Category Archives: Pets and Family

We love pets for the enjoyment and companionship they bring to our lives. Their antics brighten our day, and their presence in our beds at night is reassuring, even if a bit crowded. But pets are more than just companions or entertainers – they make us healthier. Let’s take a look at the different ways pets improve our health.

National Fire Prevention Week, sponsored by the National Fire Prevention Association, is October 8-14. This year’s theme is “Cooking Safety Starts with You.” While pets don’t cook, they can start kitchen fires and are sadly victims of housefires. In 2021, CNN reported on cats causing kitchen fires by jumping on stoves with touch sensitive buttons. Once the cats turned the stove on, it overheated and caught fire. In this blogpost, I’ll discuss the pet health hazards of house and apartment fires and what you can do to keep your family safe.

Many of my readers might be surprised by the title of this blogpost. Usually, the question is posed in reverse, i.e. “Does my pet pose a risk to my baby?” True, pets do pose some risks to children, but the benefits of pets in teaching responsibility to children, providing companionship and preventing allergies are well known. In most cases, you can mitigate the risks to children from cats and dog bites. So, in today’s blogpost, I will focus on the flipside of this question and discuss the risks your baby or toddler poses to your pets and how to make your child-friendly household pet-friendly as well.

The second Sunday in September is National Pet Memorial Day, a day to remember those pets who are no longer with us in person but remain in our hearts forever. For those who have recently lost their favorite fur person, I want to take this opportunity to recommend some books that might be helpful during the grieving process.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have great information on their website to help all of us stay healthy. The site contains information on travel health, foodborne illnesses and descriptions of every disease you can imagine in their Health Topics A-Z. They even have section called Healthy Pets, Healthy People with information about pet care and pet diseases. In today’s blogpost, I’ll be discussing tick bites and tickborne diseases, an issue that concerns humans and our companion animals alike.