Green Dog Blog

“Megaesophagus is a condition in which a dog’s esophagus is enlarged to the point that food remains in the esophagus and never makes it down to the stomach and is instead regurgitated. The muscle contraction and relaxation that normally takes place to move food down to the stomach doesn’t work. Megaesophagus can be present since birth or can develop in adult dogs. If left untreated, it can cause a range of problems, including starvation and aspiration pneumonia.” This quote was extracted from a site called The Pet Project and their post details how to get a hold of “Baily’s Chair” which enables dogs to eat in a way that lets food get down into the stomach more easily, as well as giving many great resources for where to go for support and information about this condition. Check out this fantastic You Tube video of a dog using a chair like this – it’s so flippin’ cute how the dog jumps into place!

In the “Answers from Experts” (03/99 issue) of the Whole Dog Journal, Holistic vet Dr Carolyn Blakey suggests that homeopathy can help, as well as acupuncture, “which would be great for stimulating whatever tonal ability the dog may have. With megaesophagus, the whole problem is a lack of innervation (sufficient supply and activity of the nerves). The messages are just not getting through to the esophagus to constrict and move food down; it gets all flaccid. But acupuncture can get those neurotransmitters working, or at least, get them working better than before.”
She also mentions that it would be important to have a good vitamin mineral supplement as well as digestive enzymes to help the dog (or cat) to absorb more nutrition from the food that makes it into the stomach.

A customer shared her very clever solution to a long time problem she was having. Her dog loves to bark out of the window, and was not only creating a lot of noise for her close neighbors, but she was also shredding her blinds. The shredded blinds not only looked terrible, they were an expensive loss. Then she hit upon the great idea to purchase a sort of contact paper made for windows that made them look frosted, and the problem was solved! They still let plenty of light in, they look attractive, they provide valuable privacy for houses that are close to the neighbors, and by only frosting the bottom panes, the owner can still look out the top part of the window if she needs to see outside. The dog can’t get up that high though, so the visual stimuli that were causing her to bark (squirrels, people passing, etc) were removed. She’s calmer, the neighbors are happier, and the new blinds remain unshredded, as there’s nothing to see by pushing them out of the way. Check out this awesome DYI site that shows beautiful ways to embellish the frosted glass look with a paint pen. Beautiful!

So of course tomorrow, watch out for your pets when your house is full of people:

• Make sure if they’re overwhelmed they get moved to a quieter place in the house with a nice raw bone or bully stick or stuffed Kong to work on.
• Make sure they’re wearing their ID tags in case they sneak out the door as people come and go.
• Make sure no one slips them too much turkey, especially skin and gravy, as Pancreatitis can set in quickly with too many rich fats. Of course, cooked turkey bones are extremely dangerous for dogs – cooking any poultry bones changes them from edible to sharp and splintery.
• Be careful of the wrappings, strings and foil etc that were involved with turkey cooking, as they seem yummy too. Protect this sort of garbage from your pets.
• Raisins, grapes, rising bread dough, onions and chocolate often play roles tomorrow in the big meal, and they are all toxic to dogs.
• Raw turkey necks, however, are a great treat for dogs (unless their Thanksgiving day is filled with too many other treats – maybe save that for a quieter day if they haven’t had one before), and the raw liver and heart are worth cutting up and giving little pieces to both the kitties and the dogs.
• Keep your emergency vet # in an easy to find place in case your pet eats something they shouldn’t
• Have a wonderful holiday!

Christine was interviewed yesterday on a blog called DandelionDish about how to green your pet – the topics included:

- What do we look for in a product and how do we define green when it comes to pet products?
- What should you generally be looking for in a food and what do you absolutely not want to see on a label?
- What is the greenest way to feed your pets?
- Discussion of more sustainable cat litters vs. clay
- What do we look for in things like beds and toys?
- Are green products necessarily more expensive?
- What are ways that people can save money and still live sustainably?

Here’s the link to the podcast

These are two videos I wish I had made myself, as we have these discussions with people on a daily basis. I also wish Dr. Becker was here in Portland – I’d give anything to be able to refer customers to her veterinary practice, and to have her out to the store for lectures, etc. The good news is that she has a great website/e-mail newsletter that addresses so many important health issues for pets. I highly encourage you to sign up for her free e-mail newsletter, and to peruse the archived articles on her website.

