Moving with pets raises human stress levels and your cats and dogs are no different. While many dogs enjoy adventure and visiting unknown places (and smells!), cats bond closely with their home territory. Any change can put their tail in a twist when moving disrupts routine. An unfamiliar location, smells, and sounds raise levels of fear, anxiety, or stress (FAS).
With proper care, though, you can reduce or even eliminate the angst. Here are tips for moving with cats and dogs and helping them quickly acclimate to their new home.
10 TIPS FOR MOVING WITH PETS
Before You Move
Pack Out Of Sight. Cats and dogs can become upset seeing furniture, clothes, and other familiar objects packed away. We know pets (especially cats) love boxes, so having them around your cat could risk your pet hiding away and getting lost. Confine your pets to a safe room away from all the disruption until you complete and move all the packing boxes out of the home. Put a sign on the door “PETS INSIDE, KEEP CLOSED!” Confining to a room with their property also prepares them for their first few days in their new home, where they’ll also be temporarily confined.
Prepare For Travel. Plan so your pet accepts car or airplane travel. For smaller pets, acclimating them to a safe carrier or crate helps enormously. The crate becomes the one constant and familiar-smelling safe spot for your pet both during travel and once you arrive at your new home. If you’re traveling by plane, check with the carrier to be sure your crate meets their size criteria. Here are some tips for traveling in cars with your pets.
Crate Train Pets. Start at least two weeks before the move and leave the crate out all the time so pets can come and go at will. Turn it into a favorite sleep spot with a comfy bed or blanket. Hide fun toys or treats in the crate (perhaps catnip for kitties) to associate positive things with the location. Adding a tee-shirt that you’ve worn but not washed adds your comforting scent and can help reduce stress. Feed favorite meals here can help enormously. Also, adding a favorite treat your pet ONLY gets when inside the crate also can accelerate acceptance. Try a natural milk-based treat of Zylkene (alpha-casozepine) that helps calm pets of any age. You can offer Zylkene during travel, and also once you arrive, to reduce moving stress. For the first several weeks, you may want to crate your dog whenever you leave the new home, so he feels more secure–and won’t indulge in destructive separation behaviors.
Get a safe fence to keep pets safe.
At The New Place
Confine Your Pets. At your new home, set up one room specifically for your dog or cat with all his toys, bowls, bed, with litter box and scratch object for your cat. You’ll be unpacking boxes, opening and shutting doors, and don’t need a door-dashing pet adding to your headache. Be sure to shut windows, too. Better yet, think about leash training your cat.
Keep Familiar Gear. Resist the temptation to buy new cat trees, dog beds, and toys until after your pet becomes settled in the new place. Stocking the room with familiar objects that smell like your pet can help keep him calm. Having a room of his own also helps the pet become familiar with the new place, one small space at a time.
Pet Proof Your New Home. Think about all the “whoops” areas that might accidentally hurt your pet. You’re still learning about the new place, too, so think about electrical wires, window blinds, or hidy-holds. Be sure to check the fenced yard for toxic plants or yard supplies, too.
Use Pet Gates. Gradually expand your cat’s territory in the new house. Cats won’t be interested in doing anything else until they’ve explored the new place top to bottom to find hiding spots, perching places, and lookouts. Opening the door could mean your cat disappears somewhere you can’t find him. But you can use moveable pet gates to segregate the upstairs, for example, or expand the cat’s territory down a hallway. Once cats feel comfortable with the expanded area, you can move or remove the pet gate and supervise as he explores his new space.
Continue Routine. As much as possible, maintain your pets’ regular schedule. Feed at the same time, continue scheduled walks or play sessions, and any other favorite activities. It can take two or more weeks for cats to adjust to and accept a new routine and home, so be patient. Dogs may adjust over a few days but some also take weeks or months.
Offer Doggy Leash Walks. For dogs, a walk around the new neighborhood familiarizes him with his new sniffing area. Show him all the cool spots, encourage him to have fun. You’ll want to keep the dog leashed for at least the first couple of weeks until/unless you know his training keeps him under your control. A secure fenced yard offers peace of mind for you and extra benefits for your dog, but you’ll still want to supervise outings. Ensure your dog can’t dig under, or leap over, the fence.
Update Identification. Be sure to update your new address on your pet’s microchip or other identification in case he manages to go astray in the new place. See about locating a new Fear Free Certified veterinarian and transferring your pets’ records.
Prepare Neighbors or Roommates. If you’re moving into a block of apartments or deciding to house share, make sure to prepare. This could be letting neighbors know you have a dog or filling your roommate in on your cat’s temperament. If you’re looking for roommates who would be happy with a pet, SpareRoom is a great place to find them.
Different cats and dogs adjust to new places at different rates. With these tips, you’ll increase the odds your pets adjust well, as quickly as possible, to their new home-sweet-home. Click on one of the ComPETability books and order the title for additional help.
