The holidays bring family, friends, food, and a low hum of anxiety about whether everything is going to hold together. We cannot help with the turkey. We can help make sure your dog is not the thing that goes wrong.
Six areas to get ahead of, ideally a few weeks before anyone arrives.
1. Know what your dog can and cannot eat
Everyone wants to share the meal. Some of it is fine, and some of it means an emergency vet visit on a day when your regular clinic is closed.
Generally safe in small, plain portions:
- Turkey, skin removed
- Chicken, no bones
- Cooked sweet potato, no butter or seasoning
- Plain baked potato
- Plain pumpkin
- Cucumber, carrots, green beans
- Banana and apple, seeds removed
Keep away from your dog entirely:
- Alcohol, and yes, we have heard the stories
- Caffeine and chocolate
- Candy and anything sweetened with xylitol
- Grapes and raisins
- Onions, garlic, and chives
- Nutmeg and heavy spices
- Nuts
- Rich, salty, or sugary leftovers of any kind
The bigger risk is rarely what you feed your dog. It is what a well meaning guest slips under the table. Tell people the rule before dinner starts.
2. Train greetings before the day arrives
If your dog mugs every person who walks through your door, the morning of the party is far too late to address it. Controlled greetings have to be built in advance, when the stakes are low and you have a spare hand.
Practice with one family member at a time. Walk your dog toward them and reward calm approach, four feet on the floor, no pulling, no shoving into their space. If your dog is genuinely rambunctious, work on leash and collar so you can interrupt the wrong choice and redirect before it becomes a rehearsal. Repeat until boring. A greeting your dog can do with the family is a greeting they might manage with a stranger.
3. Supervise every interaction with children
Dog bites go up around the holidays, and the reason is not that dogs become worse in December. It is that the house fills with noise, stress, and unfamiliar people, and small children who do not read warning signs are turned loose in the middle of it.
Even a dog who is excellent with people needs supervision around kids. Children lean on dogs, hug their necks, corner them, and pull at them, and they do not notice the whale eye, the lip lick, the stiffening, or the turn away that means a dog has had enough. A growl at that point is not aggression. It is a warning that the dog has run out of other ways to communicate.
Two jobs, then. Teach the children in your house how to approach a dog gently and when to leave one alone. And watch every interaction yourself, so that the moment your dog looks uncomfortable, you can move the child along and give your dog somewhere else to be.
If your dog has already started growling or stiffening around your own family, do not wait for the holidays to test it. That pattern gets worse without professional help, not better.
4. Use the crate
Crating is the single most effective tool for getting a dog through a busy holiday, and the one people feel guiltiest about.
Set the expectation now: it looks unkind to put your dog away while everyone else enjoys the evening. In practice, it is safer and calmer for the dog. They cannot steal food off the counter, they cannot knock your grandmother over, and you are not tracking them around a crowded room while trying to host. Dogs are denning animals. A quiet, covered crate in a back bedroom is a relief, not a punishment.
The catch is that this only works if you practice first. A dog crated for the first time on the day twelve strangers arrive will panic. Build the habit weeks ahead, with meals and chews in the crate, until settling in there is unremarkable.
5. Check tags and microchip details
The holidays are peak season for lost dogs. Doors open and close constantly, guests do not check behind them, and a dog who has never shown any interest in escaping will slip out during the confusion.
Take five minutes now. Confirm the collar tag is secure and readable, confirm your dog is microchipped, and confirm the number registered to that chip is one you still answer. A chip with a dead number attached does nothing.
6. Book daycare or boarding early
If you are traveling, running errands all week, or simply know your dog will not cope with a full house, a good daycare or boarding facility solves the problem outright.
Book it early. Reputable facilities fill up for the holidays well in advance, and waiting means either a kennel you have not vetted or a change to your plans. Booking a few weeks out is also a good idea for its own sake, because a dog who has spent the day working and socializing arrives home tired and ready to sleep through your dinner.
Start now, not the week of
Every item on this list works better with lead time. Greetings, crate training, and daycare reservations all need weeks, not days. The households that get through the holidays calmly are the ones that did the boring preparation in November.
Need help before the guests arrive? Call us at 480-595-6700. We train dogs 20 weeks and older at our Scottsdale and Cave Creek campuses.
