The Nook

Short, practical guides for the things that go wrong after the box is opened.

Most pet-product problems are not product problems. The bed is fine; the cat has decided it is furniture. These are the four that come up most, and what actually helps.

Your pet is ignoring the new bed

This is the single most common one, and it is almost never the bed. A new bed smells like a factory and nothing else. To an animal that navigates by scent, it is a foreign object that has appeared in their territory.

• Put it where the old one was. Not where you would like the bed to go — that is a separate negotiation, and you will lose both at once.
• Make it smell right: an unwashed t-shirt of yours, or the old bed's cover, laid on top for the first week.
• Do not carry them to it. Feed treats on it, and let them arrive at the idea themselves.
• Give it two weeks before you conclude anything. Cats in particular tend to accept a bed all at once, after a stretch of ignoring it completely — so the first week tells you very little.

If they still will not use it after a month, it is the wrong bed — usually the wrong shape rather than the wrong size. A dog that sleeps stretched out will not settle in a donut, no matter how well it fits.

When to bin a chew toy

Nothing is indestructible, and the failure mode matters more than the lifespan. A toy that wears down evenly is fine. A toy that comes apart in pieces is the one to watch, because the pieces are the hazard — swallowed fragments and squeakers are a real and expensive vet visit.

• Bin it once a piece can be torn off whole, including the squeaker or any stitched-on limb.
• Bin it if the surface has gone sharp — hard plastic and nylon can split into an edge that cuts a gum.
• Rope toys: bin them when they start shedding long strands. Swallowed string is worse than swallowed rubber, not better.
• Check weekly rather than occasionally. A dedicated chewer can take a toy from fine to dangerous in one afternoon.

Nothing is chew-proof to a determined dog, and any product sold as such is overselling. Supervise the first session with anything new, and treat every toy as supervised if your dog is a gutter — the kind that opens a toy specifically to remove what is inside.

Brushing a coat that sheds heavily

Little and often beats one long session, for a simple reason: the long session is the one that hurts, and the one that hurts is the one they remember. Five minutes daily gets more hair out of the house than half an hour on Sunday.

• Work in the direction the coat lies, not against it. Against the grain is faster and it is why the dog leaves.
• Double coats need to reach the undercoat — a surface brush only moves the top layer around and leaves the mat forming underneath.
• Do not cut a mat out with scissors. Skin tents up into the mat and it is very easy to cut, which is a vet visit for a grooming problem.
• Many breeds shed far more heavily for a few weeks as the seasons turn, double coats especially. If that is what is happening, it is normal and it ends.

One thing that is worth a vet rather than a brush: sudden shedding out of season, bald patches, or skin that is red, flaky or being scratched raw. Those can be allergy, parasite or thyroid, and no amount of brushing fixes any of them.

The first trip in a carrier

Nearly every bad carrier experience follows the same pattern: the carrier only ever appears immediately before something the animal hates. Once the carrier means vet, the carrier itself becomes the problem.

• Leave it out, open, for a week or more before it is needed. It should be furniture before it is transport.
• Feed near it, then in it. Do not shut the door on the first day they go in.
• First trip: five minutes in the car, and come home. Nowhere. That is the whole exercise.
• Cover a cat carrier with a towel in the car. Less to look at is much less to panic about.

If it is already ruined — the carrier comes out, the cat vanishes — you can reset it, but it takes a few weeks of the carrier being present and meaning nothing at all.

Quick answers