Blog
Practical things we've learned building mypet care, and the questions pet owners keep asking us.
A dog or cat that has been sick once and is otherwise fine can usually wait. One that has been sick three times, or is retching and nothing comes up, or is a cat that has stopped eating, cannot. The signs that decide it, and what to do in the meantime.
Nearly eight in ten owners underestimate what a pet costs over its life. Here is the honest arithmetic for a medium dog in Europe — the routine lines, the first-year extras, and the three costs that never make it into anyone's budget until they arrive.
Roughly half of dogs are frightened by fireworks, and the ones that are get worse every year unless someone changes something. What to do on the night is the small part. The eight weeks before it are where the fear is actually reduced.
A dog that chews the door and howls for an hour is not being naughty — it is having a panic attack. Most "separation anxiety" is not that, though, and the difference decides what you do. How to tell, and the slow method that actually works.
House soiling is the number-one reason cats lose their homes, and it is almost never spite. The first call is the vet — and for a male cat that is straining, it is an emergency. Then the box itself, and it usually is the box.
Most lost cats are within a few houses of home, and a frightened dog will not come to its own name. The first day decides more than any later one — what to do in the first ten minutes, where a found animal actually ends up, and the text message that is a scam.
It is the most googled dog question there is. The short answer is that most dogs do it, most are perfectly well, and the "they do it to make themselves sick" story is mostly wrong. What the research found, and the four cases where grass-eating is a symptom.
The requirements are short and easy to read. The trouble is in the details — a booster a day late, a treatment with a five-hour window, and an airline whose rules are stricter than the law.
The dog you collect is not the dog you will have. What is normal in the first seven days, the mistake that loses the most dogs, and the four things genuinely worth doing straight away.
