The food and Drug Administration is investigating reports that chicken jerky from China is making dogs sick. Here’s their bulletin:

FDA Continues to Caution Dog Owners About Chicken Jerky Products

November 18, 2011

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is again cautioning consumers that chicken jerky products for dogs (also sold as chicken tenders, strips or treats) may be associated with illness in dogs. In the last 12 months, FDA has seen an increase in the number of complaints it received of dog illnesses associated with consumption of chicken jerky products imported from China. These complaints have been reported to FDA by dog owners and veterinarians.

FDA issued a cautionary warning regarding chicken jerky products to consumers in September 2007 and a Preliminary Animal Health Notification in December of 2008. After seeing the number of complaints received drop off during the latter part of 2009 and most of 2010, the FDA is once again seeing the number of complaints rise to the levels of concern that prompted release of our earlier warnings.

Chicken jerky products should not be substituted for a balanced diet and are intended to be fed occasionally in small quantities.

FDA is advising consumers who choose to feed their dogs chicken jerky products to watch their dogs closely for any or all of the following signs that may occur within hours to days of feeding the products: decreased appetite; decreased activity; vomiting; diarrhea, sometimes with blood; increased water consumption and/or increased urination. If the dog shows any of these signs, stop feeding the chicken jerky product. Owners should consult their veterinarian if signs are severe or persist for more than 24 hours. Blood tests may indicate kidney failure (increased urea nitrogen and creatinine). Urine tests may indicate Fanconi syndrome (increased glucose). Although most dogs appear to recover, some reports to the FDA have involved dogs that have died.

FDA, in addition to several animal health diagnostic laboratories in the U.S., is working to determine why these products are associated with illness in dogs. FDA’s Veterinary Laboratory Response Network (VLRN) is now available to support these animal health diagnostic laboratories. To date, scientists have not been able to determine a definitive cause for the reported illnesses. FDA continues extensive chemical and microbial testing but has not identified a contaminant.

The FDA continues to actively investigate the problem and its origin. Many of the illnesses reported may be the result of causes other than eating chicken jerky. Veterinarians and consumers alike should report cases of animal illness associated with pet foods to the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator in their state or go to http://www.fda.gov/petfoodcomplaints.

The symptoms they describe are similar to the ones that showed up in the Melanin scare a few years ago. Note that they aren’t sure yet that there actually is anything wrong with the product. It will probably take the FDA months to come up with a definitive answer.

So what are we supposed to do in the meantime? As far as I can see there’s only one responsible thing to do and that’s to cut the chicken jerky out of your dogs diet. You might think that you can just avoid the Chinese product, but that doesn’t work in today’s globalized economy. Products from China are shipped over here in bulk and then repackaged without any notification of where the product came from in the first place. That was the case in the Melanin problem a few years ago. Chinese wheat gluten was being used in many of our lower priced dog foods, and that gluten had been laced with Melanin to increase the perceived protein content. The problem wasn’t with Chinese dog food so there was no way to protect yourself based on where the food itself was manufactured.

The best thing you can do is switch to a better quality dog food. Or you can try making some of your dogs food yourself by following these recipes that you can download for free.

If your dog really, really likes chicken jerky you can make it yourself. The key to making delicious dog treats is to get yourself a dehydrator. Then all you have to do is slice the chicken into thin strips and dry it for a day. The same thing can be done with liver or heart to make great healthy treats that your dog will go nuts for. One caution, though. Put the dehydrator outside on the carport or the balcony. Drying meat products give off a powerful smell that you really don’t want being pumped into your living space. I know this from personal experience.

In my earlier article about deer chasing I talked about the prey-drive. This instinct is especially strong in younger West Highland Terriers and it can cause a lot of excitement from time to time.

Another instinct that these dogs have is a desire to cover their scent. Dogs naturally love stinky stuff. Here in Courtenay the salmon have just finished running and the banks of the creeks and rivers are littered with the bodies of spawned out salmon. The biggest challenge for dog owners in this area nowadays is keeping their dogs from rolling on dead salmon. This is a special challenge if your dog is off leash and exploring on his own.

When we lived in Maple Ridge we had a lot to do with horses. Willow went to the barn nearly every day to help out. She managed to find a great way to cover her scent there as well.

This video was also posted on Willow’s Facebook fan page. Next time you’re on Facebook, check out her page.  For more videos of Willow in action subscribe to her youtube channel.

