Pets are so adorable that anyone would want to have these furry creatures around their homes. However, owning a pet is not for everyone as the responsibilities it entails is no joke. To be a responsible pet owner, you need to focus more on the pet’s health and safety, and less of it’s cuteness and adorableness.
While the responsibilities are indeed, no joke, there is much to gain from owning a pet. The following items will help you take care of your pet properly.
Beginning with values, one value you learn is commitment. There are so many duties you must do when owning a pet, like watching what they eat and keeping them safe. Due to the number of roles to fill as a pet owner, it takes commitment to fulfill these duties.
Another value learned is compassion. Eventually, through bonding and caring for your pet, you naturally learn to love your pet, making the responsibilities more involuntary, as opposed to a chore.
This is why parents get pets for their children. At a young age, it is important for parents to instill commitment and compassion in their kids. As they age performing their duties to be a responsible pet owner, they eventually grow old to be loving and responsible young adults.
On the flip side, you may not be a kid anymore but you need a companion but prefer not to have children. That is fine. At least, you know what you can and cannot commit to. Regardless of age, commitment and compassion is the key to success of responsible pet owners.
Here are the 7 tips to become a responsible pet owner
1. Monitor their nutrition
Nutrition is often overlooked when caring for pets. For some, they just get the most popular brand of pet food and feed their pets. Others just feed them leftovers while the irresponsible few don’t even feed their pets.
As a pet owner, it is not enough to feed your pets at specific time periods. You must be cognizant of what exactly they are eating.
Even pets need to “mind their macros.” Pet foods will always contain nutritional facts for you to monitor their macromolecule intakes. Just like humans, pets need some carbohydrates, less fatty foods, and more protein.
2. Monitor their hygiene
As pets, they are willing to get dirty without a care in the world. The one who should care about how dirty they can get is you, the pet owner.
Some pets, when outdoors, can lie in the middle of the road or walk around mud. Point is, pets are almost always dirty. While some pets might not like it, it is your responsibility to keep them clean by bathing them every so often.
To add, pets are not exempted from oral hygiene. Pets will eat anything and everything which may lead to damaged teeth but will obviously lead to bad breath. As funny as it sounds, you can brush your pets’ teeth, though most people opt for dental sticks instead.
Lastly, do not forget regular visits to the groomer. As a pet owner, you want your pet to look and feel good.
3. Let them exercise
One way to describe pets is that they are small balls of intense energy begging to be released.
Pets are energetic and playful, making exercise a necessity for them. Pets cannot be sedentary and stagnant all the time, they must be in constant motion – running and jumping until they pass out asleep.
For exclusively indoor pets, it helps to have spacious home or garden that allows them to run and play. On the other hand, for outside pets, it helps to have a subdivision with ample outside space and facilities that is pet-friendly.
By owning a Bria House and Lot, you open your pet up to a pet-friendly community where it can run and play around the village while meeting other pets as playmates.
4. Interaction with other pets
Building of the previous subtopic, to be a responsible pet owner is to expose your pet to interaction opportunities with other pets.
Another similarity between pets and humans is being inherently sociable creatures. In the point of view of a pet, they are curious when they see a different animal within their midst. As long as it is not some kind of predator-prey relationship, there should not be an issue with letting your pet make friends with other pets.
5. Make your pet feel like home
The moment you become a pet owner, your pet is officially part of the household. To quickly integrate them to the household, it will need a place to eat, sleep, and defecate, among many things.
To illustrate, cat owners provide their cats with a bowl with cat food within the bowl’s vicinity, a cat bed, though they usually sleep in couches or a pillow, and a litter box.
Other ways to officially include your pet into the home is to “pet-proof” your home. Make sure electrical hazards cannot be accessed by your pets.
Read Also: 12 Pet Essentials Every Fur-Parent Should Have
6. Have your pets immunized
Rabies is a viral disease often transmitted through the bite of a rabid animal. It affects both pets and humans. The virus attacks the bitten mammal’s central nervous system, leading to damage in the brain, which will ultimately lead to death.
To prevent this deadly disease from spreading, Philippine legislators passed a law called the Anti-Rabies Act of 2007 (RA 9482) “provides for the control, prevention of the spread and eventual eradication of human and animal rabies.”
Under this law, pet owners must have all their pets vaccinated, to be noted down using a current animal identification card that records all vaccinations administered to the pet. To be a responsible pet owner, having your pet vaccinated is not enough. If your pet bites someone else, it is your duty to report the incident for preventive measures.
Rabies is a serious and deadly disease so precautions are necessary.
7. Pet identification
One of the biggest nightmares of a pet owner is being separated from their pet, more so losing it. Your pet wearing a collar is not just for the aesthetics, it is a great way to give your pet identification and your contact details.
Your pet’s collar should be double-sided, with the front face showing the pet’s name. On the back, it can have the following: an emergency contact number, a GPS tracker, or a QR code linked to an emergency contact and/or GPS location reveal.
Pet registration and identification are required in several towns and provinces in the Philippines, and microchipping has become more prevalent as a means of identification. Should your pet wear an identifying collar, make sure that the tags are updated and comprehensible. Consider making your pet wear a GPS tracker or putting a QR code on your pet’s collar that can be scanned to give your contact information.
Love your pet
Perhaps the most important factor in how to be a responsible pet owner is love. Either it takes love to fulfill the responsibilities of a pet owner or as you go through your duties, you eventually learn to love your pet.
Either way, love must be present in your relationship with your pet. It is important for them to feel loved so that they can be happy.
As mentioned earlier in the article, owning a Bria House and Lot can add to your pet’s happiness by putting them in an environment that is friendly to them.
Written by Cholo Hermoso
