Halloween can be a traumatic and even dangerous time for your pet. Here are a few common sense tips to protect your pet on Halloween:

€ Keep your pet away from the front door. Keeping your pet in a separate room during the trick-or-treating hours is best. At an open door, dogs in particular, may feel the need to “protect their home and humans” and may bite your bizarre-looking visitors. Your pet may also become frightened and dart out through the open door.

€ Don't leave your pet out in the yard (front or back) on Halloween. There are plenty of stories of vicious pranksters who have teased, injured, stolen, even killed pets on this night and the days before Halloween.

€ Trick-or-treat candies are not for pets. Chocolate is poisonous to many animals, and tin foil and cellophane candy wrappers can be hazardous if swallowed.

€ Be careful of pets around candles and lit pumpkins. These may be easily knocked over and cause a fire. Curious kittens especially run the risk of getting badly burned.

€ Don't dress your pet in a costume unless you know he loves it. This may put added stress on the animal. If you do dress up your dog, make sure the costume isn't constricting, annoying or unsafe. Be careful not to obstruct his vision, even the gentlest dog can get snappy when he can't see what's going on around him.

€ Finally, some humane organizations fear that certain pets, primarily black cats, are at risk of becoming unwilling participants in the darker side of Halloween activities and elect to halt adoptions of these animals until after the holiday. For safety reasons, owners of all pets, particularly black cats, should keep their pets in the house around Halloween.

Remember that your pets are depending on you to keep them safe from the more dangerous goblins and ghouls that this holiday brings out.

In other news:

Another plea for help with cats.

I have been contacted by a number of people who are helping various feral cat colonies by feeding them and laying out their own money to get them spayed or neutered. I want to remind readers that injuring such cats, including suddenly starving them or trapping them (unless done under the auspices of the SPCA or other rescue organization for the purpose of spay/neuter) is against the law.

These compassionate citizens need others to pitch in with donations to take the burden off of so few. It costs $25 to neuter a male cat and $45 to spay a female cat at the new clinic.

Judy Vorreuter is the founder and director of Animal Advocates of the Finger Lakes. Contact her at judy@cayugaanimaladvocates.org