As of March 2016, we are closing the business. Thank you for all your support!
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Top Ten Fourth of July Pet Safety Tips
By: Yahaira Cespedes
Like many Americans, you may be planning to have a festive Fourth of July. Along with barbeques and day at the beach, no July holiday celebration would be complete without enjoying the fireworks that celebrate the birth of our nation.
Perhaps you are considering staying at home and planning a get-together with friends and family. Or, you may want to go check out your local professional fireworks display. While putting the finishing touches on your planned celebration, take a moment to consider your pets.
Unlike people, pets don’t associate the noise, flashes, and burning smell of pyrotechnics with celebrations. Pets are terrified of fireworks, and often panic at the loud whizzes and bangs they produce.
Because of this, the American Humane Association reports that July 5 is the busiest day of the year for animal shelters. Why? In a 2005 press release the Indiana Proactive Animal Welfare, Inc. (PAW) stated that animal shelters the day after Fourth of July are “inundated with pets that panicked at the noise of firecrackers and fled into the night, winding up lost, injured or killed.”
Both the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and PAW have listed ways you can prevent your holiday celebration from turning into a tragedy. Here are 10 tips on how to keep your pet from panicking this Fourth of July weekend.
10. Keep your Pet Indoors at All Times!
It may seem obvious, but even if your pet is used to being outside, the resulting panic caused by fireworks or other loud noises may make them break their restraint or jump a fence in a terrified attempt to find safety.
9. Don’t Put Insect Repellant on Your Pet that isn’t Specifically for Pet Use
The same tip applies to applying “people” sunscreen on your pet. What isn’t toxic to humans can be toxic to animals. The ASPCA lists the poisonous effects of sunscreen on your pet as, “…drooling, vomiting, diarrhea, excessive thirst and lethargy.” DEET, a common insecticide, may cause neurological issues.
8. Alcoholic Drinks Poison Pets
If your pet drinks alcohol, they can become dangerously intoxicated, go into a coma, or in severe cases, die from respiratory failure. Yes, even beer is toxic; fermented hops and ethanol are poisonous to dogs and cats.
7. Going to a Fireworks Display? Leave Your Pet at Home
The safest place for your pet is at home, not in a crowded, unfamiliar and noisy place. The combination of too many people and loud fireworks will make your beloved pet freak out and desperately seek shelter. Locking them in the car is also not an option; your pet may suffer brain damage and heat stroke.
6. Have Your Pet Properly Identified
If your pet manages to break loose and become lost, without proper identification it will be that much harder to get them back. Consider fitting your pet with microchip identification, ID tags with their name and your phone number, or both. It is also a good idea to have a recent picture of your pets in case you have to put up signs.
5. Keep Your Pet Away from Glow Jewelry
It might look cute, but your pet could chew up and swallow the plastic adornments. The ASPCA states that while not highly toxic, “excessive drooling and gastrointestinal irritation could still result from ingestions, and intestinal blockage could occur from swallowing large pieces of the plastic containers.”
4. NEVER Use Fireworks Around Pets
While lit fireworks can pose a danger to curious pets and potentially result in severe burns and/or trauma to the face and paws, even unused fireworks can be hazardous. Some fireworks contain potentially toxic substances such as arsenic, potassium nitrate, and other heavy metals.
3. Don’t Give Your Pet “Table Food”
If you are having a backyard barbeque, you may be tempted to slip some snacks to your pet. But like beer and chocolate, there are other festive foods that could harm your pet. Onions, coffee, avocado, grapes & raisins, salt and yeast dough are all possible hazards for dogs and cats.
2. Lighter Fluid and Matches Are Harmful to Pets.
The ASPCA lists chlorates as a harmful chemical substance found in some matches that, if ingested, can cause your pet difficulty in breathing, damage blood cells or even cause kidney disease. If exposed to lighter fluid, your pet may sustain skin irritation on contact, respiratory problems if inhaled, and gastric problems if ingested.
