Be Careful Walking Your Dog After Halloween
There is one thing that I always see when I’m walking dogs the day after Halloween: Candy on the sidewalk everywhere. Those Trick-or-Treaters sure are messy. Name the candy and I’ve seen it on my daily dog walks.
You HAVE to pay attention every time your dog stops to smell something. It’s natural to just think they are doing their normal sniffing thing. But the day after Halloween there is a lot to smell (and eat).
It’s simple, don’t space out while walking your dog the day afternoon Halloween. And that advice is for dog walkers and dog owners alike. Put your phone away during the walk.
Be ready to pull your dog away when they stop to sniff something. Now you don’t HAVE TO do that, but failing to do so could result in a pricey vet visit, or worse.
And don’t forget about Halloween night itself, either during or after the festivities. At night is when the candy is being dropped and it’s harder to see what the dogs are smelling.
You may want to consider bringing a small flashlight or walking your dog where the Treaters haven’t been.
Articles about candy on the ground after Halloween and walking your dog
You don’t really hear or read anything about looking for chocolate and other candies when you are walking your dog on Halloween night or the day after. I did a quick search online using terms like “dog walking after Halloween” and “post-Halloween dog walking.”
Boy oh boy, the pages I read were pretty bad. And I went at least three pages deep in the Google search results. It was the same topics and phrases over and over in each article:
- From the ubiquitous “chocolate can be poisonous.”
- To “keep the candy where the dogs can’t reach it.” No, really? Thanks for the tip.
- Or even “dogs can be frightened by the costumes.”
- And there is a lot of data on chocolate and sugar chemistry and how the compounds interact with a dog’s physiology.
It’s as if one person somewhere wrote an article on “Dogs + Halloween” and everyone else plagiarized the content. And I read articles from corporate food companies to national dog walking services.
I guess the profits from their food sales and walker apps aren’t enough to hire writers with dog walking experience. To be fair though, the better articles at least had lists of symptoms for chocolate poisoning in dogs.
Nearly no mention about candy on the ground at all. However, I did find one article that had a paragraph about watching for candy dropped on the sidewalks. And what a surprise, it was an article from a dog walking and pet sitting company, and not a corporate behemoth.
So kudos to equipaws Pet Services in Miami – good job! Their article is called Tips for Walking Dogs on Halloween!
It’s easy to forget about this until Halloween each year
So some of you may have noticed the date at the top of this article – November 2nd, 2018. And you may want to ask me “Why didn’t you publish this BEFORE the holiday?”
Well, I’ll tell you why – I forgot. I forget every year. It wasn’t until I took my dog out for his night walk and saw all the mayhem that I remembered and said to myself “Watch out for the chocolate.”
I’m actually kicking myself right now for not including this safety tip in my article 5 Dog Walking Dangers and Safety Tips. I obviously forgot to include this tip in that piece. Check it out if you have time.
Hopefully, you have a better memory that I do and you’ll keep this article in mind each year. Just pay attention to what you are doing and everything should be fine.
