What Does It Mean to Be a Responsible Pet Parent?
What does it mean to be a responsible pet parent? Does it mean that our duties go beyond just giving love and affection. Absolutely! Anyone can be a pet OWNER, but it takes specific knowledge and skills to be a pet PARENT.
We must provide our pets with the 5 Freedoms:
Freedom from hunger or thirst.
Freedom from pain, injury and disease.
Freedom from discomfort
Freedom from fear and distress.
Freedom to express normal species behavior.
Now some of you are, saying “ I provide my pet with food water, veterinary care and a warm comfortable home”. That’s great! You are already off to an amazing start! But we can do more. To be a true responsible pet parent we must provide our pets, at minimum the 5 freedoms. Providing your pet with outlets to express normal species behavior is, you guessed it by implementing ENRICHMENT. Environmental enrichment is allowing your pet to explore their surroundings at their own pace, gives them the opportunity to gather information about their environment, and therefore increasing brain activity and mental well-being (exploratory time in the yard, sniff walk, or a dig box, catios for cats, added shelving for climbing, cat tv, cat friendly plants: mint, parsley, and cat grass). Implementing enriching toys, and training these are examples of mental enrichment and allows your pet the freedom to express normal species behavior. Freedom from fear or distress. Now, freedom from fear and distress can be tricky one as we can’t protect our pets from everything that may cause them fear and distress, but we can try. By learning their body language so we can interpret when they are uncomfortable, or fearful and change the context. We can provide our pets with flexibility, patience and changing our mindset. Our pets don’t know how to speak English, they don’t understand human concepts and rules. It is up to us to teach them these things through a language that they understand and not instill fear and distress.
The 5 freedoms are not an absolute, or of a guideline, but if you can accomplish the 5 freedoms for your pet, then you can honestly call yourself, one of the best pet parents on the plant!