1. Citronella Insect Control Products Harm Pets, Too.
Oils, candles, insect coils and other citronella-based repellants are irritating toxins to pets, according to the ASPCA. The result of inhalation can cause severe respiratory illnesses such as pneumonia, and ingestion can harm your pet’s nervous system.
The safest and best bet for celebrating this Fourth of July with your pets is to exclude them from holiday festivities, at least this time around. Instead, find a safe, secure spot in the home for your pets while you go out and enjoy the loud bangs, bright lights and spectator fun. Your pets will appreciate the quiet a lot more than you’ll enjoy the noise.
We have consolidated!.
November 1, 2013
Fido N' Scratch has decided to consolidate efforts and have just 1 fabulous store in Mt. Baker Park.
We are dedicated to providing the best customer service and pet supply products available.
We have NEW extended hours to better serve you.
Monday - Friday 10am - 7pm
Saturday & Sunday 10am - 6pm
If you have shopped at the Leschi location in the past, the Mt. Baker store is less than 2 miles South.
Just follow the lake road to LakePark Drive and turn Right. Follow up the hill (1 long block), and we are in the brick building straight in front of you!
Mio Posto and Relish are our neighbors!!
We hope you will make this short and scenic drive to the Mt. Baker location and continue to shop with us.
Thank you for your continued support.
Dirty Secrets of Commercial Pet foods........
February 27, 2014
An excerpt from an article in "The Healthy Home Economist"
...To provide an overview here, what’s most important to know is that the bulk of ingredients used in most commercial pet foods come from places called rendering plants.
Rendering plants are facilities designed to process a wide variety of leftover waste products, a number of which are quite unspeakable, and most of which are derived from the production of food for human consumption. Here’s a partial list of items that are routinely sent to, and processed by, rendering plants:
Slaughterhouse wastes, including most all portions of animals that are not generally considered to be fit for human consumption, such as heads, hides, spines, hooves and diseased body parts. Diseased, disabled, dying or dead livestock deemed unfit for human consumption, aka 4D animals. Expired meats from grocery stores, including their plastic and styrofoam packagingrancid, overcooked oils drained from fryolators, and filthy grease from grease traps from fast food and other restaurants. The bodies of domestic cats and dogs that have been euthanized, sometimes right along with flea and tick collars still attached around their necks. Road kill, YES ROAD KILL!
Rendering plants take the above sorts of items and throw them all into a giant auger to pulverize them. The resulting ‘soup’ is cooked at extremely high temperatures, surely at least in part to kill off all the potentially harmful bacteria, pathogens and parasites that may be lingering on dead, rotting flesh. However this very high heat also destroys much of whatever nutritional value the stuff may have ever had to begin with. Then the fat is rendered off, and what’s left is made into various products that are known by the euphemistic terms we’re used to seeing on pet food ingredients lists.
If you haven’t already, I would strongly encourage everyone reading this post who is concerned about the health of our pets to start reading pet food labels.
Here’s a partial list of suspect ingredients that come from rendering plants:meat by-productschicken by-product mealmeat mealmeat and bone mealanimal digestanimal fat (often treated with things like BHA and/or citric acid)
Also, notice how many junk pet food ingredients listed on the label are grain based, such as corn, soy, wheat, rice, sorghum or barley etc. As you begin to notice how many grain based ingredients are contained in these products, please bear in mind that dogs and cats are carnivorous animals whose bodies were never designed to consume grains in any appreciable quantities.
For those of you interested in learning the details, below are links to several relevant web pages and articles that delve deeper into this troubling subject:
http://www.rawfedcats.org/toxic.htmhttp://www.outoftheearth.com/petfood.htmhttp://www.homevet.com/index.php/diet-discussion/item/315-an-excerpt-from-the-book-food-pets-die-forhttp://www.examiner.com/article/the-ultimate-recycling-the-rendering-industry - See more at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/dirty-secrets-of-the-pet-food-industry/#sthash.eaGk0n2I.dpuf
