Catios, and Why They're Awesome!

8 months ago we didn't have any furry kids of the feline persuasion and now we have 3!  Right before Christmas we adopted a Mom cat and her juvenile son.  Mom had a few liters of kittens before a friend of mine took her in and got her spayed and adopted the last liter out.  Once the kittens all found homes at a proper age (I think she waited 8-10 weeks), I adopted Mom and her son and renamed them Nova and Naveen (both have meaning's of "New" in different languages).  They live in our garage and I was determined to build them a safe and fun catio where they could go outside, move about, but still be completely enclosed.  I'm a determined woman and I'm still amazed that I built the whole thing by myself - the frame is 4 feet wide, 8 feet long, and 7 and a half feet tall.  I'm only 5'0" so moving this thing around as I built it on the driveway was quite a feat! My husband helped me move it into place outside of a window, and planning is essential because I knew the overhang of the garage was 8 feet high, so I only allowed 6" of vertical clearance to move it.  I have since done a few upgrades since I installed it a few months ago - I originally wrapped it in chicken wire but decided to take the majority of it down and wrap it with a stronger wire though it has larger gaps.  I also just finished installing a landing pad and a ramp up to the window.  Originally they were jumping in/out through the window down to a camping chair but Nova has been very sore lately after having an altercation with a friend's dog so I wanted to make it as easy as possible for her.

When I first put the catio in place, I salvaged an old branch from the yard and put it about 12" into the ground and then drilled the very top portion of it to the frame, allowing for a more outdoorsy feel.  I added 2 shelves at different heights, which they love to lay on and fall asleep while bird watching.  The camping chairs have been great for giving them a 'hammock' type bed to sleep in, and they do most of their napping in the chairs.  There are 2 bird feeders just a few feet away and now that we have free ranging chickens, the chickens actually enjoy sitting right next to the catio and both birds and cats take naps just a few inches away from each other.  The door is about 6' tall and I put a gate latch on there if I ever wanted it locked, but I don't really see the need for that.  I go in there quite often and sometimes in the evening I'll go in there and sit with them while the sun goes down :)  The location is rather perfect as they never get any direct sunlight - the catio is on the west side of the garage so there's no morning sun, and it also sits below a thick oak tree which strongly filters any afternoon sun.

(Click picture to enlarge)

I also have a coffee can out there for a constant access to water - it gets changed daily so there's no chance of harboring mosquitos.  I recently put up a chicken swing from one of the oak branches - chickens supposedly like to swing and I'm hoping they'll start using it soon.  They really love to sit next to the catio for some reason.  The cat's don't care very much, sometimes Naveen will look at them wide-eyed but he's a lover not a hunter ;)  I have also started growing oat grass with bulkseed I buy online, and then plant it in my own containers.  Once the grass is long enough, I bring a container into the catio for them to snack on - they love it!

If you don't have the ability to build your own, there are pre-made ones you can purchase online for hefty prices, or maybe hire someone to build one for you?  There are so many benefits to catios - some people even move the litter boxes out there so there's no indoor smell!  You can install a cat door in the wall, a cat door through a window or configure something else through the window.  Because ours is next to the garage which we don't really use, all I did was cut a square large enough in the window screen.  We haven't had any strange critters in there, and if I ever need that screen again, they're pretty easy to re-screen.  Read some more benefits about catios here and I hope you consider one for your indoor kitties!

How To Pick a Pet Sitter

I'm a little biased on this topic but I'd like to think I can give some great insight on how to select the perfect person to help take care of your home and pets.  This isn't going to be specific about our area, so feel free to share with friends across the country!  Petsitters can operate in pretty different ways so it's really important to pick the best fit for your needs.  So here's a list of things to consider when interviewing petsitters...