A video of a man screaming at his deer-chasing dog in the U.K. seems to have created a small interest in how to bust dogs off deer.

Dogs chasing deer is not a new problem but an old one, and it is not limited to deer. Dogs may bust on fox, geese, feral cats, horse, sheep, bear, and even cars and bicycles.

Anything that moves away quickly — and especially anything that moves away while making noise — will tend to trigger the prey drive in a dog.

What to do about it?

Well to start, recognize that prey drive is a deeply-seated code that is curled up like a watch spring in some dogs, and that pursuit is a self-reinforcing behavior.

What’s that mean?

Simple enough: It means the dog gets a great deal of pleasure from the pursuit itself.

For a dog, chasing things is a peak experience in and of itself. It is FUN in capital letters.

What that means for you, the owner or trainer, is that you are going to have to use all three legs of operant conditioning in order to achieve success if you have a dog with a lot of prey-drive.

(From a recent article on the Terrierman Blog)

Deer-chasing Willow

I have a confession to make. Last month I came very close to losing my little Westie, Willow. It was a prime example of the danger of deer-chasing.

We were walking in Morrison Park close to where we live in Courtenay. The park is a large area of forest and streams where we like to walk almost every day. Its a great place to wander and gives a Westie a wonderful chance to exercise its nose.

Courtenay is a small city surrounded by forest. If you live on the outskirts of town, as we do, this forested area starts just a couple of blocks away and runs up to Mount Washington and then on to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Morrison Park is actually just a promontory of forest that has been set aside for recreation and there are no fences or any other containment. In other words, if a dog takes off in those woods it can easily be lost forever. Deer-chasing is very dangerous under these conditions.

And that’s what almost happened to me. We were walking in the park. Willow was loose, dragging a 30 foot long-line. Suddenly, she jumped a deer and she was off before I could jump on the line and stop her. That’s how fast you can get into trouble with deer-chasing.

That long-line is all that saved our bacon that afternoon. The brush was too thick to track her. All I could do was head off in the direction she was going and hope she would get hung up somewhere.

That’s exactly what happened. She got a couple of miles and the line finally tangled around a root and stopped her. Fortunately for us, she has been trained to sit calmly as soon as her leash pulls tight, and thats what she did instead of fighting it. As soon as her forward progress was stopped she sat and started barking so I could find her. Everything ended well and I learned a valuable lesson.

Here’s the thing: Westies are terriers. That means that the prey drive is pretty strong in most of them. They can be tripping along as cool as cucumbers one minute and gone in the next instant if something catches their interest. This is especially true if the dog is young and fit like Willow is. Deer-chasing is especially attractive for dogs in their prime when they still have lots of energy.

You may think that you don’t need to worry about such things, especially if you don’t live in a place like Courtenay where deer, and sometimes bears, are often seen walking down the street at midday. But, your dog has the same instincts and they can be triggered by kids on skateboards, cats or other things just as easily as by deer.

The absolute safest thing is to never let your dog off the leash, but who wants that? Having your dog running free beside you is a great feeling and something we should all work towards. That’s why Willow was hooked up to the long-line that afternoon. Deer-chasing wasn’t on my mind though. I was guarding against her chasing a squirrel and figured I would have lots of time to reel her in.

Its fine to let your dog off the leash once you’ve done some work with him. That work includes having him solid on-leash and then on a long line. It takes work and time, but its worth it. Things can change in an instant and its quite possible to lose your dog. It may not run off into the woods, but it could run in front of a car or get into some kind of mischief that ends with it in the pound or being put down.

So, do the work. Put the time into training before you let your dog run free. The training is fun and rewarding in itself and it will protect you from a lot of heart-break in the future. Deer-chasing is not the only thing you have to be careful of.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you have no doubt noticed the new header we deployed a couple of weeks age. I thought I’d take some time to explain how the header was created.

The image is a photo-collage of three other pictures. They get dropped onto photo-shop in layers, then you erase part of the top-most image to reveal the image underneath. I said photo-shop, but the same techniques would apply if you were using some other program like GIMP or Sumopaint.

One of the things I like about this banner is that Willow is in it three times, once as a puppy around eight months old, around two years old and around three years old.

The first picture is this one that was taken at the Maple Ridge Equisport Center in the summer of 2010. Willow was almost two when this was taken. Let’s put that on the extreme left.

