Covid-19: Pet pawrents, pets and social distancing

After WHO described Covid-19 as a pandemic disease, a lot of countries, in order to ‘flatten the curve’ for Covid-19, asked their residents to maintain social distancing by:

- Closing schools and universities and switch to online classes

- Stay at home and work from home

- Canceling public gathering and events

- Maintaining 1 -2m distance from other people in the public

As pet pawrent, you may possibly face two situations during Covid-19:

Situation A: you will stay at home to work from home.

Situation B: you will stay at home in case of Covid-19 sickness.

What can you do in these two situations to keep your pet safe, happy and healthy? Here is some general advice on pet safety during social distancing;

Situation A: Working from home

1. Spend more time with your pet

Your pet can be a wonderful provider of emotional support amid the covid-19 pandemic. Social distancing is an opportunity for you to spend more time with your pet and reduce reliance on pet boarding centers. You can play with your pet as well. Some dogs require quite a lot of exercise, and this can be difficult to do in this situation, make sure you spend enough time playing and entertaining this type of dog to help disperse some of their energy – take the time to teach it new tricks, mental energy can also contribute to wearing them out.

2. Check your pets vaccination card & records

Make sure your pets records are all up to date and complete, update vaccinations if required, make sure they have a microchip.

3. Foster a pet

Search for pet adoption centers in your living area and foster a pet while working at home to cope with loneliness and depression caused by Covid-19. This also helps relieve the workload and financial burden on shelters, and can give your current pet a playmate while they are housebound.

4. No need to buy face mask for your pets

The WHO say there’s no evidence that animals can get the Covid-19 virus and spread it to their owners. So there is no need to panic and buy face masks for your pets, save them for all the front liners that need them.

5. Ensure you have enough pet food, treats, medications, ancillary items and cleaning products.

If you want to keep your pet healthy, you need to stock some pet food and treats for a couple of weeks to make sure your pet will stay on a consistent diet. Please do not over-buy. Do not forget to buy ancillary items and cleaning products such as poop bags, kitty litter, pee pads and fake grass for your pets.

6. Entertain your pets

While working from home try to keep your pets entertained while keeping them away from your personal space. Prepare toys, treats and puzzles to keep them busy.

7. Potty time

You need to go for a walk with your pet dog for exercise and potty time but if you live in an apartment and don’t have a backyard, you need to potty-train your dog at home. First designate the area of your floor as the potty area, then cover it with newspapers, pee pads or fake grass. Then start your dogs’ potty-training.

Situation B: Infected by Covid-19

1. Quarantine yourself from your pet if you are infected by Covid-19: We are used to quarantining our pets when they become sick, and cannot imagine the day we would have to quarantine ourselves from our pets when we get sick. We do not know enough about the covid-19 virus, so it will be safer if we keep our distance from our pets in case of this sickness.

Cattening the curve

Please do stay at home in order to cattening the curve for Covid-19 virus. Here’s the cat version of flattening the curve by Anne Marie Darling: