppy visit, and anyway, I'm just here to let you see how cute they are.

But really what I wanted to chat with about today was the 4th of July is coming up and there's a lot of dogs that have noise phobias and fireworks can be a very significant noise phobia, obviously are stimulus to cause a pretty strong reaction in a lot of dogs. There's a lot of dogs too who you could be putting the fireworks off in your house and they could care less. But there's a subset that really are frightened tremendously by loud noises and they can cause them to do some scary things like try to break out of your house or get really fearful, have panic attacks and maybe cause some destruction too.

So we want to make sure we avoid those things. For those of you that have had your dogs for years and had had experiences, some of you know already that you have that, there's a great medication that we use called Sileo. It's very safe and it is used specifically for noise aversion. So if you know your dog has this problem, you're to want to use that medication on that day. Sometimes even January 1st, on New Year's Eve, we have issues also, or if you just know there's going to be some really loud noises of jack-hammering or something, you're going to want to have this product available.

So it's super safe and very effective. So if you know you have that issue, then you should use it, and also you should hopefully stay home with your dogs, that any dog that has noise aversion. If you don't know if your dog noise aversion, then you probably may want to stay with them the first time you go through a 4th of July. Now, I think there's going to be less 4th of July going on this year because of COVID, but nonetheless, I'm sure there will still be fireworks going off and some noises. So when in doubt, just make sure someone stays with your dog. And if you do know they have the fear of them, let's get that product, Sileo, to make sure you have a safe 4th of July.

So one more thing just to add too, is in making sure that your dog has a proper ID tag all the time. Sometimes you guys have gardeners or somebody visiting in the yard that leaves a gate open and a dog get out, and certainly 4th of July is a time when some dogs sneak out. So ID tags are really important. Also, microchipping is a great insurance policy to have a microchip placed into your dog's skin and that's a great way for if they were to get found by someone else or the county authorities, that they would be able to identify who the dog belongs to and get them back to you safely and as quick as possible.

A lot of people are going to have barbecues, probably very small barbecues now in light of COVID, but just remember that dogs will eat inappropriate things from your barbecues. Some of the more common foreign bodies that are really serious are corncobs, the skewers that are used for meat, and bones. None of these things should be eaten by your dog and so please be super careful or talk to anybody that's visiting about making sure that those things do not land on the ground or that you guys maybe get up and go somewhere else in the yard, which is something I've done, and you leave the table unattended and then the dogs are up there feasting on things that they shouldn't do. So just be really careful around that and have a great 4th of July.