Living Happily with Your Pet
~ Pet
Behavior Library ~
If you're lucky enough to share your
life with a pet, you already know that the relationship
requires commitment and perseverance. Surely you
remember when you last came home to a chewed up pair of
slippers (or worse!), a litter box accident, or an
eerily quiet house thanks to your dog's "Hairy Houdini"
escape act.
Pets provide us with unconditional
love and companionship, and even lower our blood
pressure. But sometimes they can make our blood boil
when they act like, well, animals. Sadly, for too many
animals exhibiting behaviors their caregivers can't deal
with, their fate is tragic: They are given up, or given
up on.
Behavior problems top the list of
reasons for pet relinquishment. Thousands of other pets
are given up because of lifestyle changes or human
health issues. Still others are given up because their
caregivers couldn't find animal-friendly rental housing,
or because their owners simply had unrealistic
expectations about what it meant to care for a pet.
For all these reasons, Beartooth
Humane Alliance has compiled a collection of
informational sheets to help caregivers meet the many
challenges of pet ownership. Our goal: to lower the
number of animals relinquished to shelters—or otherwise
given up on—because of breaks in the human-animal bond.
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