Real Christmas trees??

[MonkeyTennis34]

Considering getting a real one this year, we have a Lab who may well try and take a bite!

Are the pines safe?

Well, the resin won't taste very nice so I would expect even a lab to want any more after the first nibble...

Drinking the water I understand isn't good (I think it tastes slightly sweet due to sap). But I've always had real trees and real dogs and it's never affected them if they do drink it. But try and make it so they can't. I've never had a dog try and eat the tree though.

I was always more worried my boys would want to pee on it. They never have!

I used to worry that we were installing an indoors urinal, but fortunately DDog ignores it.

The main safety point is to have no smashable baubles within range of the dog's mouth (until you know whether they're likely to take a chomp of these interesting things at nose height).

And of course to make sure that if any pressies that would otherwise go under the tree contain chocolate or raisins (many cakes or anything with mincemeat) they are stacked somewhere else well out of reach.

When I was a child we had a boxer who ate all the chocolate decorations in the night - foil as well. He suffered no ill effects but we were a bit sad.

We had real trees with dogs for 20 years with no problems whatsoever. Last year, in a total fluke, our newly adopted rescue cocker somehow managed to get one of the needles embedded in her flank - she must have rolled on it at just the right angle on the day I was taking the tree down. That needle travelled deep, and is now genuinely the most expensive thing we own apart from our house and car - countless vet trips, major surgery to try (unsuccessfully) to locate it, an exploding abscess in the middle of the night (which was when it actually came out), CT scans and another major surgery at the vet hospital to remove the entire area because the needle had left deep-seated pockets of infection and inflammation with tracts draining out of her side, major complications with healing, a massive draining seroma that took nearly a month to resolve....thank fuck for PetPlan because the entire debacle cost upwards of £6,000 and our poor dog was on limited lead-only exercise for six months. We have bought an artificial tree this year!!

We always have a real tree and dog has never been remotely interested.

Echo, no baubles within easy reach, and no chocolate or candy canes. My two labs are always more interested in what’s under the tree though, and have been known to sneak a peek before Christmas Day.