[Dailydrool] Article on Christmas tree safety for dogs

[Sylvie McGee]

This is a link to a nice article on increasing safety of Christmas trees in
homes with pets - both dogs and cats. 

http://www.petplace.com/dogs/10-steps-for-a-dog-safe-holiday-tree/page1.aspx
?utm_source=dogcrazynews001et&utm_medium=email&utm_content=petplace_article&
utm_campaign=dailynewsletter

And of course, what a great opening for the annual ritual of stories about
interesting things our dogs have done with our trees. I'll start with a
non-Basset story....

Bear and Shy were Shepherd and Afghan mixes of some sort who shared my life
some years ago. As a social worker working in homeless shelters, I was
pretty short of funds most of the time. So when Christmas came, I combined
trimming the tree with entertaining. I threw an annual cookie-decorating
party at which friends would come over and decorate sugar cookies that I had
pre-baked in all sorts of Christmas and animal shapes. Each cookie had a
hole in it, and the best cookies would be hung on the tree as decorations.
However, since the fun of this was largely in the party and friends'
company, I never shellacked (sp?) or tried to preserve the cookies in any
way....

For several years, this went very well. Then one year, I think the girls
(Bear and Shy) decided they had had enough. I came down the morning after
the party, made coffee, plugged the tree in and sat down to enjoy the lights
twinkling. That's when I realized that the bottom half of the tree was
curiously empty of cookies! It was as if the girls had drawn a neat line all
the way around the tree about half-way up, and had systematically eaten all
the cookies under that line. Of course, that line was about the height of
their upturned noses! 

That's when I noticed that scattered on the floor around the tree was not a
single crumb, but a nice assortment of those little metal hooks that the
cookies had been hanging from.

The girls slept very soundly all day. And I went to the dollar store for
some inexpensive ornaments!

Sylvie McGee
HeavenScent Bassets
SPDR Basset Pack
sylviemcgee at comcast.net