Are you welcoming a new pet to your home? Sharing your home with a pet offers numerous benefits. It provides you with company, brings more love and comfort to your space, and adds a bit of liveliness. Welcoming a new animal member to your family creates a monumental moment in your life. However, as with any scenario of taking care of a pet, introducing a pet to a new space comes with challenges and heightened responsibilities (For more info on pet care – www.thepetfreak.com). Here is how to help your new pets feel more at home and optimize the success of their move.
Establish Consistency
For both pets and humans, any major changes create a huge life shift. Disrupting normalcy increases anxieties and, for many, heightens discomfort. When introducing a new pet to your home, establishing consistency in their routine mitigates the overwhelming feeling of change. It helps them solidify normalcy in the chaos.
Establishing consistency also involves creating solidified designated zones. Creating a set feeding spot, bathroom location, and sleeping area helps them get familiar with their new home, speeding up their adjustment period. Minimizing additional changes to your newest family member’s life ensures you don’t overwhelm them and introduce them to a new normal that they’ll love.
Create a Private Pet Space
Fight and flight responses also affect animals. These natural instincts kick in during emotionally intense scenarios and when panic surges. Moving to a new home might cause your new pet to embody aggressive or flighty personalities due to their fight-or-flight urges. Creating a private pet area gives your pet an isolated, safe space.
There are many reasons why you should have a pet room in your home (which you can learn more about in this blog). One of the benefits is that they ease adjustments and anxieties. A private space allows your pet to hide, avoid conflicts, and enjoy a space that they control. When they know they have a safe space to escape to when things get overwhelming, your pet will slowly gain confidence, relaxing throughout the rest of your home.
Maximize Home Comforts
Comforts come in numerous forms, from tasty snacks to cozy blankets. Maximizing home comforts gives your new pet lots to enjoy and various ways to ease the anxieties and stress. Popular pet comforts include a padded bed and a range of soothing sensory attributes, like scents and chew or scratch toys.
Like curling up with a warm cup of chamomile tea, indulging in comfort soothes anxieties and overwhelming feelings, making room for calmness and joy. Offering multiple comforts for your pet shows that they are welcomed and helps put them at ease.
No matter how you help your new pet feel at home, as long as you cater to their needs, make them feel safe, and show them love, they’ll warm up easily. Welcoming your new pet will come with challenges. However, between implementing consistency and optimizing home comforts, you’ll provide plenty of reasons for your new pet to feel happy and at home.