How Your Kids Can Do More to Look After Their Pets

It’s no secret that pets bring a lot of joy into children’s lives. Dogs, cats, and other pets firmly establish themselves as household members and often enjoy playing with kids. As a parent, you also enjoy the company of your canine or feline friends at home.

The trouble is, while kids want to have pets, many children seldom play an active role in looking after their furry friends. Ultimately, the responsibility for each pet’s upkeep falls on your shoulders as the parent and head of the household.

Wouldn’t it be great if your children could play an active role in the health and welfare of your pets, leaving you more time to spend elsewhere? The good news is you can make that happen! Check out these inspirational tips to help you get started:

Lead by Example

You already know that your children are like educational sponges, soaking up all kinds of information in their young lives. As a responsible adult, you’ve undoubtedly taught your kids all sorts of topics, like knowing the difference between right and wrong.

One excellent method for teaching your children how to look after their pets is to lead by example. In a nutshell, that means showing your kids how you lavish love and affection at your pets and how you do things like clear up after the dog when they take a toilet break.

The more your children observe what you do with the family pets, the more inclined they will feel to mimic your actions and help out without getting asked. It sounds like an impossible goal, but it does happen quite often!

Teach Your Kids About Your Pet’s Eating Habits

You can also get your children to be more responsible for their pets by teaching them how and when to feed their pets. For example, you can demonstrate how many meals your pets eat, the times they have their meals, and how much food they should consume.

On the subject of food, you should also teach children about healthy eating habits for pets. If you look at Freshpet dog food reviews, for instance, you’ll notice those foods have lots of nutritional value for dogs, whereas feeding a pet dog some human snacks isn’t a good idea.

When you teach your children how to feed their pets, you should demonstrate how you measure food quantities and store their food away correctly. What you don’t want to happen is for your pet to overeat because someone left their food container open by mistake!

Create a Pet Timetable

Lastly, another effective way to have your kids do more to help with pet care is by creating a pet timetable. That way, you can allocate tasks to each child on different days and ensure an even and fair distribution of work.

You can motivate your children further by giving them stickers once they’ve completed specific tasks like taking the dog for a walk or cleaning the cat’s litter tray.