Canola Oil – Separating fact from fiction

Posted by & filed under canola, diet and health, specific ingredients.

 

By Green Dog Pet Supply

Every once in a while a customer comes into the store and asks about Canola Oil, as they have read a lot of scary things on the internet about it. Many sites online claim that Canola Oil “is a poisonous substance, an industrial oil that does not belong in the body. They claim that it contains “the infamous chemical warfare agent mustard gas,” hemagglutinins and toxic cyanide-containing glycocides; it causes mad cow disease, blindness, nervous disorders, clumping of blood cells and depression of the immune system”.  This same information is copied and pasted to many sites, and though even organic Canola Oil is definitely not our favorite oil (especially when used exclusively in anyone’s diet), these are distortions that should be cleared up for those who are trying to educate themselves about nutrition. Of course, one of the major problems we have with Canola oil is it’s largely a GMO crop that can cross pollinate with other members of the brassica family (broccoli, cabbage, brussels, kale, mustard, etc) damaging these crops (especially organic crops which cannot contain GMO material) and the livelihood of the farmers that grow them. Our discussion here focuses on the safety of Canola oil in pet foods, not to advocate for or against it, just for the sake of objectivity we want to address the truths vs. the fear-mongering.

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Almost 2000 Sick or Dead Pets Reported to FDA

Posted by & filed under Chinese Chicken Jerky, other health concerns, specific ingredients.

By Green Dog Pet Supply
The Chinese Chicken debacle continues. The FDA has issued 3 separate warnings to the public about the danger of consuming these treats.  Almost 2000 pets reported so far that have been sickened or have died from consuming Chinese chicken jerky, which we know is only a fraction of the true number. When we hear from customers that they had purchased these treats in other stores and their dogs had acted sick after consuming them, the first question we ask is “Did you report it to the FDA or to your vet, or to the store you bought it from?” and the answer is invariably “No”. Message boards all over the internet are full of stories of problems with these treats. It’s very clearly a much larger problem than is reflected in the reported numbers.

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Essential Information About Ticks and Your Dog

Posted by & filed under fleas and ticks, other health concerns.

As usual, Holistic Vet Dr. Becker has written a fantastic article that I want to share with all of you. This article about tick prevention and tick born diseases is well worth reading and contains very valuable information. I encourage you to follow the link to read more!

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The Very Best Way to Protect Your Pet from Ticks

By Dr. Becker

Last year around this time I had quite a battle with tick exposure with my own dogs, Violet, her brother Esau, his mate Ada, and my little Boston terrier, Rosco.

I thought I would share the entire saga with you, since summer is upon us once again and it’s shaping up to be an extra bad year for pests and parasites. Hopefully, I’ll provide some helpful information to those of you with pets that have tested positive for a tick-borne disease – or might before the season is over.  Read More….

Pet Poisons – There’s an App for That!

Posted by & filed under diet and health, other health concerns, poisons and toxins, specific ingredients.

By Green Dog Pet Supply

Do you know what to do if your Screen Shot 2013-11-15 at 11.43.13 AMpet encounters something toxic, or is bitten by a spider, or eats something he shouldn’t? I’ve stumbled upon a great iphone app that could be very useful in an emergency, allowing you to act quickly to get information and even has a direct dial button where you can contact the Pet Poison Helpline immediately (like most or all poison control hotlines, there is a charge for the service, but that’s a small consideration when dealing with a life threatening emergency).

The app comes with a handy alphabetical list of potential toxins in your home environment with information about the types of symptoms you might see in your pet, which species are affected (did you know that avocado is extremely toxic to both birds and cows, while not much of a concern for dogs and cats?). Then there is a detailed description of what makes each item found on the list to be dangerous, including foods like raw bread dough and coffee grounds, human medications, toxic house and garden plants, spiders and snakes, and other household chemicals. I learned quite a bit from browsing through the list of poisons. For example, I knew that many Lily plants are very very toxic to cats and ingesting the smallest amount of the leaves or petals can cause them to have kidney failure, but I didn’t realize that interacting with the pollen or even drinking the water in a vase of lilies could cause the same problems. Makes sense, but I hadn’t thought about the water in the vase being a problem. You can even filter the list of toxins by species (ie: all of the things that are toxic to cats), or by type of toxin (ie: garage items, medications, or plants, etc).

No iphone? The Pet Poison Hotline website (http://www.petpoisonhelpline.com/) is mobile device enabled for viewing with other smart phones, and of course the website itself has the same great info as the app. I feel better prepared having that information and the connection to the hotline at my fingertips.

 

A Simple Formula for Getting the Weight Off Your Dog or Cat

Posted by & filed under diet and health, obesity.

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By Dr. Becker

Banfield Pet Hospital recently released their State of Pet Health 2012 Report, and the news isn’t good. In fact, it’s extremely troubling.

Chronic diseases in cats and dogs have risen dramatically over the last five years.

The report is a compilation of medical data from about 2 million dogs and over 400,000 cats that visited a Banfield hospital in 2011. Some of the disturbing findings:

  • Overweight and obesity increased in dogs by 37 percent, and in cats by a stunning 90 percent
  • Arthritis increased 38 percent in dogs and 67 percent in cats
  • Almost half of arthritic dogs and more than a third of arthritic cats are also overweight
  • Nearly half of diabetic dogs and cats are overweight
  • Forty percent of dogs with hypertension and 60 percent with hypothyroidism are overweight

Banfield also conducted a survey of 2,000 dog and cat owners to see what steps they were taking to keep their pets healthy. Survey answers revealed that less than 40 percent of dog owners and only a quarter of cat owners planned to seek advice from a veterinarian to manage their pet’s health condition.

