Animal Safety Pt. 1

I am proud to finally present Introductory Animal Safety.

This document is a labor of love, created over the past 8 months originally as a resource to help keep pet sitters safe.

You may remember my post in February, The Complicated Contracts of Dog Walkers, where I said I wanted to create training resources for new pet sitters to help them stay safe on the job.

Two excellent pet sitters, Chris Wooten of One of a Kind K9 and Kim Fields at Everything and the Dog generously gave of their time to make sure this document would be helpful to new pet sitters in their field.

I would also like to thank Lili Chin, Dr. Karen Overall, and Elsevier Publishing for making the animal behavior images in the document available for non-profit use.

Since I could not find any similar documents available through the two major pet sitting organizations I will also be sending this handout along to them in the hopes they can use it for their members.

Since this safety information is helpful for all pet lovers I will present it here too. It will be split into at least 3 posts. This first section focuses on how to avoid catching animal diseases:

Helping with Allergies

As a kid I always wondered why Snowball, our pet Jack Russell, licked her feet like they were ice cream cones every fall and spring. You can see the little brown stains on her paws in her picture. Does your pet do the same thing? Like Snowball, your pet may have allergies.

How do you know if your pet has allergies? What might they be allergic to? Find out below.