The next picture selected is this one of Willow and my brother Jim. It was taken the day after we moved to Vancouver Island, so June 2011. Willow was almost 3 years old. The location in Cowichan Bay. We’ll drop that on the far right.

The third photo I chose for the center of the banner is this one. It was taken in 2009, soon after we got Willow. Puppy Willow is sitting on the ground on the right side of the photo. On the other side is a guy in coveralls holding two Westies and a Scottie. The two Westies are Willow’s parents.  Anyway, let’s see what we wound up with.

This is one of the first examples of the three images together. There are two things, at least, wrong with this early effort. First, ther’s too much stuff happening over on the right-hand side. Puppy Willow is crammed under Jim’s table, and the backgrounds are quite different. That’s going to make erasing the top image more difficult.

All those problems are relieved simply by flipping the photo. Now the gray of the deck boards and the gray of the pavement are easier to blend. The coffee-table that was squashing Puppy Willow is now over on the edge. Much better. Also, mature Willow will be standing right next to Puppy Willow, which I think is kind of cool.

The other problem with this layout was the order of the layers. This is just an example of some of my early efforts and I really had no idea what I was doing. The solution turned out to be putting the left and right pictures on one layer and the center photo on top. That way you are always erasing from the same picture to reveal the underlying image.

Be sure to save a back-up of your source image and keep it somewhere separate from the one you are working on. You will make mistakes and have to go back to the beginning several times if you haven’t done this kind of thing before.

There are two main settings that you use with the eraser tool. One is brush size. The other is opacity. Opacity controls how deep you erase each time you make a pass. I’m a real coward, so I kept the opacity around 25%. It takes longer to erase all the way down but you’re less likely to blow it by going too deep.

I found the best way to proceed was to work from some distance into the source image out to the edge. A couple of times I went too far and wound up erasing part of the image I was trying to reveal. Not a photo-shop pro! Sometimes you wind up with some pretty cool effects. For instance, if you look at the center image, the background was the office in our housing complex. Careful erasing made it look like AJ is standing on the cross-country course with Willow.

Once the blending of the images is done all that’s left is the lettering. It is possible to do the kind of fancy lettering I wanted in photo-shop, but an easier way is just to get somebody else to do it for you. I popped over to cooltext.com. There you can make your own logos in real time and download the final images. Open those images in photo-shop, drag them where you want them and you are done.

This has been a very simplified overview of the photo-collage technique. I didn’t get into much detail because I don’t want to put myself forward as some kind of pro with photo-shop. The article I learned how to do this from is available at the digital photography school.

Hello. I’ve been down with some kind of a bug for the last week and haven’t been able to do anything in the way of a blog post. I can still shuffle out the door and walk Willow slowly through the park. Apart from that, I’ve mostly been staring at the walls and wondering how long this is going to last.

Right now I’m having a moment of comparative clarity, and I realized that I could at least point you to a couple of cool sites that I have come across recently. Here goes.

First off is The Daily Puppy. I have google reader set up to scan the whole web for anything to do with West Highland Terriers This morning, this caught my eye:

Puppy Breed: West Highland White Terrier

Kevin Bacon enjoys barking, taking long naps, meeting new canine friends, and digging. He hates vacuums, construction equipment, and being awoken from naps. He has many nicknames, ranging from “Stinky Rat” to “Wet Wick.” A natural charmer, Kevin is wildly offended when passers-by don’t stop to greet him, and sometimes cries when faced with this “rejection.”

The Daily Puppy is a great resource for cute puppy pictures as well as general tips on anything to do with puppies.

The other website is The West Highland Terrier Blog. It is a super-enthusiastic video blog about Westies. There isn’t much in the way of text, just a line or two on some videos. This site is one of the best resources for fun, Westie videos that I’ve come across.

So there you go. Best I could do, feeling this sick. Check them out, you’ll like them.

I’ve always been a pretty no-nonsense guy when it comes to dog food. In general, I felt that fussing about your dogs diet and buying expensive food was a waste of time and money. The article What’s the Best Diet For a West Highland Terrier laid out my thinking on the subject quite clearly.

My thinking is changing now. Doctor Jones webinar was a real eye-opener for me, because it described the difference between high-quality and low-quality food, and provided the education we need to choose wisely.

There are three things wrong with lower-priced dog foods.