1. How often do you travel?  If you take the occasional vacation (oh say, two trips a year) then a sole-proprietor can work well for you.  On the other hand, if you travel often, needing to go out of town on business quite a bit, you might need a 'team' of petsitters... someone who can always be available at the drop of a hat.  Granted, it might be a different person each time and many people don't like having someone new in their home each time.  A sole-proprietor (like me) would require some more planning to schedule him or her for your needs.  We need vacation too which means when we're out of town, no one is there to watch your pet, there is no back up. 
2. What are your pet's emotional needs?  Some happy-go-lucky dogs don't mind who comes through the front door - as long as there's someone to love on them and feed them!  Some other dogs are very protective and would need an established relationship with the person coming in to take care of them.  Others can have a rough past and have a very hard time trusting people, these dogs need consistency in their lives as much as possible.  Cats can be similar.. some are very friendly and outgoing, but others will go and hide when they hear a new voice in the house.  Knowing that the same person is taking care of your pets time and time-again can be a relief.
3. Does your pet have any specialized needs?  Do they have a medical condition that could really benefit from a petsitter with veterinary experience?  Do they have severe separation anxiety and would require someone to spend the night with them in your home?  Perhaps you have a large dog that has trouble getting around, it might be best to have someone young and strong.
4. Would you need pet-taxi services frequently?  If you board your pet or have your pet groomed and would like someone to pick up and drop off your pet, they need especially reliable transportation to drive your beloved pet around town.  If your dog is large, they'll need to have an appropriate sized-car to get them around, and maybe even a ramp so they can get in/out comfortably.
5. How important is home security to you?  The absolute worst thing I see around town is a car driving around with large magnet's on the side saying "Jane Doe's Petsitting, ###-####".  This is an open invitation for someone to follow that car and find out where all the vacationing homes are.  This is my #1 professional pet peeve!
6. Does the petsitters values line-up with your own?  When someone is going to have access to your home and taking care of your furry family members, it can be very comforting to know that you and your petsitter see eye-to eye.  This largely means views on training and health.  If you firmly believe in positive reinforcement training (clicker training, treat pouch etc)  but your petsitter uses shock collars to train their dogs to sit, lay, etc. it can signal a red flag that they don't value the human-pet relationship as much as you do.
7. How important is insurance and bonding to you? While many petsitters call themselves professional, if they're not investing in their own business, how sure are they in their own services?  When a petsitters spends hundreds of dollars each year to be insured, they are protecting their client and themselves.  Insurance can pay for a house to be re-keyed if a key was lost, it can cover a pet's rattlesnake bite if it happened during the time the petsitter was taking care of them, it can even cover the cost of carpet cleaning if say a pet urinated on the carpet due to a UTI while in the petsitters care.  Also, when a petsitter is bonded, it also protects them and the client - that the client will pay the sum agreed upon and that the petsitter will render the services.  Both insurance and bonding are a must in my book.
8. How important is it that you have your petsitter for years to come?  Petsitters come and go fast and frequent.  Many people start offering petsitting thinking it will be a fun source of income, but in reality petsitting is not a job for someone needing a steady income.  It takes a while to build clientele and many do not have the luxury of being that patient.  I see it too often that they give up within months, move to a different town, or find something else that pays better.  Those of us in it for the long haul are few and far between.

There are benefits to other options like boarding or having your friends watch your pets in their homes.  Boarding would be great for very high energy dogs that need a lot of attention.  The drawback is that respiratory issues can spread like wildfire in a boarding facility even with vaccinations.  We're seeing viruses and bacteria mutate and vaccines are no longer protecting pets at 100%.  Personally, I would never EVER board my pets.  We don't travel enough and I will not have a facility dictate when I should vaccinate my animals.  I also have a very emotionally needy dog that is scared to death of new dogs.  The very sound of a dog on the TV scares her so a boarding facility is way out of the question for us.

Having friends watch your pets in their homes is my favorite option.  This is what we do - we take turns with some friends who live a few minutes away from us.  All of our dogs get along great and both of us wives are former vet techs and have very similar views in training, so we can feel completely comfortable leaving our pets with each other.  This option doesn't work so well for cats though, or if your friends have a particularly busy household.

So while it is very important that your pets and your petsitter get along, there are other factors to consider.    I do wish I could clone myself so I could help more families, but that's the downfall of working as a sole-proprietor.  I limit myself to a small number of clients, but those clients and their pets become family.  They respect that I need to go on vacation too, so I try to plan my trips months in advance and we work with each other's schedules.  When I'm in someone's home taking care of their animals maybe every other month, it is routine - unless something major has changed in the pet's care, I remember exactly how much to feed, what lights to turn on, what shades to close etc. 