Your Fat Pet is (or will soon be) a Sick Pet

Clearly, overweight and obesity in pets today is both its own disease and the root cause of many other diseases that develop as the result of too much weight. (more…)

Your Bag of Kibble Might Have Pretty Pictures, But Do You Know What’s Inside?

Posted by & filed under cat health, diet and health, pet food ingredients, poisons and toxins, specific ingredients, Useful.

By Green Dog Pet Supply

We all love our pets as members of our families and want to do the very best we can to keep them healthy and happy, but many of us overlook the very foundation of health for our pets – their nutrition. Just as our own health is affected by our daily nutrition habits, dogs and cats can develop chronic health issues like diabetes, skin allergies, inflammation issues such as arthritis, yeast overgrowth, bowel issues, urinary infections or crystals, and even cancer. We often don’t realize that chronic issues are developing at a cellular level, and of course many pets seem “fine” until a crisis occurs. Of course, the very best way to support our own health and the health of our companion animals is for all of us to eat more whole foods and cut out processed foods as much as we can.

However, processed kibbles have come quite a long way in the past 10 years, and there is a great disparity between what you might find on the pet aisle of your local grocery store and what might be available at your local independent pet retailer. It is not legally required (it is actually prohibited) for manufacturers to use language on a pet food label that would help a consumer to know if the quality of the ingredients on a label are similar to the ingredients you might use to cook your own dinners or are simply waste products that were inappropriate for use in human foods, though there are some things to look out for on kibble labels that will give you a good idea. I hope to empower you to recognize some of these “red flag” and “green flag” ingredients that might help you to determine the quality of the ingredients in any dry kibble you’re feeding to your pets.
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If Your Vet Thinks Your Pet Needs Antibiotics, Ask Him to Do This First

Posted by & filed under antibiotic resistance, other health concerns.

By Dr. Karen Beckerpills

MRSA is short for Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Staphylococcus aureus is a strain of bacteria naturally found in most animals, including humans.

In your dog or cat, staph can be found as naturally occurring bacteria on the skin, in mucous membranes, as well as in the GI tract.

Occasionally pets can become infected by their own normal flora.

I refer to these infections as “pet acne,” because they are usually harmless and very easily treated, but when a pet’s normal flora develops resistance to broad-spectrum antibiotics, it becomes a very dangerous health threat.

If these bacteria undergo genetic mutation — making them resistant to even the strongest antibiotic available, including methicillin — it can cause serious illness and even death in pets.

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Just Say No to Soy in Pet Food

Posted by & filed under diet and health, pet food ingredients, soy, specific ingredients.

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This article sums up nicely why I gave up unfermented soy years ago for my own diet, and why we have never allowed soy to be a primary ingredient in any of our foods or treats at Green Dog (we are aware it sneaks in in ingredients like lecithin, but we do what we can). We were upset to hear that Castor and Pollux was planning to use soy as one of their primary proteins in their new grain free formula (which is now on the market) and this just added to our list of why we had to get rid of that brand right away. I’ve always meant to write a blog posting about soy in pet foods, but Dr. Becker has come through again with a great article.

By Dr. Becker

As I was scanning an industry trade journal recently, a headline caught my eye.

It announced the opening of a new manufacturing plant to produce protein for animal diets.

Protein in animal diets being one of my favorite subjects, I read a little further … only to discover the company opening the new plant makes vegetable protein.

And the reason they need more manufacturing capacity is to answer the growing demand for soy protein products in North America.

Clearly, soy in all its forms is being included in an increasing number of commercial dog and cat food formulas.

I’ve discussed the problem of soy in pet food often here at Mercola Healthy Pets.

But I think it’s probably time for a closer look at what soy is, the health problems it can create, why it’s used by so many pet food manufacturers … and why you shouldn’t feed it to your dog or cat.

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To Flush or Not to Flush – disposing of pet waste

Posted by & filed under biodegradable poop bags, Green Tip, what to do with dog poop.

By Green Dog Pet Supply

Not long after we first opened the store, we found a product that we thought sounded like a no-brainer for a green store – doggie poop bags that broke down quickly in water so that they could be safely flushed. It seemed quite logical that pet waste would be best disposed of in a system already in place to treat sewage, so we bought them. However, it occurred to us that we had only worried about the safety of the home sewer system before we bought them, and had not considered to ask what happens to the water supply when pet waste was flushed. We were already selling flushable cat litter and advocating the flushing of litter. Is flushing really the best way to dispose of pet waste?  We contacted the city of Portland about this issue, as we wanted to make sure that it would truly be a good idea on all sides. They vehemently opposed the idea at the time, and we ended up not reordering those bags again (and they weren’t selling that well anyway, so we left it at that).

We heard recently that a few of our distributors were probably bringing in flushable bags, which concerned us a bit, as it means  they would then be actively promoted to local retailers and therefore marketed more widely to the public. As some years had passed and I knew that Portland has made some upgrades to the system in recent years, I called again to discuss the issue. (more…)