As we all know, the holidays can get a little crazy sometimes. Between all of the parties, family gatherings, family members coming home from college or coming from out of town, our schedules can get really mess up.

This time of year can be especially stressful for our pets too. They don't read calanders, they don't understand holidays and they surely don't understand what to think of all that noise and people coming and going until all hours. Even the most laid back dog can become overwhelmed when it's routine is turned upside-down and completely disrupted.

So before all of your guests, relitives and friends begin to arrive, take a few moments to make sure your dog has a quiet place to go so that it can escape the all of the craziness. Even if it's just moving the dog's bed or crate into a quiet corner of the basement or into your bedroom, it can be enough to create a quiet retreat for a stressed out dog.

The first signs that your dog is becoming stressed out is that you will see the dog pacing, panting or trying to find a place to hide. Your dog may also become easily irritated or want to go outside or anywhere it can get away from everyone.

So give your dog a break from the holidays ... give it quiet place of his own.

Excellent advice Michael! One might to way to busy to even consider this to be a potential problem, but being that dogs are creatures of habit they most definitely might get stressed out when afronted to these kinds of changes.

A good reminder indeed!

I spoke to a breader friend of mine who told me about this. He rerad an article or something about dog bites being much higher during the holidays and the thought was that is was because dog's become afraid of ppl they dont know very well. After further study they realised that it was stress related and NOT fear related.

I hadn't heard of that myself, I mean about bite incidents rising during holidays. It sounds logical to think that it would be stress related, also if family over means having little kids over (ones that don't know how to interact with dogs) that might also explain why the frequency of bites it much higher too.

great idea! thanks for mentioning this. definitely important to let your pet feel comfortable amidst all of the holiday craziness.
luckily we go to my in laws for the holidays and they are Batman's half brother/sister so they just play non stop until they exhaust themselves..so they dont seem to mind us humans doing our own crazy holiday stuff, lol.

This is another reason that it is SO important to socalize a dog properly. A well socialized dog will just walk away, whereas a porrly socialized dog will bite.