10 Halloween Safety Tips: Better Treat than Trick with Your Pets

As Halloween is coming, such households having pets like yours, there are some essential Halloween safety tips for pets that you should check on carefully.

Every Halloween, we hear stories about how pets get scared and may run off or try to defend their owner. Pets also may injure themselves by chewing on toxic decorations or swallowing plastic wrappings. As a pet parent, it can be hard to know what to do for your pet and how to prepare the house and yard for Halloween safety.

Here are 10 tips to protect your pet for a successful and memorable Halloween.

Chocolate in any form is dangerous or even fatal to pets. Halloween is an occasion where we often store a lot more candy, especially chocolate. Those are wonderful treats for kids and guests, but definitely not for your pets.

If your pets accidentally consume a certain amount of chocolate, they will suffer serious symptoms such as vomiting, diarrhea, or rapid breathing. You should notice any strange signs from your pets, and check whether they eat your candy and how much they already take to have in-time treatment.

Hence, the first notice in Halloween safety tips for pets is to get candy bags far away or put them in a place where your pets can’t reach to make sure they won’t get any of that.

Safety for your pets is pretty similar to your baby. Any electric decorations that may be in the way of your pets normally walk by, you should consider putting them elsewhere.

Since your pets are often overactive in the holiday season, they may run around the house without control. Their legs or even whole body may be tangled with the wires from the electric or battery-powered decorations.

Your pet can even chew those electric cores and may cause electric shock. Some may get choked because of swallowing small plastic pieces.

Since you’ll get more “unexpected” guests knocking on the door on Halloween day, you may need to prepare for some sudden loud noises or scary costumes.

We all know that this is Halloween day, but that term doesn’t seem familiar to your pets’ dictionary. So in terms of pets, or animals in general, those strange changes may cause them aggressive or anxiety leading to unwanted behaviors.

Make sure you can keep your pets calm or prepared instead of being surprised by walk-ins. The best way is to keep them away from the door or holding them in your embrace so that you can control their emotions better.

As usual, a lot of kids and their parents will walk on the street on Halloween night for the trick-or-treat celebration. Your pets may get overwhelmed with the number of people on the street. Combining their weird and scary makeup will terrify your pets also.

Moreover, the darkness and scary theme of Halloween may not suit every pet’s characteristics. Hence, keeping your pet indoors and reducing his chance to run outside is one of the best Halloween safety tips to protect them physically and mentally.

Pumpkin and corn are traditional decoration items for Halloween. Your party would be less exciting without them. However, those new decorations look like new toys to your pets. They will get curious and want to play around with them.

Chewing on uncooked pumpkin or corn is a direct danger to their health. When eating something unfamiliar to their normal diet, pets may suffer gastrointestinal upset. Even worse, they will get intestinal blockage if they swallow big pieces of pumpkin or corn.

So one more item needs to get away from your pets, or in other words, keep your pets far from decoration plants on Halloween day.

Several weird stories and beliefs are built up during the Halloween season, and somehow that makes our dark-colored pets in danger. People believe that dark-colored pets such as black cats or black dogs are descendants or relatives of witches.

Some areas even reported a significant number of black cats disappeared on Halloween. Since people get out more when it gets darker, keeping your pets indoors after sunset is a good way to protect them from unwanted situations.

Since Halloween celebration prefers to happen in the darkness, a lot of people choose to use glow sticks as a way to make light.

However, it is another item you should get out of pets’ reach. Fortunately, the liquid inside glow sticks is non-toxic, chewing it is not a good experience for your pet either. In case your pets accidentally swallow a significant amount of glow sticks’ liquid, they might drool or even vomit.

Make sure you wash their mouth, let them drink some water, or eat some pet treats to clear the material out.

Speaking of light. Candles and lanterns are other alternative ways you might use to get light on Halloween night. But just as dangerous as electric decorations, those flammable items can burn your pets in a lot of ways.

In case they step on a lit pumpkin or their tails get in the light, they will be easily turn into a fireball within seconds. So it would be better to hang those items on a higher reach so that they won’t get in the way of your pets. This is another Halloween safety tip you should take note of.

If you want to wear a costume for your pet on Halloween night, you’ll need to try it on for them the night before to make sure they like it and, more importantly, they feel comfortable in it.

Not every pet loves costumes. Some may have negative expressions toward weird clothes put on them. So as a pet parent you should understand their preference better.

If your pets do want to wear costumes, the outfit will need to be weather-friendly, pet-friendly, and fit your pets perfectly. In case your pets are anti-fan of Halloween costumes, getting them a personalized bandana may be more than enough to solve this problem.

Having a pet-informed metal sign is a win-win option for this Halloween safety. If one of your guests is afraid of dogs, for example, they’ll get the notice right before knocking on your door and be prepared for that.

Meanwhile, it will also help you to inform other guests about the sensitivity of pets around Halloween, so that they can be more careful before having any scary or surprising actions when coming to your house.