1. The ingredients that are missing
2. The extra ingredients that are in them
3. The proportions of the various food types

The ingredients that are missing

So, how can you find a good quality dog food? Learn to interpret the label on the package. That’s the only guide you have and, as long as the manufacturers are reasonably honest, the only one you need. Since watching the webinar I’ve been paying much more attention to the labels on dog food.

The important thing to realize about the contents label is that it lists the relative proportions of the various ingredients in descending order. Dogs are carnivores, so the most important ingredient in the food should be some kind of protein from an animal source. That means that the first item on the list of ingredients should be something like beef, lamb, salmon or duck. Being first in the list is important, because its the most important part of your dog’s diet. Contrast this with the ingredient list of the food I have been feeding Willow. The product is Beneful made by Nestle and she likes it a lot. Here are the first ingredients:

• Ground Yellow Corn
• Chicken byproduct meal
• Corn gluten meal
• Whole wheat flour
• Animal fat
• Rice flour
• Beef
• Soya flour

I’m not picking on this particular brand, either. Its a typical dry dog food you can buy in the super-market. Other dog foods in the same store show pretty much the same ingredients.

You might think that buying more expensive food from your vet is the answer, but it isn’t. Food from your vet will cost you two or three times as much but display pretty much the same ingredients. What you buy at the vet will probably have some extra supplements added, but not enough to justify the increase in price.

Extra ingredients in dog food

We’re talking here about artificial preservatives, artificial flavorings and dyes. These are powerful chemicals. Some are known to be bad for dogs, Some are suspected of being evil. In either case they aren’t good.

The best rule of thumb to follow is, if you can’t pronounce it or don’t know what it is, then it probably shouldn’t be in you dog’s food.

By the way, these things aren’t good for us either. Read the labels on some of your favorite foods and you’ll find them there as well. I’m not any shining example of health awareness myself, but, if you get into reading labels on food stuffs you will find yourself wondering where the actual food is. ‘Nuff said.

Proportions of ingredients

What’s first on the list? What’s second? Remember, the protein source should be first and it should be something you recognize.

Besides a list of ingredients, you’ll also find an analysis of what’s in the food. To take the example of Beneful again, we find the first item on that list is crude protein – 25%. This is very deceptive. All that means is that the amino acids found in the corn gluten, wheat flour and soya flour can be assembled into a simple protein by the dogs digestive system. There’s no guarantee that the dog can actually use that protein and it will certainly have to use a lot more energy to do so than it would if the protein was from an animal source.

This protein analysis is what was behind the big Melanin disaster a few years ago, and its one of the hidden dangers of globalization. Manufacturers buy their ingredients from the cheapest sources. The cheapest gluten available for sale came from China. One or more of the Chinese manufacturers of gluten realized that adding Melanin to the gluten would make it appear to have more protein than it really did, but the side-effect was destroying the kidneys of dogs and cats. The same manufacturer added Melanin to powdered milk that was destined for childrens’ formula and several kids died because of it.

The main message here is that it is better to get the protein directly from an animal source instead of cheaping out and supplying amino acids instead.

Quality dog food

I’m going to use Timber Wolf dog food as an example. It is representative of good quality dog food. I’m not associated with them in any way and I’m not saying it is the best food. Its simply a quality brand that I know. Here’s an excerpt about this brand from the Dog Food Chat blog.

Timberwolf formulas attempt to mimic the diet of a wolf in the wild including high levels of meats and essential fatty acids. To assure freshness and wholesomeness, Timberland dog food is placed in food grade foil-lined bags that will protect the food from oxygen and retain the dog food’s natural moisture balance.

There are currently 8 Timberwolf dog food formulas which have all been guaranteed to meet the AAFCO nutrient profiles required for all life stages.

The protein-rich rations of Timberwolf dog food products are derived from top meat sources including chicken and chicken meal, herring meal, lamb meal, salmon and salmon meal, elk, bison, white fish meal, and turkey meal. Each Timberwolf dog food formula pairs up a raw meat source and a meat concentrate particularly meat meals in an effort to achieve optimum meat content and consequently high protein levels in the diet.

Fresh meat sources such as lamb, elk, chicken, or bison are desirable meat ingredients however these contain high amounts of water which is lost during processing thus leaving only a fraction of the original weight. The incorporation of meat meals is an effort to add to the protein content of the dog food since meat meals contain more than 300% protein compared to fresh or raw meat. In many dog food brands, meat meals are generic, which means the source/s are not specified. The usual sources for these meat meals are meat parts and by-products of meat processing which have been declared unfit for human consumption.

