2007.11.30
Christmas trees and poop patrols
Our newest greyhound, Coral, has been a very well-behaved girl since she came to live with us a couple of weeks ago. She's still pretty new to living in a house verses living in a kennel at a dog track, so she's still getting used to things like furniture, carpet, stairs.
Everything has been going smoothly. That is, until yesterday morning when she decided to steal ornaments off the Christmas tree.
This former West Virginia track star has never seen a Christmas tree until this weekend. While we were busy with our morning routine, she was thieving the soft ornaments that look like her new stuffies. I see her point. As far as she knows, that tree is a six-foot interactive dog toy.
However, she grabbed one ornament that was made of some breakable, fiberglass-like material, and when we found it, it was in a million pieces on the soft carpeted floor.
She had to have bitten into it to make it shatter like that.
I checked her mouth and there were no cuts or scratches. We swept up the shards; there was no way to tell if pieces were missing.
I called our vet's office. After telling this story three times, I finally talked to the vet who said she would probably be okay, but we would need to watch her for potential problems. He suggested I feed her small meals and look through the eventual outcome she would deposit in the backyard for shards or blood.
Oh, lucky me.
So, I followed the doctor's recommendation, lavished her with attention and fed her several small snacks through the day. So far, I think this is her favorite day in the Nelson household. I inspected three piles of poop. It looked like, well, poop. Nothing unexpected, no signs of trouble.
I share this story in hopes of sparing another family from having to worry about injury by Christmas tree. If this is your pet's first experience with holiday decorations, keep in mind that those shiny ornaments are a big temptation. We know better and we should have been more vigilant in keeping an eye on her around the tree, but even the most devoted pet parents can't control everything their critters do.
If you have a story about pets, holiday decorations, and the things that can go very wrong, post it here.
My cat Shade loves to eat slender ribbons that come off of fancy packages. Many a time I have had to extract a long piece from her throat (much to her dismay)that she has stolen off of someones present. Now I pretty much ban slender or curly ribbon so she isn't tempted!
Another issue I remember as a child was our cat eating the strands of tinsel she would pull of off the branches of the Christmas tree. It made cleaning the catbox easy - if you know what I mean!
Perhaps my biggest disaster was when my little cat Gracie decided it would be a good idea to try and climb the inside of my tree. I head the giant crash of broken ornaments on the hardwood floor and then saw a gray streak fly through the living room. Both tree and cat were fine, but Gracie pretty much stayed away from it after that!!
Comment by Kim — November 30, 2007 @ 3:30 pm
I have never put tinsel on our tree for just that reason, Kim. The litter box doesn't need any added glamour.
When our two cats were kittens and celebrating their first Christmas, they tried to climb the artificial Christmas tree more than once. Luckily we had carpet so nothing got broken. I ended up attaching a two-by-two piece of plywood to the base of the tree, which made it much more stable and less likely to tilt when kittens went climbing.
I also stopped hanging breakable, sentimental ornaments on the lowest branches because they loved to bat at them.
Now they are older and they could not care less about the tree. I kind of miss the kitten days.
Comment by Nona — November 30, 2007 @ 5:29 pm