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Today's Pet care tip: Preparing Pets for a Baby

Bringing home a baby is a huge adjustment for both people and our pets. If your pet has spent limited time with a baby or children, or your pet has been your only “child” for some time, many of the adjustments may be upsetting. Take action now to avoid additional stress and make this time of transition as smooth as possible.

Do not try to love/snuggle/play with your pets as much as possible right now! While it may sadden you to think your time with your pets will soon be shared, or significantly reduced, showering them with extra attention now sets them up for an even bigger letdown when baby arrives.

If you have neglected to teach your dog any commands, it is time to buckle down and get serious with the training. It will be very useful to have a dog that can obey the bare minimum commands of sit and stay, along with knowing not to jump up on people. Dogs can be dangerous underfoot when carrying a little one, so teaching your dog a command to get back can also be a good idea.

If you currently sleep with your pets and plan on having your baby sleep in your room for any length of time, kick your pets out in advance. You can’t supervise while you are asleep. A baby may be viewed by your cat as a soft, warm spot to sleep, which could be deadly for a newborn or infant. If you choose to keep your dog in the room at night, make sure your bassinet is secure and locked in place and that your dog cannot get into it.

Review the steps to avoid bites between pets and children pronto and learn how to recognize signs of canine stress. Your cat will be stressed; you can just assume that.

Change up their routine. If your pets are on a schedule, it’s time to break out of it. If they are used to being fed at 7 am followed by a brisk walk, try altering that time and order. Babies bring chaos; acclimate your pets now to reduce stress.

If you don’t use your dog crate regularly, start doing so now. Just because your dog is able to wander free and guard the house unsupervised now does not guarantee he won't rebel when baby arrives and diverts attention. Avoid the additional stress of destroyed objects and introduce the crate in small increments. While this may seem unnecessary, skipping this step risks that. The crate will also be a safe haven for the dog once baby arrives.

Introduce your pets to baby objects, sounds, and smells. Some easy ways to do this are simply setting up the nursery and having baby objects out in the home. Play a YouTube video of babies crying for your pets with regularity or consider playing a CD of baby lullabies if you will be using one. Some people find it useful to carry a doll around and initiate the rules you will enforce when your real baby arrives. You can even have someone bring home a blanket your baby was swaddled in at the hospital before you are discharged so your pets can acclimate to the smell.

Arrange for help so your pets won’t be neglected. You will want at least a couple of people lined up to care for your pets when you go into labor, as you may not be able to get in touch with everyone. Once home, see if you can arrange for a friend to take your dog for a daily walk or provide a petting session for your cat for a few days while you and baby get adjusted. Look into doggie daycare as another option.

Don’t wait until month nine (or right before the estimated arrival of your adopted little one) to make these changes. Due dates and adoption dates are only estimates and constantly changing. The more time you spend prepping your pets for baby's arrival now, the less time you will have to spend troubleshooting problems after your little one arrives.

Sadly, many parents give up their fur children after the arrival of human ones because of behavior problems that could have been largely avoided. What other tips do you have to offer expecting parents?

Everyday Household Items Useful for Pet Care

Frugal by nature and necessity, I’m not one to spend scads of dollars on pet-specific items when something I have at home or can get easily and inexpensively at a regular store will do.

Vinegar

Stinky dog laundry makes using bleach and other harsh cleaners tempting, but inexpensive vinegar makes a decent bleach replacement in the laundry. If, like me, you get headaches from the laundry detergents whose perfumed smells last weeks, you’ll be grateful for the little or no scent of vinegar when items come out of the laundry.

Microfiber Towels

Simply wet one with plain water and wipe your pet down to remove pollen or other environmental allergens when she comes inside from playing. You can usually buy big packs of these towels at grocery stores, or even home improvement stores. Just be sure not to mix the ones you use on your pets with the ones you use to clean house.

Memory Foam Bath Mats

These make great crate mats, pet beds, and even padding for your own behind, if (like me) you spend a lot of time on the floor with your pet. I recently bought two large ones at my local membership warehouse store for less than $10 each.

Regular Bath Mats

Typical bath mats also make nice floor and furniture protectors if your pet becomes incontinent. I got a bunch at local thrift stores and garage sales. The rubber backing provides good traction and a moisture barrier, and usually these mats wash and dry easily.

Beware of the fancy microfiber/shag style bath mats though. Washing just one nearly killed my washing machine. It was crazy-heavy when fully wet. We have to take the ones I bought to the car wash now.

Old Flat Sheets

When I buy new bedding (rarely), I keep the flat sheet from my old sheet set to use as a “top sheet” on our bed. If you allow your pets on the bed, it’s much easier to wash and dry that one sheet than it is to wash a big bedspread or wrestle the down comforter out of the duvet for cleaning.

