New Year’s Resolutions With Your Pet

There are plenty of things you can do with your pet to better both of your lives and start the year off right. You can set a step goal which your furry friend can help you to achieve or focus on eating healthy together to support each other in getting healthier. Even resolutions like reading more books can involve your pets. They love to be spoken to and communication really enriches their lives. Many dog and cat rescues allow volunteers to read to the animals in their care, even if they can’t have physical contact with them. This leads to animals being attentive and a reduction in stress levels.

Life can be fast paced so if you need an excuse to sit down with a book consider it a valuable bonding session with your feline friend or canine companion. Reading aloud might seem strange at first but once you get into the habit of relaxing together with a book, you can keep your resolution to yourself while giving your pet a relaxing experience.

A new year means you can try out something new with your pooch. They might only know the basics or they might have a whole bunch of tricks up their sleeve already, but there’s always room for more. Trick training is a great way to bond with your beloved pet. It teaches them to never give up trying to get it right to get access to the praise and rewards they love so much. Through training, dogs learn frustration tolerance and don’t get disheartened when they don’t get it right the first time.

Learning new tricks is both mentally tiring and can be physically tiring depending on what you choose to teach them. You can teach an emergency stop for when you’re out on walks and need them to put the breaks on, or you can teach them something fun like the names of some of their toys to correctly identify and bring to you. If you haven’t yet, you can start with the basics like a sit and wait or advance onto a rollover. The possibilities are endless and you can have great fun as you both learn new skills. Make sure you’re stocked up with treats like the Wellness CORE Lamb with Apple Dog Training Treats.

Training treats can be almost anything your pup likes, but they should be high value to get them working for them. If they’re too boring they won’t try hard for their reward. They only need to be small treats so treats specially made for training are ideal to portion control the extra calories they’re getting.

If your resolution for the year is to get fit, there’s no reason why your pooch can’t come along with you for the ride. You might want to lose a few pounds or just get outside more and find new places to enjoy. No matter what the main driving force is, your canine companion is always more than happy to go along with you. You might be bored on the same walking routes day in and day out as you circle the same park and if you’re bored then your pup is most likely bored too.

New walks come with lots of new sights and sounds along with interesting scents that they might not have encountered before. A new trail is going to be much more enriching than the same route they’ve done a hundred times before. You can even start to find walks that will slowly increase in how challenging they are for you to navigate with your best friend. New walks are a great place to take your pooch to practice their recall. While your pup may be fixed to your side around your normal walking route, new places offer more excitement. You could crack out the Puppy Training Recall Dog Lead and brush up on how valuable you are to come back to even in new and interesting places.

If you go out walking where there are rocks to climb, gates scale over and other natural obstacles, a harness like the Julius K9 Harness is great to offer support. With its easy-to-grab handle in the event of having to help them manoeuvre over things, it’s a great piece of equipment when it comes to going on hikes with your best friend. 

If your New Year’s resolution involves giving your beloved pet plenty of fun things to do, toys are always a safe bet. They might have a bunch of tired old toys lying around but there’s nothing like something new and fresh to get them on their feet and playing. If your pup loves a tennis ball but you get that dreaded ache in your shoulder after constantly throwing the balls, you can level up your game with the Nerf Dog Tennis Ball Blaster. Not only does it throw it further than your arm ever could but it takes a toy they already love and makes even more fun for them.

If you’re forever cleaning up after your pup because they love to destroy their toys and pull them apart, try getting them toys that are made to be pulled apart! The Pet Brands Toadstool Hide-N-Seek Dog Toy is a mushroom shaped soft toy filled with little gnomes that can be pushed into the toy for your pup to dig and pull out. You might be surprised at how long a soft toy can last, even with the most destructive pups, when it’s designed to play into their instincts to pull it apart! Some of the best dog toys for chewers might not look that tough but are made to satisfy their desire to chew.

Toys aren’t just for your canine companions,your pampered kitties can benefit from new and exciting toys too. Hexbug Nano Cat Toy is a toy designed to mimic the movements of an insect and really get your feline friend tuning into their hunting instincts. Toys that trigger your cat’s chase drive help to keep them active. Many cats, especially indoor kitties tend to get a little lazy and would rather spend their day snoozing away in the sun. A fun and active toy can help to get them on their feet and use up some of their energy.

Maybe in the New Year, you want to change things up a little with an upgrade in their diet. Picking the right food for your pet is a balancing act between the best ingredients and finding a diet that doesn’t upset their tummy and brings out the shine in their coat. All food should be complete and even the most decadent diets like the Gourmet Solitaire Beef In Tomato Sauce are balanced and packed with nutrients. If your kitty has been dining on biscuits, they might appreciate an upgrade into the world of wet cat food, whether it’s for their whole diet or to accompany a complete dry diet.

If you’re looking for a wet dog food to treat your pooch to, Lifestage Adult Dog Grain Free Salmon and Potato is gentle on the stomach and even helps to aid with digestion. Just because it’s a wet food diet doesn’t mean that it’s going to be harder to digest and more likely to upset their stomach. As a grain free diet using fish protein, it’s great for skin and coat health alongside the immune system boost it offers.

More and more pet parent are choosing to feed their beloved pets raw dog food as it comes with so many benefits. You’ll find that your pup should have fewer poops on a raw diet as you tend to feed them less. Raw food is calorically dense while being easy to digest so while it feels like you’re feeding a lot less, your pup can digest more nutrients in the food which is why you get less waste. Raw food can be difficult to calculate and get right but premade diets like Natures Menu Frozen Nuggets Banquet have all the benefits with none of the drawbacks of trying to balance the meal yourself. 

Whether it’s trying out a new diet, getting your steps up of taking more time to relax together, we have everything you and your pet need to stick to your New Year’s resolutions! Have a prowl in store or online today.