Grantham pet expert Sara Barnes writes about keeping your pet calm during Halloween

Halloween may not be your dog’s favourite time of year, writes Grantham pet expert Sara Barnes.

When it comes to Halloween more and more people are dressing their dogs up so they can join in the fun of trick or treating, with this in mind this month I thought I would remind you to make sure that anything you dress your pet up in needs to be dog friendly and fire safe, yes just like your kids fancy dress outfits.

If you decide to use face paints to turn your dog in to a skeleton hound or a purple striped spider dog then make sure they are safe for your dog to ingest, because lets be honest no matter how hard we try they will end up licking some of it off, and none of us want to end our trick or treating to go to the vets with a sick dog, and the out of hours services for most if not all Grantham Vets are about 30+ minutes drive away, or vidivet.

On the flip side if your dog is not keen on going trick or treating, goes nuts when the doorbell goes off, or gets stressed with all the strangers coming to the door then you could consider leaving the lights off and not decorating outside, which these days seems to be the socially accepted sign that your house is not open for trick or treating.

You could also turn the volume down or disconnect the doorbell to reduce the likelihood of your dog being triggered. You could also prepare them a den/safe space to hide away if there are fireworks or flashing lights.

If you don’t want to be the neighbourhood scrounge how about leaving a bowl of sweets out front for those out and about to help themselves?

Just make sure they are out of reach of the dog so they can’t snack on them and make themselves sick.