For Timberwolf, they made it a point to specify the type of meat meals to add authenticity to their claim of using only top quality ingredients.

Timberland dog food formulas may be grain-free and the main carbohydrate source is sweet potatoes, a good source of complex carbohydrates.

There are also Timberwolf dog food formulas which contain grains such as oats, barley, and millet which are also good sources of complex carbohydrates with low glycemic indices.

All Timberwolf formulas do not contain soy, simple carbohydrates, corn gluten meal, and artificial additives such as BHA,BHT, and ethoxyquin.

The addition of herring oil, chicken fat, and salmon guarantees a dog food which is rich in omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids which are essential to the numerous physiological processes in the body.

Other notable additions include probiotics and chelated minerals. Probiotics are beneficial microorganisms that enhance the functions of the digestive and immune system. Chelated minerals are those which have been chemically attached to amino acids to enhance their absorption and utilization inside the body.

Those are the kinds of ingredients and proportions that you want in a high-quality dog food. It doesn’t matter much what brand you choose as long as

• The main protein source is animal
• The main carbohydrate source is something like sweet potato
• No chemical preservatives, dyes or flavorings
• Supplements of fish oil and probiotics are desirable.

Final thoughts

It is definitely worth it to spend the extra money on a premium dog food. Be cautious when switching your dog over, though. Good quality dog food is so rich in nutrients that it can cause stomach upsets of various kinds. Switch over gradually because it will take your dog some time to adjust to the better food.

What about the cost of premium dog foods? Well, the do cost more, no question, but how much more depends on how you slice it. I’ve been feeding Willow Beneful and mixing it with canned food or Roll-Over. When I switch over to the better food I won’t need to add the wet food, so that will save some money to offset the higher price. Over the years, I expect her to be healthier and that will save money on Vet bills. It doesn’t take much of a vet bill to wipe out any saving I might have realized by staying with the cheaper stuff.

Another way to deal with the problem of low quality dog food is to make it yourself and forget commercial brands altogether. There is a report in the free downloads section of this blog that contains several excellent recipes for DIY dog food and cat food. Give them a try. Even if you don’t want to go that route all the time, whipping up a batch of home-made dog food will make you feel good and provide a nice change of pace for your dog.

<Begin apology for being off-theme>This article is about Pit Bulls. I could try to tie it in with the Westie theme of this blog by saying that both Pit Bulls and Westies are terriers, have common personality traits, yada-yada-yada. The fact is though, that I simply came across this article when I visited the Terrierman Blog this morning. Its a subject that I’ve put a lot of thought into, Patrick’s article was extremely good and I wanted to share it with you. </End of apology for being off-theme>

When Willow and I are out-and-about and we see a Pit Bull coming, I cross the street and take her away unless she gives clear signals that she wants to meet that particular dog. Willow has become a very good judge of character where other dogs are concerned, and I trust her judgement.

If I avoid Pit Bulls, its not because I fear them and it certainly isn’t because I don’t know anything about them. In fact, I’m quite fond of them. When I lived in Burnaby in the 1990s, my son and I owned a Pit Bull bitch named Ashley, and she was a wonderful dog. So I’m not against Pit Bulls per-se. It seems wise to me to be cautious when my dog is just the right size to be Pit Bull lunch.

Pit Bulls are way over-represented in the population as a whole. There are statistics on pet ownership available from the American Veterinary Medical Association that put the number of dogs in the US at around 72 million. Another statistic I saw said that there were 4.5 million Pit Bulls registered and probably twice that many unregistered. If that’s true, it means that every eighth dog in the country is a Pit Bull. Many of those dogs won’t technically be Pits, I suspect. They must have lumped in crosses, Staffordshire Terriers and so on. Still, that’s a lot of dogs.

What I don’t trust is their owners and their training. In Vancouver the usual scene was a young man being dragged down the street by a large dog. Dog and man are often connected by a heavy chain and the turkey often has the chain wrapped around his hand. Obviously, no knowledge of dogs and no respect for his hands. Its obvious that part of the macho impression he is trying to convey is that he is strong enough to control an untrained, dangerous dog and everybody had better give him a wide berth.

Here’s an excerpt from the Terrierman Article:

Pit Bull owners are more likely to be criminal, young, and ignorant than the average dog owner.

