If you prefer to share the love, you may well consider adding a new member to your family. However, if this is the first time you’re doing this, you might be unsure how to handle everything. Luckily for you, this guide is here to share information about what you need to know about adding a new animal to your pack.

Before Getting A New Pet
Before you bring home a new pet, it might be worth checking that such an addition will work with your current situation. You may wish to think about how much free time you have on your hands, and how much money you can afford to spend on your pack. If you don’t feel like either of these meet the mark, you may wish to hold off for a while.

What’s more, you might want to think about your existing pet. For instance, some cats struggle to accept new additions, especially when they’ve been the only animal in a household for a long time. Issues like this might make expanding your pack tricky.

Preparing For Them To Come Home
When you bring home a new animal, you might not know how your current pet will react. In fact, you probably won’t know for sure until the big moment comes. To try and avoid any potential clashes in the beginning, there are a few things you might want to consider depending on the animals in your pack.

If your new pet is a cat, you may want to set them up in one room of the house where they can feel comfortable. If they have all the essentials around them – e.g. food, water, bed, etc. – they’ll hopefully adjust to their surroundings quite quickly. It’s also ideal if this is a room that isn’t usually frequented by your other pet as it may prevent any territorial issues.
You may consider doing a similar thing if you already own a cat and are bringing a dog home, seeing as how the former is more of a solitary species. By creating a safe space for your first pet in a room that they spend a lot of time in, you allow them an easy escape if they find the new addition overwhelming.

Introducing Them To Your Pack
When it comes to the actual introductions, it’s again worth adjusting your actions depending on the animals involved. If you’re bringing a new dog into an existing dog household, it might be useful to have both animals on a lead when they first meet. That way, you can allow them to get to know one another, while also having full control should either get too feisty. If you feel like they’re both behaving themselves, then you might wish to give them more freedom.

If you’re bringing a new cat into an existing cat household, scent can be incredibly useful here. If you can find ways to make your new pet’s smell familiar to your first cat, it may reduce the risk of tension when they meet. This can also be useful for introducing dogs and cats.

Saving Time And Effort
If you already own a pet, then there a few admin tasks you can probably save yourself time and effort on here. For one, you’re likely already registered with a local veterinary practice. Thanks to this, you probably won’t have too much trouble getting your latest animal signed up with them. Hopefully, that will come in handy, seeing as it’s important that you consider getting your pet checked out soon after bringing them home.

Something else that you could save time on when adding an animal to your family is insurance. Providers like Everypaw offer multi-pet insurance policies, so you can get your entire pack covered. You can get pet insurance for two cats or more, cover for two dogs or more, and even get a multi-pet discount on each pet you cover. Whatever you need, there’s a good chance you’ll save yourself some time, money, and effort thanks to multi-pet insurance policies.

Watching For Any Future Tension
As nice as it would be to bring home a new pet and have them instantly fit in with your pack, there’s never any assurance that this will happen. You might find it beneficial to keep a watchful eye over all your animals for the first few weeks – if not months – of welcoming a new addition. That way should there be any tension between your pets, you can address it.

Hopefully, though, after enough time together, they’ll adjust to one another and learn to get along. It’s impossible to put a timeframe on this, but you probably won’t have to deal with them being at odds forever.