In the end, a petsitter won't be perfect for everyone and that's ok!  What matters most is that you have someone you can rely on, who you are 100% comfortable with taking care of your pets, and that your pets love them!

Frozen Seafood Snack

With temperatures over 100* this week, I've been busy keeping our own pet's comfortable and making all sorts of ice cube treats, even for our new chickens!

In my earlier post, Beat the Heat, I mention how you can turn canned dog/cat food into ice cube treats.  If you don't have canned food on hand, or just want to offer your pet's a different option, here's a cheap and healthy ice cube to offer them!  Sidebar: Cats almost always suffer from renal issues later in life due to chronic dehydration so I'm always trying to sneak more water into their bodies, this is a great way to do it!

I used 1 small can of chunk light tuna and 1 can of water packed sardines.  I dumped all contents into a bowl to mix them up and mash up the sardines into flakes, then added enough water to fill an ice cube tray.  It didn't take long for them to freeze and if you need the ice cube tray again, you can keep the extra cubes in a ziplock in the freezer.  The kitties loved these for a mid-day snack and unlike the dogs, really take their time enjoying them, lick by lick =D

Beat the Heat

This post isn't going to focus on heat stroke prevention because I'm pretty sure if you've come to my blog, you probably love your pets as much as I do and would never put your pet's life in danger.  But let's be real, your pets have no business being in the car on a hot summer day while you run inside a store for a quick errand.  Additionally, we all know if your pets are kept outside, they need a significant amount of shade, TONS of water and a surface to lay on that will be out of direct sunlight.  

Even if your pets lay around in the air conditioning all day long with short potty trips outside, the heat can still be pretty rough on them and I know it zaps our dogs of energy.  So here's a list of things to help your dogs and cats beat the heat..

*Offer your pet's frozen treats.  A simple way to do this is to use canned food and make ice cubes out of it, then give it to them frozen.  I love doing this for cats since they will generally take their time, licking it while a dog would probably chew it twice and swallow.

*Frozen toys are a great option for mouthy dogs.  The Chilly Bone comes in different sizes.

*Use a fan on the floor so it will blow directly across the floor/room. Some dogs love to sit in front of fans.  I have heard you can also freeze a gallon of water in the freezer, place it in front of a fan and it will help cool that immediate area.

*You can make a big frozen treat for your cats and dogs like the Doggie Cone.  If you want to make something like this extra tasty and want to use chicken stock, please take the time to make your own stock.  It's so easy and you will be saving your pet from a huge amount of sodium and other chemicals.  If you do want to make your own stock, you can boil extra chicken (or beef parts) like bones or the parts of the chicken carcass you wouldn't use like the back bones.  You can make a significant amount, freeze it into ice cubes and later melt and reform as you'd like.  I've done this before and loved how easy it was.

*You may have freezable toys already in your home like Kong's or other stuffable toys.  One of my favorite things to do is to fill up a Kong with some healthy goodies, freeze it, then give it to the dogs frozen.  Get some of the really small kong's for cats and try it for your felines too!  Frozen Kong's help cool your pet as well as keep them busier for longer.

*Try a cooling mat from K&H.  They come in different sizes and if your dog or cat are not sure about laying on it, you can slip it under the cover of their favorite bed or put a sheet or thin blanket over it.

*Utilize a cheap baby pool to help outdoor dogs. Dogs and cats only sweat through their foot pads and through their nose (sometimes it will look like your dog has a runny nose, it's often them sweating).  Keeping their feet cool is an easy way to help them remove heat from their bodies.  In fact, when a pet comes into an animal hospital with heat stroke and their temperature is still elevated, the first thing the medical team does is saturate their feet with rubbing alcohol.  The alcohol draws heat out from their sweat glands.

*If your dog won't dip their feet in a baby pool, if they can walk in a puddle or wet concrete/ground, it will still help cool their feet down.  I often will spray down walk ways or back patios for some of the dogs I take care of, so that they can cool their feet while walking through it.

*Pretty please don't walk your dogs during the middle of the day but save their walk for after the sun goes down or at sunrise.  One thing to know is that black asphalt holds heat much more than the pale concrete so limit walks to concrete or even better, the dirt.