Clifton is too nice a fellow to say it that way, but Pit Bull owners themselves say it, don’t they?

Isn’t that the subtext of the Pit Bull apologists refrain that, “it’s not the dog, but the owner”?

Right.

But actually it’s the dog and the owner. Put amped-up canine genetics together with sub-par human intelligence, and sprinkle denial over all of it, and you get America’s Pit Bull mess.

Or, as Clifton puts it:

The central behavioral issue involving pit bulls is not a matter of “nature versus nurture,” but rather a matter of inherently problematic dogs being acquired by inherently problematic people, who then keep and train the dogs in a manner that multiplies the risk factors.

Bingo.

Pit Bulls in shelters

Pit Bulls are generally the most common dogs in shelters. When times get tough, people tend to get rid of their dogs, especially large breeds that are expensive to maintain. Another reason Pit Bulls are so common in shelters is because of factors listed in the excerpt. The tough guy types that love Pit Bulls as a symbol of their own machismo are often unable to provide a stable living situation for themselves, let alone provide special conditions to keep the dogs in. Their lives move from crisis to crisis and the dogs are often abandoned along the way or apprehended.

Only 3.3% of the dogs advertised for sale online are pit bulls, implying that only about 3.3% of all the dogs sold are pit bulls. Yet more than 16% of the dogs adopted from animal shelters since 2007 have been pit bulls, meaning that shelters are persuading adopters to choose pit bulls at about five times the rate that dog purchasers choose to buy pit bulls when they buy dogs from breeders.

Despite that extraordinary rate of success in pit bull placement, however, about 75% of the pit bulls and pit mixes arriving at shelters are killed, either due to dangerous behavior or simply because shelters are receiving pit bulls in ever-escalating volume. Each year from a third to 45% of the total U.S. pit bull population enters an animal shelter, a phenomenon never seen with any other dog breed….

The net effect of this is that Pit Bulls are also killed in disproportionate numbers. In 2010, 930,000 Pit Bulls were put down. Something needs to be done to cut down the number of Pit Bulls in the population as well as to increase the skill level of Pit Bull owners.

I don’t know what the answer will turn out to be. The approach that was put forward in the Terrierman article was a tax on the sale of the dogs, coupled with a very aggressive sterilization program. If that could be done it would certainly go a long way towards solving the problem of too many Pit Bulls. The only difficulty I see with this, is that it would only work on breeders and owners who were at least semi-legitimate and would leave the biggest source of the problem out of the  equation.

The simple fact is that the mix of dogs in the population and the way those dogs live is a direct reflection of what is going on in society as whole. Since I’m not an American, I can’t even begin to offer a solution and it would be presumptuous of me to do so. It does seem obvious, though, that as long as there is a segment of society that idolizes violence, weapons and rejects any kind of social control, that their dogs would suffer the same type of life as their owners. Unfortunately for Pit Bulls, they are the dogs of choice for this type of person.

Sometimes you do something right and that’s definitely the case with my promotion of the dog health and nutrition webinar by Dr. Andrew Jones yesterday. It was so good that my only regret is not pushing it harder.

I can’t claim much credit for it, though, because I had no idea how good it was going to be. I like Dr Jones. He’s a fellow Canadian. Even comes from the same province as me. So, when I heard about the webinar, of course I promoted it simply out of solidarity and trust. Good call as it turned out.

1800 people signed up for the event. That’s unheard of for a small, niche webinar. Sure, the marketing gurus get those kinds of numbers when they launch a new product, because they are big names and have huge mailing lists. They also get their buddies to promote it to their huge lists. To get those kinds of numbers for a dog health and nutrition webinar is just crazy.

Still, chances are you missed it. Well, I have some good news. The webinar was recorded and it is going to be made available. As soon as it is I’ll post a link to it so you can watch it at your leisure.

Best info on dog health and nutrition

Most webinars I’ve watched are slick productions that give you a few tips and spend the a lot of time trying to sell you stuff, or get you signed up to a mailing list for future sales. The dog health and nutrition webinar was a horse of a different color. It ran for 90 minutes and it was non-stop, detailed information about dog health and nutrition. I could barely keep up. It was amateurish. The guy is a vet, not an internet personality. It was probably his first webinar. I hope it isn’t his last.

Sure, he mentioned his supplement a couple of times, the same supplement you can see the ad for on the sidebar of this blog, but the webinar was not a promotion vehicle. Instead, it was was that rarest of creatures on the internet, pure information simply for the purpose of helping people take better care of their dogs.

