Articles

Dog Safety When Hiking With Your Dog: 3 Dangers Every Dog Owner Must Guard Against

Forest Dangers: If there is something most owners are aware of it’s that dogs love to explore. The perfect place to a dog is the natural woodlands and deep forests. Here in these areas dogs can adventure into nature and explore all their curiosities. Except for the fact that forest contain many mammals, and are great places for hunting and trapping to take place. And this presents a life-threatening danger to your dog if you are exploring terrain that should be off-limits.

In the northern part of the U.S. there are many traps set in the woodlands for the furry species to be captured. Many hunters in these areas set up traps with bait. These traps are also attractive to your dog. Many of these traps are placed in ditches where dogs love to roam. So needless to say can pose a serious danger to them.

Before going out to these areas be sure to know when hunting and trapping seasons are and also where the those areas would be located. It is important to know that even if you’re not in a hunting zone or even if it’s off-season there could still be the danger of poachers. To have an absolute piece of mind the best idea is to put an orange hunters vest around your dog’s torso so they’re easily seen and not targeted as a wild animal. These types of dog vests are available through certain suppliers.

Prairies Chasing: Many people do not consider a Prairie to be something to worry about when taking their dog out hiking. They are not aggressive creatures and are actually scared of most animals. But therein lies the problem. Dogs love to chase prairies!

While your dog is probably not going to chase a large animal like a deer or bison, it is very likely that he will run after one of these small Prairie animals and end up chasing him for miles at a time. There are many cases where some dogs began to chase a Prairie and never made it back. They either wound up getting lost due to running so far away (you better hope he runs into a friendly stranger who takes the time to look at his id tag), or the more likely scenario – they met their match with some larger hungry wild animal.

Foxtail Plants: When running through grassland areas the most commonly encountered danger is called the foxtail plant. This is a perennial weedy grass that is located in large fields and on some roadsides. It is slender shaped with long brushy spikes that contain seeds which will embed themselves into your dog's flesh. The most common area that dogs get these painful little spikes embedded is in between their toes. It is just like having barbed wire puncturing and stabbing through the skin. Each seed contains little barbs which point backwards. Because of this design, they slowly get pushed deeper and deeper into the body and can cause infection or lead up to more serious situations, such as organ failure.