How can we protect the animals in winter

Winter is coming and its hard for stray animals to survive the cold weather.

Lack of food and no proper shelter can make their survival difficult. It’s important to keep them warm so that they don’t fall sick.

We must as humans help our voiceless animals spend the harsh winter with some degree of comfort. Help your pets and stray animals to stay warm in winter.

The temperature is dipping as winter is coming, we felt a need to write a short post for those individuals who look after stray dogs and cats outside their homes, offices or any other place. If you can make a little makeshift shelter for the community dogs that would be super as they all often huddle up in little balls and sleep during winter. The following steps can go a long way in helping animals survive throughout cold weather:

Here are some tips to protect stray animals from winter:

Simple ways you can help animals in this winter:

1. Food and water:

Just like humans, animals too need energy to survive the cold weather so providing them food and water will help them to save some energy from hunting for food.

Consider providing them some food and water. Unfortunately, no one person can help save all of the stray dogs and cats in the world.

But with a little effort and compassion, one person can help at least one stray animal through the dark, cold days of winter and hopefully on to better days ahead.

By feeding them warm milk some bread, biscuits help them to keep the body temperature normal. The best thing you can do is put out water for them and check it twice daily to make sure it hasn’t frozen over.

2. Create or look for shelters for them:

Sleeping on the road in the cold at night can be hard for them. The temperature falls at night so providing them a shelter with warm clothes will protect them from cold weather.

You can make shelters out of all sorts of objects like storage bins and plywood.

Just make sure you do not insulate the shelter with blankets, hay, folded newspapers, or towels, as these materials do not fare well when wet.

You can also create a shelter for them near your house where you can look after them.

3. Check under your vehicles before turning the engine on:

Most of the times stray animals take shelter under a car or the space between the wheels. So before turning on your engine check under the vehicles. Always check before driving away.

4. Provide them with sweaters or Regular jackets:

Animal jackets are available in every pet store or clinic.

If you do not have a budget for providing new jackets then people can also give their old woolen blankets, rugs and their pet dogs ‘used jackets’ which could be used for the strays to keep them warm.

Strays struggle during peak winter and that’s why we should give or donate some warm clothes.

5. Leave your gates open at night:

If you have some separate space where you can let the stray sleep in your house then please let them in for the night so that they can have a warm place to sleep.

Use old clothes/ curtains/ bed sheets to cover them and allow them to sleep near your gates or outside the house.

6. Contact Your local Ngo:

If you see any stray animal suffering from ill health due to cold weather then the first thing you should do is call your local rescue organization near your area so that they can take proper action and provide safe and secure shelter for the stray animal.