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Stay up to date with the latest book giveaways and appearances related to my September Day pet-centric THRILLERS WITH BITE! Amy Shojai, CABC is a certified cat & dog behavior consultant, a consultant to the pet industry, and the award-winning author of 35+ pet-centric books and Thrillers with Bite! Oh, and she loves bling!
Do you know how do you find pet behavior help? As a certified animal behavior consultant for cats and dogs, I receive many requests for pet behavior help. Solving cat behavior problems and bad dog behavior can be a challenge. Some of these I address with articles explaining cat behavior (how to stop meowing, for example, or dealing with cat aggression), as well as puppy and dog behavior issues like noise phobias and separation behaviors.
Some pet behavior challenges have solutions through reading books and articles, others via phone call advice, and more serious issues (dog aggression, for example) need one-on-one help. But how do the behavior experts receive training?
Dog hot spots often happen during both the spring and fall shedding season and are the bane of many dogs’ existence. Some develop hot spots all year long, especially those with very thick, wooly coats. Have your dogs ever suffered from hot spots?
Fortunately, hot spots are not a problem for cats. Kitties, though, do have their own issues with shedding and hairballs. Bathing cats can help with that.
When dog hot spots are a chronic problem, it can be aggravating and frustrating for pet owners. And painful for the dog! While severe problems need veterinary attention, home remedies for dog hot spots often help enormously. Here’s what you need to know.
Memorial Day honors the American men and women who have lost their lives while serving in the military. It originally honored those who died in the Civil War, and now honors those who died in any war. It is also known as Decoration Day. This holiday differs from Veterans’ Day which honors all those who served in the military.
There is no Memorial Day for the brave military K9s who served and lost their lives, often heroically saving their human partners. I can’t imagine the bond that must exist between the soldier and his or her war dog—they share things and stand against danger to protect the rest of us against horrors we don’t want to think about. And because of them, we don’t have to worry about such things. Thank you.
I’m eternally grateful to those who sacrifice for our freedom. Losing a beloved animal companion anytime cuts deep. It must be horrific to lose a comrade-in-arms, including those with four feet and fur.
And since I focus on pet issues, I want to shine a light on the dogs of the military. There is a National K9s Veteran’s Day on March 13, too. But here’s an excerpt from my book DOG LIFE to shine a light on military dogs through the ages.
Have your pets ever choked on something they chew? Shadow-Pup loves to chew up inedible objects, no matter how much we supervise. Learn how to administer the pet Heimlich to save a life!
When Karma-Kat came to live with us, that put lots of cat toys within Magical-Dawg’s reach. Seren had never been too keen on such things and she was already nine years old when Magic came as a puppy. He loved to swipe Seren’s “sparkle-balls” and ended up with sparkly poop. Once Karma’s toys added to the kitty quotient, the big ol’ dog had a field day seeing how many cat toys he could stuff into his jaws.
Bravo played with rocks. And the new puppy Shadow loves to chew sticks. He’s already got one caught in the roof of his mouth. That’s the perfect opportunity for choking, and a need for the pet Heimlich. I hope that we’ll never need it, though. In case you do, read on!
Do you have a dog fence? Magical-Dawg used to take off after “critters” every so often, racing around the 13-acre spread (or beyond). We eventually trained him to stay with us, even when off-leash. It would have devastated me if Magic disappeared. He was microchipped, but folks would need to catch him first.
Bravo was a very different dog. He was so good off-leash during most morning rambles and didn’t want to go too far away from us. He’d chase and play with his “big-ball” in the field, and baptize every tree and grass tussock. And once he lost his leg, he couldn’t get out the back fenced area even if he’d wanted to.
Shadow-Pup, though, takes after Magical-Dawg. He’s so small, not even the fenced back area keeps him contained. He also likes to dig, so we needed to address possible escapes. A fence is a dog’s best friend!
How do you stop a cat fight? And how do you know if the cat fighting turns serious—rather than just kitten play? Shadow-Pup thinks it’s great fun to chase and wrestle with Karma-Kat. We supervise, of course, and interrupt the play should one or the other object.
There are many kinds of cat aggression, and many are perfectly normal behaviors. Certainly, it’s not fair to you or the cats to allow cats to fight. Learn how to recognize the potential and reasons behind cat aggression and fighting cats, and what you can do.
A dog vomits more easily than nearly any other creature. So why in the world would a pet parent want to make pets vomit? When dogs or cats eat the wrong thing that could cause harm, you can save your pets’ lives by inducing vomiting.
Pets vomit for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it’s because of illness, while other times the dog vomiting or cat hairball upchuck is more innocuous. Some pets eat grass to induce vomiting, or they get into dangerous candy that makes them sick. However, sometimes making pets vomit means life or death. That means you need to know how to make pets vomit.
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