Old Sweater Sleeves

You can make easy, inexpensive small dog sweaters from an old sweater sleeve. For tiny dogs, you could even use an old sock.

Fleece Fabric

Certain times of the year, fabric stores put big bolts of fleece fabric on sale – at least 50% off the usual per-yard price. Time your shopping just right, and you can make fast, easy dog blankets - dog bedding that washes and dries like a dream. No sewing needed.

Share Your Pet Care Secrets

What other everyday or DIY items have you used for your pets?

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How the Nutritional Needs of Cats Differ from Our Own

People project a lot from their own lives onto their pets, including food preferences, beliefs, and habits. Often we think of dogs as little furry people and cats as small dogs, but when it comes to how their bodies need and use certain key nutrients, that’s not the case.

How Do We Know What Cats Need?

“Well, it was a lot of hard work over many decades. There are a lot of nuances to determining requirements because you have to determine the requirements for what and for whom and under what conditions,” says Jennifer Larsen, DVM, PhD, a board-certified in veterinary nutrition and an assistant professor of clinical nutrition at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital at the University of California, Davis.

Calling two of her mentors, Dr. Quinton Rogers and Dr. Jim Morris, the godfathers of feline nutrition, Larsen explains that much of the early work focused on the nutritional needs of growing kittens, later extrapolated to adult cats.

There are sometimes gaps in this method, however. For example, Larsen explains, “The aromatic amino acids – phenylalanine and tyrosine – work together... so we usually talk about them together. We determined the requirements (of these amino acids) for growth, but subsequently discovered that the requirement to maintain normal melanin and hair coat, meaning to maintain a black cat to be black, was twice the requirement needed to grow a cat normally. So that’s probably an extreme example, but I think it’s a good example of one of the limitations of extrapolating growth data to maintenance requirements.”

Some of the other dietary needs begin with the nutritional needs of people. Many of the nutrient requirements indeed are conserved across species, but there are some exceptions.

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Cats vs. People

While dogs do process and use a couple of key nutrients differently than people do, the different nutrient needs of cats are the bigger issue.

“Cats are certainly nutritionally interesting,” Larsen says. “As far as companion animals go, they are fairly unique in how they evolved and their strict carnivorous status. Dogs share some of their nutritional peculiarities, but not to the same degree.”

Fundamentally, nutritional needs fall into two camps:

• Essential nutrients required in a diet because the body does not make any or enough on its own
• Non-essential nutrients that the body makes on its own

“If you think about it from an evolutionary point if view, which is kind of fun to consider,” she says, “we talk about essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids. We always sort of assume that the essential ones are the important ones, but if you think about it from evolution’s point of view, the essential ones were the ones that were readily available in food stuffs. Therefore, why should we conserve all these enzymes to make it when it’s really expensive and metabolically demanding to conserve those? But, on the other hand, perhaps metabolically or physiologically the dietary non-essential ones are more important because evolution didn’t leave it up to chance that you would stumble across that in your diet and eat enough of it.”

• Cats cannot make arginine, an amino acid, which is used by the liver to make enzymes important for processing metabolic by-products in the body.
• Cats cannot make taurine, another amino acid. Without it, cats can develop lesions on their retinas, causing visions issues. They can also develop dilated cardiomyopathy, which Larsen describes as, “their heart is sort of this big baggy sack that doesn’t contract blood as it should.”
• Cats cannot make enough niacin, a vitamin. Many animals can use tryptophan to make niacin, but a cat’s ability to do this is really limited, so it’s essential in the feline diet.
• Cats cannot make enough Vitamin A. Larsen says, “We thought for a really long time that cats were unable to make Vitamin A from beta-carotene the way that we can and the ways that dogs can. Now, we know they can. They just do it in very small amounts. It’s probably not nutritionally significant, so it’s really important that cats have a source of preformed Vitamin A.”
• Cats don’t make Vitamin D through their skin like we do. They also don’t convert very well the plant form for Vitamin D (ergocalciferol) into the animal protein form of Vitamin D (cholecalciferol).
  
  “Dogs and cats can’t make Vitamin D in their skin. We know that for sure,” Larsen says. “It’s kind of interesting because they have all the precursors, the necessary enzymes, to make it in their skin, it’s just that it gets shunted off into another pathway. So, it’s all about enzyme activity and where it’s going.”
• Cats have a low conversion rate of linoleic acid to arachidonic acid, an Omega-6 fatty acid. Veterinarians don’t often see arachidonic acid deficiencies in cats, but it’s an essential nutrient, especially for reproduction in queens.
• Cats are more finicky. Compared to dogs, cats can develop feeding behaviors and palatability issues along with weird fixations about flavors and textures.