If you want to catch a replay of the webinar, the recording is available here. Be sure you take it in.  It was great!

Here’s a link to a free report about dog health and nutrition that you can download. It contains several recipes for dog and cat food that you can make up yourself, so that you can be sure your Westie is getting the best diet possible. Download here.

Below is a copy of an email I received from Dr. Andrew Jones. I encourage everyone to sign up for this free webinar, because it will really be worth your time.

Dr. Jones is a vet who practices in Nelson, British Columbia. He is a certified veterinarian who also teaches holistic and other alternate therapies to achieve the best dog health possible. He also teaches people how to protect themselves and their animals from being chewed up in the veterinary machine. He’s a no BS guy who really believes that people can do a lot more themselves to keep their pets healthy and avoid many expensive trips to the vet.

This free webinar gets my highest recommendation. Sign up now while there are still spots available!

You are invited to a free dog health and nutrition online seminar which will reveal the secrets to keeping your dog healthy with food and at home remedies.

—–> http://www.thedogsupplement.com/webinar/

On the webinar I am going to answer as many of your dog health questions as possible- some of what you’ll learn:

EXACTLY How to Choose a Quality Food… PLUS my TOP Commercial Dog Foods

Is Your Dog ITCHING and SCRATCHING all the time?… QUICK, EASY and INEXPENSIVE Solutions to finally STOPPING the itching FAST

Do Supplements Actually WORK? The answers revealed

CONCERNED about TOXIC Flea Medications?…. Here are my BEST Holistic Flea Prevention and Treatment Options

Raw Food…Is it RIGHT for your dog?…. Here’s WHAT you NEED to know to ensure that it is HEALTHY and SAFE

CANCER in Dogs… WHY is there so much of it, and what can you give to help PREVENT it.

SEIZURING DOG… Here are some NATURAL OPTIONS that can HELP without side effects

Hip Dyplasia, Cruciate Ligament Injury and Arthritis… 5 steps that YOU can Do NOW to have your dog feeling BETTER without DRUGS

The webinar signup is here:

—–> http://www.thedogsupplement.com/webinar

Heal your pet at home!

Best Wishes,

Dr Andrew Jones, DVM

P.S. As a Bonus for signing up, you’ll also get my NEW complimentary dog food secrets report which shows you HOW to choose a  quality inexpensive food, PLUS specific kitchen ingredients you can add to dramatically improve the quality of your dog’s commercial food.

—–> http://www.thedogsupplement.com/webinar

What’s the quality of your dog’s life?

If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably say its great. But is it really?

My dog, Willow, gets walked for at least two hours every day. She gets good meals delivered on time. She has a comfortable bed to sleep on, and I take her with me when I go out whenever possible. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? In fact, I think she’s really one of the most fortunate dogs around. And yet… sometimes I wonder.

Here’s why. Our dogs provide us with companionship, love and stimulation. If we walk them as we should they also get us out of the house and give us an opportunity to exercise. All good stuff, for sure, but there’s another aspect to the relationship, and its this: no matter how good our dogs have it, they are still our prisoners.

If we don’t walk them they don’t get out. Dogs have traded freedom for security, and it isn’t always a fair trade.

Today is a rainy day in Courtenay. We had a good walk in the park this morning, checked out the Salmon spawning in the river, sniffed the tracks where the bear walked through last night, said hello to her dog friends along the way. Right now, she’s curled up on the chair next to mine, sleeping while I work on the computer. She won’t get out again until I take her.

From a dog’s point of view, most of its time is down-time, waiting for its master to do something with it. This is exactly the life a convict leads, mostly just waiting until exercise period, except that dogs can’t read or pursue a hobby to keep their minds alive while they wait.

I’m not trying to pick on anybody here, and I’m not holding myself up as any kind of paragon. I don’t know what the answer is to the quality of life question, but I do think its important that we ask it of ourselves from time to time.

Ideally, our dogs would be partners, not just pets. Every dog would have a fulfilling job to do, one that challenged its mind and gave it lots of exercise. Unfortunately, except for a few working dogs, they are simply our pets and our prisoners.

I don’t know how to move from one state to the other, especially with all the restrictions that modern life places on us, but I can’t stop thinking about it either. What do you think about this? Leave a comment below if you have any thoughts or suggestions. We’d love to hear from you.