Protect Your Pets During July's National Loss Prevention Month

Founded in 2014, Pet Hub is an innovative company that offers an external ID tag which comes with a solid support package, that in case your cat or dog got lost, would help in reuniting you with your pet. One thing the company does is send an alert to all the shelters within 50 miles if your pet goes missing. 

Their tagline is “modern pet identification”. It’s more than just a tag!

Mom and I studied their website and we highly recommend you visit them as they post wonderful resources for pet parents about PREVENTATIVE actions you can take to prevent your pet from getting lost to start with!

The reason that July is the chosen month for loss prevention is because there is a 30% increase of lost pets during the July 4th holiday time period over any other time of the year. The fireworks and festivities often make pets scared and they can bolt out an open door or window to hide somewhere.

Or you have guests who inadvertently leave the door open and a curious pet gets out.

Consider these terrible statistics that have been reported:

• 1 in 3 pets will get lost during its lifetime.

• 10 million pets are lost every year.

• A family pet is lost every 2 seconds in North America.

The word PREVENTATIVE always makes our ears perk up!

How does the saying go, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!

Mom has always been proactive and tries to prevent disasters before they happen with us, because the costs are high both emotionally as well as financially. Believe me, Beau, Bouvier and I do not want to get lost either because we have it too good here!

However, full disclaimer, Pet Hub’s focus is very dog centric even though they do mention cats from time to time in their various blogs and posts.

We are used to that being the case, but we still found very useful information in their resources that applies to both canines and felines!

Here are a few things you can do to keep your animals safe at home:

• All pets need to have an external ID collar, which goes without saying for dogs. However as indoor cats, we do not regularly need a collar except for when we would walk outside on a leash or go on a trip with mom.

• Back up for a second, the first line of defense is to microchip your cat or dog, in case something happens to that collar. In the case of cats, their collars need to be “break-away” in case of accidental strangulation from jumping and catching the collar on a branch or similar object and hanging to death. Yikes!

• Make sure your home is well-secured! We just talked about warm weather and open windows in last week’s blog. When you give a party, or you know there will be a lot of noise such as fireworks or loud music, please put us in a quiet room away from the party with a bed, toys, a treat and access to a litter pan. We will be much happier! 

• Making sure your home is well-secured includes having cameras inside and outside for a few reasons – your safety and your pets. You may not have thought about how an outside camera can help you get on your pet’s trail if they slipped outside, showing you in which direction they wandered.

• Us cats can get spooked and run off if we feel threatened while we are sitting outside in the garden and we can get lost if we decided to take a stroll around town. So what is the preventative measure? Don’t let us outside unless we are at the end of a leash and harness or inside a catio in the backyard.

Every day mom sees posts on Next Door for lost cats and dogs in our neighborhood and surrounding areas. In the case of the cats, many post how their cat hasn’t come home in a couple days or worse a few weeks, and mom always shouts “why the heck do you let them free-roam outside to begin with?”.

That is why mom is a proponent of taking preventative measures – not reactive measures.

Mom says she is going to order tags for us from Pet Hub because she likes what they offer in terms of support!

As always, our recommendations are based on our opinions only and we are not compensated for this post.