Common Nutritional Problems with Home-Prepared Pet Diets

Veterinary researchers found some common nutritional problems when they analyzed 200 home-prepared dog diets. Sometimes, home-prepared diets provided too little of certain nutrients. Sometimes, the diets provided too much. In other studies, researchers found similar issues in homemade diets for pets with cancer or kidney disease.

The Research

Researchers collected 200 recipes from 34 sources, including books, websites, and veterinarians.

Due to a lack of recipe specifics on things like cuts of meat, cooking methods, type of vitamin and mineral supplements to use, and feeding instructions, the research team sometimes made certain assumptions – typically using ingredients and supplements easily available in stores in most communities.

The team analyzed the recipes through computer-based analysis, which calculates common nutrient levels of ingredients. They also sent some actual prepared diets for laboratory assessment. The lab work is cost prohibitive, so researchers only tested 15 of the 200 diets in a lab.

Researchers then compared test results to National Research Council (NRC) recommended allowances and, when available, Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO) minimal requirements for adult dogs.

The Findings

All essential nutrients. Of the 200 recipes tested using computer-based analysis:

• Only 3 recipes provided all essential nutrients in concentrations meeting or exceeding NRC recommended allowances.
• Another 2 recipes provided all essential nutrients in concentrations meeting or exceeding NRC minimal requirements.
• All 5 of these diets came from veterinary sources.

Nutrient deficiencies. Of the 200 recipes tested using computer-based analysis:

• 95% of recipes resulted in at least 1 essential nutrient deficiency.
• 83.5% of recipes had multiple deficiencies.

Based on the NRC’s recommended allowances and minimal requirements, these nutrients were most commonly deficient in home-prepared diets:

• Zinc – 69% of the recipes
• Choline – 64.5% of the recipes
• Copper – 54% of the recipes
• Combination of EPA plus DHA (fatty acids) – 53.5% of the recipes
• Calcium – 35% of the recipes

In some cases, there wasn’t enough information to determine levels of Vitamin D or Vitamin E. However, in the 167 recipes where information was available:

• 61.1% were too low in Vitamin D.
• 45.1% were too low in Vitamin E.

Some deficiencies didn’t even reach 50% of recommended allowances.

Why worry? The study’s authors wrote: “Deficiencies in these recipes may translate to adverse clinical effects when fed on a long-term basis. For example, diets deficient in choline can cause weight loss and fat accumulation in the liver, and vitamin D deficiency may cause substantial musculoskeletal abnormalities, particularly in growing puppies. For some nutrients (eg, zinc and vitamin E), clinical signs of deficiency may appear only after a prolonged period of feeding a deficient maintenance diet.”

Exceeded recommendations. Of the 200 recipes tested using computer-based analysis:

• 100% of recipes exceeded NRC recommended allowances for crude protein, arginine, and pyridoxine.
• 100% of recipes exceeded AAFCO guidelines on pyridoxine.
• 9 recipes surpassed the safe upper limit for Vitamin D.
• 6 recipes surpassed the safe upper limit for the combination of EPA and DHA (fatty acids).

Computer vs. Lab Tests

Lab test cost constraints limited the number of recipes and the number of nutrients assessed. While there were laboratory differences in nutrient concentrations compared to the computer-based tests, computer analysis was “highly predictive of deficiencies or excesses of nutrients as measured via laboratory methods.”

Diet Rotation Theory

A common response to possible home-prepared diet deficiencies is that it all works out over time, if the diet is varied and rotated. This theory assumes, however, that each diet is deficient in different ways.

The authors wrote: “Many proponents of less structured recipes for home-prepared diets assert that although each day’s meal is not necessarily complete, rotation and variety will provide a balanced diet overall. Our analysis indicated that this assumption was unfounded because evaluation of 3 recipe groups, each of which comprised 7 separate recipes, did not eliminate deficiencies. In addition, many recipes had similar deficiencies, with 14 nutrients provided at inadequate concentrations in at least 50 recipes. Thus, even the use of a strategy for rotation among several recipes from multiple sources would be unlikely to provide a balanced diet.”

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Pet Care: Calming Products for Dogs and Cats

Whether your dog or cat turns out to be clinically fearful or faces only situational upset – such as during thunderstorms, fireworks season, or car rides – you have a number of options for products designed to help dogs and cats relax.

TIP! Pets must be carefully acclimated to any calming products, while they are happy and calm already. If you only trot out these products when the pet is fearful, you can sometimes accidentally create a negative association, which actually increases fear and anxiety, rather than lessening it.

