Ice Melt is on the mind of many Americans at the moment with cold weather causing all sorts of problems and our driveways and walkways are filling up with snow and ice. The ingredients of ice melt usually contain one or more salt types including sodium chloride, potassium chloride, calcium chloride or magnesium chloride.
These can be irritating to a pet’s paws but more importantly when they clean themselves, they can end up ingesting it and that can be more serious. If your pet has any open wounds be very careful, the last thing you want is to aggravate an already painful experience.
Stomach upsets are the most common results and that can be bad enough but certain of the chemicals like calcium chloride can cause ulcers in the mouth. So here are some tips to reduce the possibility of pain for your pets and cleaning up for you:
- Clean your pet’s paws as soon as you can. This will remove much of the salts and the possibility of them getting eaten.
- Watch your dogs carefully as you are outside and make sure they don’t eat any of the ice melt, treated snow or the slush.