Here are two short videos filmed at our friends’ store, “Bad Dog Frida” – a great independent pet supply store in Madison, WI.
This one tells you about the best types of foods to feed your pets:

and this one outlines the types of foods you should avoid and how to recognize them:

I just stumbled upon an interesting article about flame retardants in furniture having agreater cumulative effect in the bodies of our pets than in people. Apparently many of these chemicals were phased out in 2004 in the U.S., but of course many of us own furniture manufactured before that time. It’s very important to try to minimize chemical exposure for our pets and our children- those little bodies are even more susceptible to toxins than we are.  Here’s the link. http://news.discovery.com/animals/ditch-your-old-couch-for-your-dogs-sake-110427.html

There’s a lot of cat stuff on our minds these days as we’ve recently adopted a 10 year old Himalayan cat.
So many people think that cats don’t need anything – we hear this all the time. They seem to understand that dogs need interaction, exercise and mental stimulation, but cats, (especially indoor cats) need these things as well. One thing we hear a lot from the people who think their cats don’t need anything is how horrible their cats’ behavior is and how destructive these cats are to their home!
We needed to teach Otis a lot of new things when we brought him in, as we were turning him from an indoor/outdoor cat to an entirely indoor cat, so making sure he was good at a litter box and scratching posts and keeping him stimulated enough to make up for his outdoor time was all important. I thought it might be fun to share a few videos with you.
Cats can certainly be trained through positive reinforcement techniques to follow commands. He’s got a pretty good recall and he sits like a champ on command. I also needed him to get the heck out from under my feet in the kitchen – I decided to use the threshold of the kitchen as a visual marker; something easy for him to understand. Get over the threshold and stay there and the treats you seek will come to you:

It’s been working well. First I lured him with a treat into the spot, while I said the command, then I started saying “get in your spot” and then luring and rewarding him, and then I would say the command and pause before luring him. It took longer than it would have taken a dog, but he eventually had that “Aha moment” and did it himself. Now, he needs to stay in the spot for longer and longer periods to get treats.

He had a history of being brushed and liking it in the past (you have to brush a Himalayan!) but when he came to us he didn’t tolerate it much. Mostly he wanted to play and bite the brush, and forget about brushing anything but his cheeks and back. So, we started with what he would tolerate, and just when he was doing a nice job, we’d stop and get a treat. Of course over time he’d tolerate a bit more and a bit more. I’d try to reward it when he did a slightly better job than usual, and if I pushed it too long and he got cranky/silly about it, I just stopped and left.
Each time he rolled over on his back (even when he wasn’t being brushed) I’d use the word “belly” while I talked to him, and if he let me touch and later rub the belly (without snapping the bear trap shut – our name for the attack we’d often get if we touched it) I’d give him a treat. We’ve gotten pretty far and I was impressed when he started making the connection for giving up the belly when I asked for it:

Any pet can learn to tolerate and eventually enjoy things they don’t like using this same process. Nail trims, handling body parts they don’t like touched, and being brushed are just three practical examples. You have to start with something they do tolerate or even enjoy, even if that means that you have to start with something that hardly looks like the behavior you want to achieve. Building up slowly is the key – even the tiniest progress is worth rewarding, and never ever forcing something they’re uncomfortable with.  Here’s another post about this process. It’s worth working on! If you ever want to talk to me (Christine) in more detail about your specific challenge, please do come in and I’ll try to help you with some tips

Otis came to us with quite a bit of plaque on his teeth (pretty normal for a cat that only eats kibble) and during his dental cleaning, the vet noticed that he has a few abnormalities in the design of his mouth that are causing them to wear away at each other and could cause trouble if not kept clean. So, I’ve been working on acclimating him to having toothpaste rubbed on his gums with the hope of brushing them someday, etc. Another strategy we’ve employed is that we’ve started giving him chicken neck treats and have found it so interesting to watch him process them, as he chews and chews them on both sides of his mouth. Truthfully, I’ve recommended them to my customers, but have never had a cat that I could give them to – our last was in her 20s before we found the neck treats and she wouldn’t have done well with them. I thought it would be interesting to people to see how they process them, so I took this video.  It also seems so stimulating for his mind – it takes him a while to figure out how he’s going to pick them up (I edited out a lot of that at the beginning of the video) and you can see him really thinking and giving it great effort, and he seems so satisfied all night on the nights we’ve been giving them. We started at once a week, have moved to twice a week, and probably will up it to 3x a week in a few weeks. I can’t wait till his next dental exam to see how well these yummy meat tooth scrubbers have helped his mouth stay clean.

Feel weird about giving them? I did too a bit at first, but as long as chicken is raw, it can be fed to pets – never ever ever EVER cook poultry bones and give them to pets – cooking makes the bones brittle and very dangerous. Think of all the hundreds of thousands of feral cats out there eating whole mice and birds – crunch crunch crunch!

I stumbled on this video on YouTube that shows nicely how well a turkey neck can help to clean a dog’s teeth. I also think it’s a good idea to hold them like this to make sure the dog’s getting the teeth cleaning value (just watch your fingers as they will feel the same to a dog’s mouth!). Stop on by and pick up a pack of turkey necks today!

PS: it’s always a good idea to make your dogs earn their treats – this guys does a good job of that