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Pet Calming Pheromones

Pet calming pheromones are available in sprays, room diffusers, and control-release collars:

• Dog appeasing pheromones mimic those released by mother dogs when puppies nurse.
• Cat calming pheromones mimic feline facial pheromones that cats use to mark their territory as safe and secure.

Pet Calming Wraps or Clothes

Certain body wraps and pet clothes are designed to squeeze pets in just the right way to make them feel more secure. Anxiety Wrap and Thundershirt are two of the biggest brands for both dogs and cats.

Pets wear some of these products on the body. Others are worn on the face or head.

Some families use human bandages, wrapped just the right way using the T-Touch method, to get the same effect.

Pet Calming Music

For years, you’ve been able to buy dog-calming music on CDs. Recently, Through a Dogs Ear’s Lisa Spector introduced cat-calming music and a new canine MP3 player (called iCalmDog) that’s pre-loaded with 4 hours of dog calming music. It can cycle through the music several times, providing a whole day worth of soothing.

Essentially, pet calming music is classical music that is slower in tempo, simpler in arrangement, and lower in key that regular classical music. This “psycho-acoustic” music provides a comforting overlay of sounds in a world that’s far too noisy for our pets and us.

Pet Calming Medications

Having lived with a truly, clinically fearful dog for nearly nine years now, I can tell you that I avoided using medications for too long. I didn’t want to be the girl whose dog needed drugs to cope with the world. I regret the time my fearful Border Collie suffered because I had issues with using medications.

If your dog or cat suffers from generalized anxiety or daily fearfulness, please speak to your veterinarian about what medications might help.

Learning From Homeless Pets

As a rookie Foster Care Coordinator in a big urban shelter, I had one foster mom that was a godsend. She and her two young children would take home a rubber tub full of crawly, squirmy puppies, covered in chow and bring them back weeks later, shiny, socialized, and well on their way to adoption. "The bigger litters were better for her," she said. Magic words to my desperate ears. After caring for about 40 puppies in under a year, I could see she and the kids had a system. They’d feed the litter in the guest bath tub and clean everyone up on the spot. She had two little helpers, which made for more helping hands. She’d ask me to have puppies or kittens lined up for them to take as soon as she returned a healthy litter. She was not only their savior, but mine.

I don’t think she did it for the animals, so much as she did it for her kids. It was a fun lesson in compassion and community service that she could get her elementary school kids engaged in, right at home.

Learning life lessons while saving lives:

Giving: Kids of any age can appreciate helping homeless pets. It goes beyond teaching empathy to real selflessness.

Patience: Foster pets are the ultimate in patience stretchers, requiring everything from bottle feeding to obedience training. But, for kids, they’re a hands-on opportunity to learn that anything worth doing takes time.

Responsibility: I’m not advocating that all the care responsibility falls to the children. No way. But being in charge of the care and comfort of small creatures teaches maturity and accountability.

Academics: There are all sorts of academic lessons. Math is used in feeding, weighing and medicating animals. Children can journal the animals’ experiences to pass on to adopters. Foster parents find these opportunities are great for summer or holiday breaks when kids most need a project.

High school and college kids can potentially receive academic credit or community service hours for fostering. Occasionally, a dorm or house can collaboratively care for a short-term pet, while having a companion to help them through homesickness and study-time stress.

What’s involved in fostering?

Most animal welfare groups need fosters, whether it’s to care for orphans, rehabilitate sick or injured animals, or just free up a kennel.

1. Start by thinking about what sort of animal would be best suited to your family’s lifestyle. Do you want a healthy cat or dog that needs little more than a place to crash while you and the organization campaign to find it a home? Would your kids spend hours watching kittens play in your guest room?
2. Find a rescue group that meets your goals and attend an orientation. Most foster programs do group orientations or one-on-one interviews to help families prepare for their new foster friends.
3. Ask about what is expected of you. How long is the foster commitment likely to be? What will your out-of-pocket costs be? Will the animal need regular vet care and what are your responsibilities in that?
4. Ready a foster space. A warm laundry room, basement or guest room can offer luxurious respite for a pet that’s been on the streets or in an overcrowded shelter. All they really want is privacy and a soft bed. It’s probably easiest to house animals in an area that’s easily sanitized, at least until you’ve got any training or medical issues under control.
5. Have the talk with your kids about what fostering really means, right up front. They should know, before you ever step into a shelter, that these animals aren’t to keep, but that you’re helping them move on to their forever homes. Encourage your kids to share their fantasies about their short-term friend’s future life, to help them plan ahead for the good-byes. 

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