Should You Take Your Dog Trick-or-Treating? 10 Reasons a Dog Trainer Says No

The first thing is the costumes. When people are walking around in scary masks, I want you to picture being stuck in a nightmare that you can’t wake up from, because that’s pretty much what’s happening to your dog. We’re taking him outside on the one night of the year when everybody is dressed up to look scary.

You have to understand that dogs don’t have the brainpower to work out that there’s a friendly neighbor behind that mask. He’s just wondering why he’s stuck in a nightmare and why you’re the one walking him through it. With these animals, perception is reality, so somebody in a costume walking up on your dog is a very bad idea. It can lead to nips, to bites, and to fearful behavior that never fully goes away.

So if you’re honestly thinking about bringing him, be honest about who the walk is really for. The only reason to take him is so we can feel like our dog likes Halloween, when the truth is that he doesn’t. It’s not fun for him, and he’d just as soon sit this one out.

On Halloween you’ve got so many kids running, squealing and having fun, plus huge crowds of people walking around the neighborhood. And they should be having fun, because it’s Halloween and it’s their night.

What we don’t want is for those kids to run up and try to pet your dog. Most young kids are just out to have a good time and they don’t think twice about it, but put that same kid in a scary costume and have him run straight at a nervous dog, and that’s how a child ends up getting nipped.

So when you’ve got kids that look like goblins running up on your dog, understand that the kids aren’t doing a thing wrong. It’s a fun night for them. It’s just not a fun night for your dog, and the best thing you can do for everybody is not have him out in it.

Now, if your dog is already fearful or shy, taking him out on Halloween is a horrible idea, and here’s why. Every dog on the planet has what we’ll call a fight or flight mechanism in his brain. That’s the short name for it, and we’ll leave the science at home for a minute.

When you’ve got him on a leash and he gets scared, he can’t run away, which takes flight off the table. That leaves fight. There are a good number of bites and nips every Halloween that could have been prevented by simply keeping that fearful dog at home.

So please don’t take a fearful dog out. It’s bad enough to take a social dog out and risk making him fearful because of all the costumes, but taking a dog who is already scared outside on Halloween night is a recipe for complete disaster.

Dogs who are normally okay out in public tend to act out of character on Halloween. You’ll see them pulling on the leash to get away from the people walking behind them, acting flighty, sniffing the ground far more than they usually do, and avoiding people they would normally be happy to greet.

Those are all signs that he isn’t comfortable, even if he’s the easiest dog in the world on a regular Tuesday. There are so many things going on that night that you as an owner simply can’t control, and it doesn’t take much for a dog who is usually fine to decide he’s had enough.

If you’re out there and you see any of that, don’t push through it. Take him home, because he’s telling you as clearly as he can that he doesn’t want to be there.

Dropped candy and wrappers on the ground is another one that people don’t think about. There is so much candy out there on Halloween night, and a lot of it is dangerous for your dog. Chocolate, sugar-free candy and raisins can poison him, and the wrappers can choke him or block up his gut.

The problem is that you’re walking him on a leash in the dark with a hundred other things going on, so you won’t even know when he reaches down and grabs something off the ground. That actually happens quite a bit, and a lot of owners don’t find out until later.

It’s one of those things we don’t think about much when we’re planning a fun night out, but it’s definitely something that can really hurt your dog.

On Halloween, chances are you’re watching your kids, the scary houses and everything else that’s going on around you. You’re out having fun, it’s Halloween, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

But ask yourself who is watching the dog, because the honest answer is that probably nobody is reading his body language. When we take him out, he’s going to get the least amount of attention of anything out there, and on top of that we’ve put him in a scary environment.

That combination is what leads to an accident that night or to behavior issues down the road. Nobody did anything terrible. We were just busy having a good time, and we weren’t watching the dog closely enough to see that he was in trouble.

If you’ve ever been trick-or-treating, you know one of the coolest things for us humans is walking up to a house where somebody has spent all that time decorating, so that it’s creepy, it lights up and it makes all kinds of sounds.

For a dog, it’s more like, “Holy hell, this is crazy, I don’t want to be here.” Things that shriek, light up and jump out at you are very startling for a dog, and he has no way to process that it’s all pretend and nobody is going to hurt him.

So we need to do a good job of keeping him away from those houses, and on Halloween night that’s just about every house on the street. The easiest way to do it is to leave him home.

It’s dark out, there are distractions everywhere, and dogs get scared. When a dog gets scared enough he backs right out of his collar, and that happens a lot more often than people think.

Now you’ve got a loose dog on a night when the drivers are watching for kids and little goblins running across the street. They are not watching for a dog, and that’s how a dog gets hit by a car.

Dogs getting away from their owners happens a lot on Halloween, and here’s the part nobody thinks about. Once he’s loose, you can’t catch him, because every person who walks up to help you is dressed like a monster. All of that can be prevented by keeping him home.

One bad night can lead to a lifetime of behavior issues. I’d say that anybody who tells you that’s not a real concern probably hasn’t worked with dogs long enough.

A night like that can absolutely leave you with a dog who doesn’t want to walk on a leash after dark anymore, or who is fearful of loud sounds, or who startles easily any time he’s out on a leash at night. Those are real behavior problems that show up down the road, long after the decorations have come down.

Lasting fears can one hundred percent come out of Halloween because of how scary it is for dogs. The best way to keep a fear from becoming permanent is to not take him out in the first place, and then you won’t have anything to fix.

Okay, here’s the one we all need to talk about. Not every family out trick-or-treating is comfortable around dogs. I don’t know why people think everybody needs to pet their dog, or why so many parents think their kids need to pet other people’s dogs. It’s like an unspoken rule of being sociable, and it shouldn’t exist.

My own kids will never pet a dog we don’t know out in public. We’ve taught them that we don’t pet strange dogs, because we don’t know anything about that dog and we don’t know anything about the owner either.

I’ve had so many behavior cases where a dog bit a child because the owner wanted to see if he would be social with kids. So do me a favor and remember that not everybody is comfortable with your dog being out in public. On a night when there are thousands of people out, it’s best to leave him home to relax with some nice music and a bone to chew.