Please note that 14 states have statutes that prohibit leaving an animal confined in a vehicle.  In most cases, to legally break into a person's car to relieve a pet it must be an officer.  Many people are under the assumption that anyone can break a window with no legal recourse, but just so you know it's best to keep the phone numbers of the police station and animal control in your phone.

Share some fliers with your local vet's office, dog park, groomer etc for others to hand out to help prevent heat stroke due to stupid decisions. Dare I say, put some on a few windshields??

I hope some of these ideas help a few pets out there, please share with your pet loving friends!

Cross Country Traveling with Pets

We just finished a long trek in the car with Pepe & Zoey, our 2 little dogs.  We logged 52 hours and 3,500+ miles in the actual road trip, not including the in-town driving.  It was not an easy beginning to the trip but with some work, the trip became much easier.

To start off with, our dogs do not travel in the car much, really only to the vet or to our friend's homes.  Needless to say, they're not used to long 10 hr days stuck in the car.  Pepe has actually made the road trip with me from IL to AZ when I moved out here (three 9 hr days of driving), but he is the worst in the car.  Because car rides aren't a normal occurrence, the dogs are not particularly calm when getting into the car.  The first half of the first day was pretty rough.  Pepe believes that every time he hears the turn signal or feels the car slow down, that we're coming to our destination which results in a lot of whining in anticipation.  My poor husband was on about 4-5 hours of sleep on that first day of driving and his patience was wearing thin.  We had to stop through 2 border patrol checkpoints which requires briefly speaking to the agent and their K9 partner next to the car.  Pepe especially doesn't like this, feeling like he needs to guard the car of the agents, toll booth attendees and even passing motorcyclists.  Zoey feels the need to have a freak-out when she sees the drug sniffing dogs. Oy Vey!  So knowing they have these issues, I did a little shopping before our big trip.

Enjoying the King bed at La Quinta

First things first, we needed pet-friendly lodging along the way.  I found that La Quinta has a great pet policy - most locations do not charge a pet fee! There is a maximum of 2 pets (dogs and cats) to a room though.  They do not require pet information at time of booking, just upon your arrival.  There are only 4 La Quinta's in the country that do not have this pet policy though.  Here's a link you can use to find other pet-friendly hotels.  Please note some may claim to be pet-friendly but still require a non-refundable deposit.

Here are some of the must-haves I made sure we had for the trip:

-Seat cover - I purchased one on Amazon, and it's doing a great job keeping all the fur and paw prints off the seats.

-Portable water dish - I have one I use for my summer dog walks that collapses into my hydration waist pack. It saves on room and is great for pulling out for a water break while we fill up at a gas station and take a potty break.

-Food storage bag - I purchased one from Outward Hound for a great price.  The bag essentially rolls up to save on room and keeping food fresh.  If you need to tote around a large amount of kibble, this is a great bag, you can pretty much carry it like a purse to help free your hands if hauling your pet's supplies around.

-Peanut butter and kongs - I picked up a small jar of peanut butter as our to-go jar for the road.  The dogs were in their kennels often and got fresh kong snacks to help comfort them despite being in a new place practically every night.

-Treats and chewys within an arms reach - I bought enough chewys (bully sticks) for each dog to have one during the middle of each day of driving.  I also kept some delicious treats on hand so I can grab the dog's attention when I needed to.  This came in the handiest when we came to cash toll booths, so the dogs would ignore the scary human in a glass box that demands to take our money.

-Benedryl - Honestly, to make the trip easier for everyone, I gave the dogs appropriate doses of benedryl so they would nap more in the car.  Consult your veterinarian if you think this is something you need.  There are much heavier tranquilizers but we definitely don't need anything along that level, just enough to encourage a little more sleeping in the car.

-Kennels - I don't crate the dogs in the car.  Many people do.  Many people will harness/seatbelt their dogs in.  It's just my choice and the dogs kept to the bench with their beds and blankets and occasionally came to sit on my lap in the front when invited.  The kennels were for when we stayed with family.  All our dogs are crate-trained to enter their kennels on command and enjoy it.  At home, their crates are always used for positive time like their kongs or chewys, for this very reason. 

Pepe & Zoey snoozing somewhere between Wichita and Albuquerque

Overall it was a great trip, the dogs soon became accustomed to getting in/out of the car for the long hauls.  Most importantly we kept bringing the dogs a secret to surprise my dad :)