Holiday noise annoys

Halloween night can be a nightmare for your pet.

The doorbell keeps ringing, strange people chant “trick or treat,” and chocolate candy is enticingly close by, sometimes unattended.

“Halloween can be scary for dogs – people in weird costumes – so consider shutting your pets in another room until your family members are back to normal,” says Amy Shaver, assistant director of the Humane Society of Clarksville-Montgomery County in Tennessee. “Dogs that are frightened or unsure might piddle on the floor, cower, shake or some may even bite.”

Shelters typically see a spike in runaways or reports of missing dogs and cats on Halloween, the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve, all times when scary or loud noises are traditional to the celebration, says Julie Bank, spokeswoman for the Maricopa County Animal Care and Control in Arizona.

Pets like routine, and Halloween is far from routine.

Norma Purviance of Cunningham, Tenn., shares a tale of woe she saw firsthand a few years ago.

“As I was trick-or-treating with my children, a lady answered the door at the house next door to the one we were at. The child had one of those flashlights that make spooky noises, which frightened the owner’s dog,” she says. The dog “rushed out and began barking at the child, and when the owner tried to catch him, he ran into the roadway where he was promptly hit by a car.”

The dog didn’t die, but it did have to be rushed to the veterinarian. Purviance says the dog’s owner had a crate just inside the front door. If she had used it, she would have prevented the trauma.

Bags of chocolate candy, the most popular kind bought at Halloween, can be tempting to pets with a sweet tooth. Most often, dogs will be the ones who scarf down the M&Ms. And the theobromine, a stimulant, in chocolate can be toxic or even fatal to dogs and cats depending on how much they eat. A couple of Hershey’s Kisses won’t be a problem, but a bag can mean an emergency trip to the vet.

Sometimes even your own kids’ outfits may be too realistic for your dog or cat, says police Officer Marcy Kuehn of Port Huron, Mich.

“Be careful around pets because they may not recognize you in your scary costume,” she says.