Bringing Home Your First Pet?
Here’s How to Prepare Your Home
Planning to get your first pet, no matter what it is, is always an exciting time in a person’s life. Introducing a new family member to the household and making the commitment to caring for it is admirable, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. Pets are deserving of respect and fair treatment, meaning that you must be willing to create an environment that is safe and comfortable for them to share with you. Here are some ideas on how you can make your home more friendly for your pet.
Consider Potential for Mess
Pets bring so much joy into a family’s life, but they also bring their fair share of chaos. Dogs, for example, are not always the cleanest members of a household. They often leave their mess in inconvenient places and must be appropriately toilet trained. Similarly, cats will either need to use a litter tray or learn to go outside each time they need to relieve themselves. Small rodents such as hamsters and rabbits will need their enclosures cleaned weekly to prevent a non-hygienic mess from building up. Fish in an aquarium must be closely monitored, so their pH levels and oxygen quality remain optimal.
Make Safety a Priority
You become entirely responsible for your pet as soon as you adopt it. They rely on you to care for them and provide a safe lifestyle. Here are a few safety considerations you could think about when bringing home your pet:
- If there are parts of your home that are out of bounds for your new pet, install baby gates to keep your pet from breaking into the wrong areas.
- You might want to consider looking at aflooringboutique.co.uk for flooring ideas that are easier for your pet to navigate. Hard floors might be easy to clean, but they can sometimes be slippery and cause tall dogs or running cats to injure themselves.
- If your dog is small and you live in a location with opportunistic birds of prey nearby, consider always keeping your dog on its leash or invest in anti-predator protective gear that makes it impossible for your small dog to be carried away.
Set Ground Rules
Some people are more than happy for their pets to have free access to every part of their home, including the bed and bathroom. If you are fine with your pet following you everywhere, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if you don’t want your pet going into particular rooms, it’s important to train them as soon as possible. If you leave this for too long, you have essentially given your pet permission to roam the house freely.
When you bring home your first pet, you’ll want to give it everything and spoil it. Instead, keep it safe and teach it the house rules.
24 thoughts on “Bringing Home Your First Pet”
Oh! I wish I could talk about it. I have never had pets but my brother has one. I would love to have one and feel the warm of someone loves without expectations
There are certainly extra responsibilities when we have a pet that love is so special.
I would love to have my first pet soon. I will keep these tips about it. Thank you for sharing!
You are very welcome. What pet are you thinking of?
First pet always comes with challenges.It was so much easier the 2nd time around.
Much like when we have our second child we know so much more
I’m one of those people who grant access to every room to my pet including the bedroom but I think having grounds rules is important too.
Ground rules are very important. It is also important for us to recognize that certain rules are more important to some of us than others.
I wish I read this before bringing home my pet. Ground rules are so important I agree.
It would be quite interesting to learn of the lessons you have learned.
I wish I had these tips when we brought home our pitbull years ago. She almost destroyed our home. New pets need a lot of patience.
Our son is interested in a pitbull. I would love to learn from you.
Their safety is out priority, these are all really important things to prepare. Thanks for sharing this with us!
Safety is definitely of upmost importance
Hhhhmmmm…this is a comprehensive guide for bringing my first pet home. I’d love to start with a dog and work my way from there. Thank you, Dr. Elise.
A dog is a different responsibility as you also need to consider walking.
This is so informative for a new pet parent. My daughter is so interested to own a pet but its me who is little worried about the added responsibilities. Hope your post will help me in near future.
I can definitely understand your concerns. There have been times when I have had the same.
Pets are loads of fun, but they also require responsibility. I have had to set rules with my girls and stress the importance of cleaning up after them and feeding them. Fortunately for me, my girls take their role seriously.
That is wonderful that they take their role seriously. They are learning a wonderful lesson hello
These are excellent tips. I remember when we got our first dog. We were totally unprepared for how much they can get in to!
I am sure that you can teach us all a thing or two.
We found our cat and rescued her from outside so we didn’t have time to prep before she came in. But we did get some of this in place as soon as possible. For the first few weeks, she was limited on where she could go in the house. Now we try to only keep her off the table and counters, and have tried since she was a kitten, but we still catch her up there sometimes.
It is a funny thing about cats. It always seems they make their way up there.