My favorite funny dialog/meme about the holidays:
Q: “Are you ready for the holidays?”
A: “No, Susan, I’m not even ready for today.”
It seems like constant planning is required for us to achieve our desires and meet our obligations. On top of that, our pets still need exercise, play, enrichment, and training. Plus, we have to consider whether our pets are ready for the excitement and borderline chaos that can characterize holiday celebrations!
Holidays can still be fun! Training exercises only take a minute or two and each one helps get your pets on track to handle the holidays beautifully. The big categories to focus on are all the humans your pets will be exposed to, the presence of lots of food, and holiday decorations. If you’re traveling for the holidays, there are a few more things you can start working on now to ensure a fun experience for the whole family.
Home is Different During the Holidays
You’ve created a harmonious home where your pets are familiar with how everything works. They know what to expect and what to do in typical situations. But are they prepared for all the new and amazing stimuli the holidays bring? We just celebrated Thanksgiving, so you may have had a taste of how some of these changes can affect your pets.
Visitors
Practice your Front Door Manners, before the visitors arrive. “Pretend Games” can help. Have a family member pose as a visitor – your kids might love this game! Keep the exercise short and only practice one aspect of a visitor’s arrival at a time. Practice conditioning your dog or cat to the doorbell by simply having someone ring the doorbell and immediately giving your pet a treat. Pavlovian conditioning is a powerful tool for doorbell desensitization and counter-conditioning!
Have your dog lie on a mat or your cat lie on a raised surface while you pretend to answer the door. Give treats to reinforce their good behavior. When you are clear in training with positive reinforcement, every practice session improves your pet’s behavior the next time you need that behavior to occur!
If your pet is afraid of people, practice having them rest in their safe room or confinement area with music, familiar bedding and toys, and a stuffed Kong or safe chew. If you ‘ll be needing them to do that when company comes, it’s best to practice now. There’s no need for your pet to interact during the busy holidays if they aren’t ready. You can work on helping them cope with visitors after the new year.
LOTS of Cooking and Eating
Oh, the food! You surely got a glimpse of this during the Thanksgiving holiday. Tempting smells, lots of extra food around, and maybe even food occasionally dropped on the floor.
Do you need to use a baby gate to keep your dog out of the kitchen? Do you need to practice your cat’s mat training so she has a job to do while she’s in the kitchen? How are you doing with your “Leave it” training? These are decisions you can make now. Just a couple of minute-long training sessions each day will help you build the behaviors you need to make your holiday entertaining a success.
Noise and Boisterous Human Behavior
Humans sometimes change behaviors dramatically when in groups, celebrating holidays together. Playing games and watching sports on TV can produce a lot of loud talking, laughing, even wild gesturing and jumping out of chairs when there’s a touchdown or a bad call in a football game. Your pet may be surprised, frightened, or possibly even somewhat traumatized by these unfamiliar behaviors, even if they are doing well with the concept of new people in the home. Take extra time now to observe your pet and fully understand what he’s showing you through his body language. If your pet is happy and content in this type of environment, certainly allow them to make that choice! Put pets in their safe room if that’s the right answer for them. Your visitors may not understand why they can’t interact with your pet, but you understand your pet’s needs. If you and your visitors are staying up late, don’t hesitate to maintain your pets’ bedtime routines if possible.
Decorations
Oh, the videos of cats in Christmas trees on YouTube! They are funny until it’s your own tree. Dogs may be tempted to grab things off the tree or they may knock things over while circling to lie down on your tree skirt! Gifts under the tree can draw their interest, too. My first dog, Howdy, opened a wrapped tin of Snickers bars from under the tree one year and had a feast. Individually wrapped candy in a tin, wrapped in paper! And he knew which present to choose. A dog’s sense of smell is amazing.
Right now, you can practice reinforcing behaviors that keep your pet out of trouble. Mat training is helpful. Keeping a basket of toys far from the tree and other decorations can help. Rotate the toys so there are some unfamiliar and irresistible items available. Provide food puzzles in other rooms, away from the bulk of the decorations. Associate fun and playtime with other rooms, not the one where the Christmas tree is standing.
If necessary, put an X-pen around your tree or keep the pets out of that room. Remember the Matching Law: whatever has been reinforced – read, “fun for pets” – goes into their repertoire. Don’t let destructive behaviors begin.
Leaving Home Brings More New Experiences
If you’re going away for the holiday, recognize that the same aspects described above – visitors, food, human behaviors, and decorations – are likely to be part of your pets’ experience wherever you are going. Add to that the trip itself, including the various new environments along the way and at your final destination.
Practice the behaviors you need now. Training not only provides development of useful behaviors, it is, in itself, a form of enrichment and mental stimulation. You can’t go wrong with practicing car ride behavior, leash skills, being confined in a crate or separate room behind a baby gate, and even having your pet relieve themselves in new places.
Prepare Your Medicine Cabinet
Pets sometimes experience tummy upset accompanying stress. Holidays bring both good and bad stress. Both can produce physiological as well as behavioral changes. Of course, you need to bring your pets’ regular pharmacopeia on any trip. Also be sure you have probiotics or other meds that you might need for upset tummies, calming chews if you may need them, and any other incidental medications that can help meet the needs of your pet. If you’re leaving home for the holidays, pack these meds along with your other supplies.
Training and the Holidays
Training your pet with positive reinforcement is fun for both of you. A training session of 1 or 2 minutes each day can rapidly build a behavior while satisfying your pet’s needs for mental activities and fun times with you. Amid your holiday preparations, be sure to take just a moment to focus on your dog, cat, or whatever pet you have. Understand them better, bond a little more deeply, and enjoy your pet’s love of life. It will reduce your holiday stress as well as that of your pet!
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