10 resolutions your pets will welcome in 2022. We’ve had a challenging two years so let’s keep these light! A common thread runs through our resolutions -our ability to break them. Each one of us has too many years and broken resolutions to count. In January each year we’re going to eat right, exercise and break bad habits. Come December you’re regretting breaking every promise made to yourself.
You’ll want to keep these because no one wants to face those big brown eyes for promises broken.
10 easy resolutions for your Body, Mind and Soul
Walk your dog
Walk your dog yourself, everyday. No “if’s, and’s or but’s.” Your dogs primary walk, morning or evening, should be with a member of the family. If dogs are family and we’re now pet parents, don’t outsource the most vital activity in your dogs life. It’ll keep you in the know of dietary problems or even potential kidney disorders. Dog walkers and house help may not be as aware as you are and pay close attention to your dog out on a toilet break. It may sound trivial but knowing your dogs bowels and kidneys are being properly evacuated is the difference between having a healthy pet and loosing one to a kidney disorder.
Feed them real food
Food out of a package is filler. Human or animal, real food comes from the earth, picked, cleaned, cooked and served by human beings, not assembly lines. Choose local food sources for you and your pets. When you choose local you support your community and lower your carbon footprint. If we are what we eat, then eat healthy. Simple sustainable foods will do for your pets health than all the perfectly measured and balanced packaged food in the world!
Exercise
Never to be confused with a walk. The daily (multiple times if you live in a high rise in a city) walk is pretty much a toilet break. Walk time is bladder and bowel emptying time. Exercise involves play time. Running, chasing and expending energy. Especially for dogs in urban spaces who spend limited time outdoors. Expend their excess energy, and get in some unintended, but well deserved exercise for yourself!
Play
Especially for indoor cats, be sure to set up a play area, big or small. Mental stimulation is key to a well adjusted cat. It will reduce anxiety, give them a purpose and keep them occupied when you are away or at work.
Take them Online
Online classes are here to stay. Resolve to sign up for a class, and if Covid has one positive outcome is that it has humanized us to our colleagues extended communities. Dogs and cats or any pet causally strolling across our screens during meetings, classes and discussions break the ice. They infuse humour and surprisingly bring the unlikeliest people together. Make your pet a part of your daily exercise routine. Yeah, maybe you will not get as much activity done when you begin, but once you establish a routine, you’ll be surprised how quick our cats and dogs are ready to attend class.
Socialising
Socialising is a skill. Animals and people are not born with innate skills to function in society. For our pets it is so important to begin young and be consistent. Cats and dogs are family, so pet parents must be responsible for their good behaviour. Animals are not little people, they are a distinct species. Allow them to display species appropriate behaviours while staying in the guide lines of social constraints.
Volunteer
You ask why volunteer when I have a pet? You’ll appreciate them more while helping their distant cousins. Volunteering is a liberating experience, and the best teacher of animal behaviour. Shelter cats and dogs will give you more insight and hands on experience than all the books and You Tube videos in the world! You’ll realise how blessed you and your pets are, it strengthens your relationship immensely.
Civic sense
Pick up after your dog, do yourself and the city a favour. Civic sense is a courtesy we as pet families owe our friends and neighbours. Even if you are dog or cat person stepping in poo is not pleasant! Please be considerate and leave no trace of your dog’s daily poo trails. When we become civic minded pet owners, we extend a kinder world to homeless animals. Of course, it’s impossible to run behind stray and community animals and pick up after them, but we can reduce the poo burden by picking up after our pets.
Cleaning crew of municiplalietis of any city in the world, are the cities silent heroes. Without our sweepers, garbage collectors, in the case of India rag pickers, we’d be living under mountains of waste. Let’s resolve to make their lives a little easier.
Groom
Think of how pretty you feel when you’re all groomed and well put together! The act of grooming for animal societies is a bonding and nurturing activity. It’s not all about the pretty. When you bring a pet into your family, your become the clan, the pride, the group. You are a member of the pack and grooming is a ritual to bring your pack closer together. Cats and dogs pets who will welcome grooming if done right and introduced when they are young.
Mental health
Mental health for us and our pets has taken center stage over the past two years. Of the 10 New year Resolutions your pets will welcome- attention to mental health is probably the most beneficial for both of you. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to ask for help. Your Mind, like any part of the body must be nurtured and fed with the same dedication we show to our physical bodies. A healthy mind translates to a healthy body- pet or person.
These are easy to follow 10 new years resolutions your pets will welcome. They’re stress busters, mood enhancers and time with your four legged companions. Come back and thank us when we head into 2023! Leave 2021 behind, with all its uncertainty and Covid disruptions. We know 2022 will not be free of hiccups, maybe more of them, but the human spirit, bolstered by our faithful pets presses on.
