Celebrate Easter with your dog

Easter is just around the corner, a time of cheerfulness, celebrating new life, and of course enjoying the first warm rays of spring. For us dog lovers, there is nothing more fun than sharing these special moments with our sweet dogs. In this article I give you tips on how to celebrate Easter with your dog in a fun and safe way.

Fun Easter activities with your dog

Easter egg Hunt

Hide special dog-friendly treats or toys in your garden or home and let your dog find them. Sniffing reduces stress for dogs and provides lots of fun.

Make and play with tug toys

Make a long braid from three strips of fleece fabric in soft colors with a knot at each end. Braid relatively loosely to get a flexible braid, or tight to get a stiff braid. My dogs prefer a more flexible tug toy. Now invite your dog to play tug by holding one end and dragging the other back and forth on the ground. As soon as your dog grabs that end, you can start playing together. Feel free to let your dog win sometime! When you’re done playing, you can end the game by spreading a few treats on the floor for your dog to find and eat. In the meantime, you put the tug toy away.

Photoshoot

Have an Easter-themed photo session with your dog. Use safe, dog-friendly props to capture a beautiful memory.

Creative Easter snacks and games

Dog-friendly Easter eggs

Color already boiled and peeled eggs with dog-friendly natural dyes, such as beets, spinach, and blueberry juice.
Add about 1.5-2 cups of the chosen food to about 500ml of water, and boil over low heat for about half an hour. Then strain the mixture to remove any fruit/vegetables and add a tablespoon of vinegar to the coloring liquid. Now place the peeled hard-boiled eggs in the liquid, so that they are completely submerged. Now put the whole in the refrigerator overnight, and then you have cool colored eggs for your dog!

Refreshing Easter snacks

Use silicone Easter molds to make tasty and cooling snacks from, for example, gelatin and puree of your dog’s favorite vegetables or fruit. I will also dedicate a blog post to this soon!

Safety tips for a carefree Easter

Be careful with chocolate and sweeteners

Chocolate is toxic to dogs and sweeteners such as xylitol can cause serious health problems. Make sure these treats are out of reach of your dog. Xylitol, for example, is contained in many ‘zero’ products, so make sure these types of edibles remain high on the Easter breakfast table!

Decorations and small objects

Be careful with Easter decorations such as plastic grass, small Easter eggs, and other small objects that your dog can swallow. For example, don’t leave your dog unattended in a decorated area if you know he or she will grab such decorations to play with them. Common sense of course, but still!

Easter plants

Some typical Easter plants, such as lilies, are poisonous to dogs. Make sure these plants are out of reach of your four-legged friend. These flowers are completely poisonous to cats! So it’s even better to just not bring them into your home at all if you have pets. Better safe than sorry!