🐶 💞 Hero Dog Rescues Owner

🫶 Dog Learns Sign Language for Mom

🐾 Dog Finds Help for His Fallen Owner

🌺 Which Plants are Toxic to Pets?

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Dog Learns Sign Language for Mom
 

• Rhett and his mom are both deaf, making them a perfect match for one another.

• Rhett is very receptive to his mom’s sign language, and he didn’t know what to think when his mom became pregnant with her daughter.

• His mom would sign “baby” and point to her stomach, and he finally put two and two together when she came home with his new baby sister.

• Now, he’s an absolute star of a big brother, and treats his sister with the same love and respect that he shows his mom.

How in the world?…
Dog Spotted Atop Pyramid of Giza

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Dog Finds Help for Fallen Owner

• An 84-year-old Washington man was letting his dog outside when he started to feel dizzy and fell over.

• His dog stayed by his owner for hours, until the man asked his dog to “go get help.”

• The dog ran out to the road and stood in front of a sheriff’s car and wouldn’t move.

• She wouldn’t listen to the sheriff’s urges to move on and go home. She just looked at the officer, then looked back at her driveway, and repeated.

• She knew what she was doing, and she truly saved her owner’s life.

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Rescue Cat Lives a Full Life with One Eye

Are Your Houseplants Pet-Safe?
^{The Guide You’ve Always Wanted}

 
Few things can brighten up your home or apartment more than a beautiful bouquet of flowers or an eye-catching plant. It’s a joy to tend plants and enjoy the life they bring to your home.

That is, until your dog or cat starts sniffing around them.

That first, fateful CHOMP into your new plant causes a panic, prompting you to quickly get the plant out of your pet’s reach then furiously Googling whether or not that plant is toxic.

That’s when you realize that you know absolutely nothing about plants, all of their varieties, or even how to start identifying the subspecies of plants you have.

Sound familiar? 

The reality is that you’re not going to find the answers you’re looking for on Google. It’s too complicated, and the subject is too vast. Thats’ why we tried to make an extremely simple guide on pet-plant toxicity.

Let’s get started.

Keep These Plants Away from Your Pets
^{(Toxic to Dogs & Cats)}

 
Our research found that plants that are toxic to dogs are typically harmful to cats as well, and vice versa. The following list contains the most common toxic plants, flowers, or native species that could enter your home in one way or another.

Note that the following plants are toxic when ingested, not necessarily if they’re just smelled. Further, a pet likely has to ingest a substantial amount rather than just chew on it without actually eating it. Still, chewing could pose risks.

Top 15 Toxic Plants

Which Common Plants are Safe?

 
Here are the plants that you can safely keep around your pets.

General Rules to Remember

 
Even with the list above, it’s easy to confuse things unless you’re a plant expert. There are roughly 400,000 species of plants, many of which might find their way into your local shops, your back yard, and ultimately your home.

1. 10 to 30% of Plants are Potentially Toxic to Pets

That means up to 120,000 species of plants could be dangerous. No matter if you’re a veterinarian, plant expert, dog expert, cat expert, or even a super-genius with photographic memory, you don’t have the ability to identify every pet-toxic plant.

This means you should take a cautious approach to all unfamiliar plants, because you never know. It can help to know which plant families are generally toxic to pets. Here’s a list of those:

2. Use a Plant Identification App

All of the confusion and worry can go away if you’re confident about the plant in your home. There are apps that can identify every species of plant, giving you the information you need to figure out whether or not it’s safe for pets.

This article goes through the best current plant-identification apps that you can download. Many are free to use. If they’re not free, odds are that you can get a free trial, then just delete the account after you’ve identified the plant in question.

Our suggestion is to find the best one for you, use a free trial, then delete the account after the plants in your house have been identified.

3. If You’re Unsure, Keep Plants High Up

The silver lining to all of this is that the vast majority of plants are not toxic so long as your pet doesn’t eat them. Find spots in your home that are inaccessible to your pets and keep plants there.

This is limiting when it comes to interior design, but it’s worth it when it safeguards your pet’s health.

4. Essential Oils are Not Safe for Pets

Essential oils are highly concentrated extracts that condense plant compounds into small bottles. This makes them very difficult for pets to digest safely, and they’re toxic in most cases.

Even if a plant is safe for your pet to eat, the essential oil of that plant is likely dangerous because it’s exponentially stronger than a simple plant might be.

^{_{The Tail Wag Tribune}}
This Week’s Key Pet News

Hero Saves 3 Dogs from Lava Tube in Hawaii

Kawika Singson has appeared in our newsletter before. A few months ago he repelled deep into a lava tube to rescue a stranded dog. He repeated this feat again last week, except this time he pulled three dogs out of a deep lava pit. 

Emotional Support Dog Found After Lost for 3 Months

A Wisconsin woman is back with her emotional support dog, Riley, after her pet went missing for 85 days — a terrifying amount of time for any pet to be lost. After tirelessly looking for months, the woman received a fateful call that Riley had been found safely.

Golden Retriever in Marching Band Steals The Show

A college woman with POTS joined the marching band with her service dog, Winnie, in tow. She said “I’m part of the marching band, so Winnie is too.” Rather than causing problems to the band, Winnie has incorporated seamlessly and has become an absolute hit among spectators.