When you have a dog and you have a fence around your yard, you should take some extra precautions to make sure your dog doesn't get hurt on the fence. While a fence can be a great way for you to make sure you are able to keep your dog from getting loose and running away, these fences also have the potential of causing injury if you aren't careful.

Here are some of the things you can do to make your fence safer for your dog:

Protect it around the bottom - Dogs can dig under the bottom of the fence and crawl under it. In most cases, the worst thing that happens is your dog gets lost, which is bad enough. However, in rare cases, a dog can get stuck between the ground and the fence as they are attempting to scoot under it. Or, they can get their collar caught on one of the bottom links if it's made of chain link, which can choke them.

One thing you can do to prevent this from happening is to have the fence installed so it goes into the ground about a half a foot or so. You can also pile heavy, large rocks all along the border of the fencing.

Put a breakaway collar on your dog - Your dog should be wearing a breakaway collar so it will break if they attempt to jump over the fence and end up getting stuck on one of the posts along the top of the fence and hang themselves. This actually happens more than you may imagine when a dog is wearing a choker collar or a regular canvas collar that won't give. Break away collars are designed to break apart if too much pressure is applied to them just for the sole purpose of preventing chokings such as these.

Have your dog's dew claws removed or keep them trimmed very short - A lot of dogs end up getting injured by having their dew claws getting caught in the linkage of chain link fences or even in the spaces of wooden fences or certain parts of wrought iron ones. You can prevent accidents like these from happening by having the dew claws removed completely, which is generally done when they are puppies, or by at least making sure the nails are kept as short as possible.

Check with places like Parkview Animal Hospital for more tips to protect your pets.

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