Thanksgiving Guests and a Dog Who Hates a Full House

Some dogs love Thanksgiving. They work the room, collect scraps from three different people and fall asleep under the table by four o'clock. Other dogs spend the whole afternoon panting behind the couch while the doorbell goes off for the ninth time. If yours is the second kind, he does not have to sit through it.

Most holiday advice for dog owners is written for people leaving town. This is for the ones staying home and hosting — twenty people, a hot kitchen, other people's kids, and a dog who did not agree to any of it.

Twenty people in the house is a lot to ask

A dog who is fine with your family is not automatically fine with your family plus your sister's family plus the neighbors. What changes is not just noise. It is the door opening every few minutes, food at nose height on every surface, people leaning over him to say hello, and nowhere in the house that smells or sounds normal.

If the right-hand column is your dog, the honest options are a closed bedroom with a chew and a white-noise machine, or a day somewhere with a different job to do. Plenty of dogs do perfectly well in the bedroom. If yours does, keep your $35 and skip the rest of this.

A dog who hides all afternoon is not being rude. He is telling you the party is too much.

If he stays home, give him a room and a rule

Staying home is a real answer, not a fallback. It just has to be set up before the first guest arrives, not improvised at two o'clock when he is already over threshold.

Daycare on the day itself

Daycare and boarding both run out of Ronkonkoma, at 835 Portion Rd. Our East Northport salon on Laurel Road is grooming only, Tuesday to Saturday — so if you are coming from Huntington, East Northport, Commack or Greenlawn, Ronkonkoma is the location you want.

One way to do it: drop off in the morning before the cooking starts, pick up in the early evening once the crowd has thinned and the food is put away. He comes home tired, walks into a quiet house, and eats his own dinner instead of half a plate of stuffing.

Two practical notes. Prices are before 8.75% sales tax. And pickup after 7pm is $5 per 15 minutes, which matters on a day when you are not the one deciding when dessert ends — build in a buffer, or send someone else to collect him.

Do it more than once a year and the passes are cheaper per day — $162.50 for five, $300 for ten, $550 for twenty, no expiration. They are non-refundable, so buy the small one first.

Boarding across the long weekend

If guests are staying over and the house is loud from Wednesday to Sunday, one daycare day is the wrong shape. Boarding is $60 a night for a regular 4x4 private kennel and $75 for a premium 4x6, and every night includes full-day daycare at no extra charge — so a boarded dog is not sitting in a kennel all day.

Check-in runs 2:00pm to 7:00pm and check-out 7:00am to 11:00am, so a Thursday-morning drop-off is a daycare drop-off, not a boarding one. Meals go out at 8am, 1pm and 6pm, with custom schedules for puppies, seniors or a medical diet. Bring his own food, or we provide it at $5 a day. Medication needed outside 7am to 10pm is the one thing we cannot always cover — raise it early.

Boarding is not right for every dog. To stay, a dog needs to be non-aggressive, comfortable in a kennel, able to socialize and free from any bite history. If that is not yours, a daycare day or a quiet room at home is the better plan — and we would rather say so now than at check-in.

Counter surfing, bones and the foods that cause the emergency

Whether he stays home or not, this part is the same. Thanksgiving puts a lot of dangerous food within a dog's reach, and much of it is handed over by a well-meaning guest who has no idea.

• Cooked turkey bones. They splinter. Get the carcass into a bin he cannot open, not the trash bag by the back door.
• Trussing string and netting. It smells like turkey and can cause a blockage. Same for skewers and roasting-bag ties.
• Onion, garlic, leeks and shallots. Toxic to dogs, and they are in the stuffing, the gravy and most sides — which is why a small plate of leftovers is not harmless.
• Grapes and raisins. Hiding in stuffing, salads and desserts, and capable of causing kidney failure.
• Fatty skin, drippings and gravy. A rich, greasy load can bring on pancreatitis, usually showing up the next day.
• Chocolate, xylitol or birch sugar. Check the label on sugar-free pies and whipped toppings.
• Raw bread dough and alcohol. Both dangerous. Unattended wine glasses at dog height are a real thing.

If he eats something on this list, call your veterinarian or an emergency animal hospital straight away and tell them what and roughly how much. Do not wait to see how he does, and do not make him vomit unless a vet tells you to. We are groomers — anything medical belongs with your vet.

Prevention is a sentence, not a strategy: tell guests at the door that he has already been fed and gets nothing from the table. Then leave a bowl of dog-safe treats out, so the ones who cannot help themselves have something harmless to hand over.

What to sort out before the holiday week

We cannot tell you how busy any particular date will be, and we will not pretend otherwise. What we can tell you is what has to be settled in advance — none of which is a good thing to be figuring out on Thanksgiving morning.

Questions people actually ask