Old Mother Hubbard Goes to Hollywood

There’s a story on the front page of the The Globe today on the growth of natural pet foods since 2005.  It’s essentially a story on Wellness, who launched a new marketing campaign at this year’s Golden Globes with an opening party at an LA venue called the Buddha Bark Celebrity and Canine Lounge.  That’s kind of flashy for the  company out of Tewksbury, MA, originally known as Old Mother Hubbard (now known as Wellpet, after a merger with Eagle).  One vet mentioned acknowledges the huge amount of media behind natural foods and is reticent in endorsing any benefit of feeding premium diets, saying “only time will tell”.  To some extent she is right, but I would rather wait and watch for benefits of a healthy diet, than wait and watch for negative effects of a unhealthy diet. What is interesting is, why are people switching (now) to premium foods?  There is the China melamine tragedy, but that was going on 3 yrs ago.  The piece suggests that as we’re staying at home more, as a result of the recession, we’re naturally paying more attention to the pets in the household.  I like that.  I’m not sure what the reason was for front page placement.  Was this a result of some great PR work?  I guess I am that naive.

Good Brushing Videos

A customer wrote after our last newsletter that the link to the brushing video (how to brush your dog’s teeth) was kind of long and not very strong on technique.  I can see he’s right.  So I’m looking for better ones.  If you have any suggestions, please comment below or email me. I happened to mention this a few minutes ago in an email about a couple of fundraising events we’re hosting this coming week, and Connie Pacillo was kind enough to write back right away with this brushing video that she thought was good.  Check it out.  Any tips, photos, videos are welcome.

Love Your Local Shelters Day

Show the love to your local shelters this Valentine’s Day.  If you are in Portland, please come by the store (195 Commercial Street) and enjoy some sweet treats and free digital photos of you and your favorite creature (you can email them to your other sweetie, the human one).  We’re hosting Love Our Local Shelters Day….20% of all sales all day will go to Animal Refuge League, HART, Friends of Feral Felines and Coastal Humane Society.  We’ll have boxes out to accept donated goods (we’re hoping to cross a bunch of things off their wish lists….each link above will take you to their list, if they have one posted).  You can bring items in from home (like clean used towels, bedding, and so on) or buy foods off the shelves.  We hope to see you!

What Cats Do When You’re Not Home

Don’t you want to know?  Friskies enlisted 50 cats from mixed households (apts, houses, with & without other animals in the house) to find out.  Cat-cams were attached to their collars; every 15 minutes a still photo was snapped automatically from the cat’s eye view.  The results are interesting.  Before I give you the results, consider what you think your cat does during all that quiet time?

Most people guess ’sleeping’.  Cats in the study spent as much time looking at computers, books, tv, dvds & even art (or any media) as they did hiding under the table, and sleeping.  It’s suggested that cats love the contrast in intensity of colors, and are best able to see greenish yellows & blues; and of course they seem to love the stimulation of the movement on a computer or tv screen.

Most of the time of course, they are looking out the window (still photos show cats looking from behind plants).

You can check out the photos from their focus group on their flickr page.

February, Choose Anything Raw for Your Food of the Month

The subject of feeding raw diets to pets continues to polarize.  I won’t get into the controversy here.  I’m a raw food believer.  I’ve been feeding Zip a raw diet for most of his 9 years.  I’ve witnessed over time the impact:  lean body mass, bright clear eyes (except during allergy season), calm demeanor (I do think this is related to feeling sated & to an internal balance from good nutrition), absence of doggie breath, regular compact firm stools, moderate thirst.  His pancreatitis is kept at bay, and his grain allergy.  I can tell that he feels good in his body.  He’s got a light trot & a curious happy demeanor.  Sure, some of this might be caused by any number of other factors, like temperament, exercise, attention, stimulation, and so on.  But I do believe that if you take care of the inside, the outside takes care of itself.  Natural health expresses itself in the skin, the eyes, the coat, ease of movement, and so on.

If you’re a raw feeder, you’ll enjoy a month of 10% discounts on any frozen raw diet, and any frozen raw bones or necks.  If you’re new to raw, please take home a free copy of Raw Food Basics, an excellent pamphlet by Bravo that’s the best primer on raw diets I’ve ever read.  And come back to take advantage of our raw food discount all month (we also carry Nature’s Variety & Primal, and can get any other raw diet you are looking for on a weekly basis).  Cats do well with Nature’s Variety medallions…you can cook them partially at first, leaving the center raw, and mash them into the current food to ease the change.  The ideal dental remedy for cats by the way is chicken or turkey necks…the sinew gets between the teeth like floss, and is the next best thing to brushing.  Remember, you don’t have to feed 100% raw to have a positive impact on your animal’s health; you can top-dress the current diet, replacing as little as 30% of the base diet with raw.  Start with a little bit at a time & gradually increase, so that the GI tract can acclimate.

Finding the Right Place

Boston isn’t without dog stores. There’s Pawsh in Back Bay, Polka Dog in South End (my favorite-it’s fun to have the tables turned…now we’re the local customer, and Zip pulls me toward their front door) and JP, Bark Place in South End; Brookline Grooming and Paws for A Cause in Brookline, and so on. But I know there’s room for Fetch. The task is to prove it to bankers or potential financiers, and demonstrate on paper exactly how it’s going to happen and where. Based on relative population, Boston should be able to support 10 times the existing Portland dog/cat stores. Finding the right location is a mix of research, luck and gut instinct. Research means mining the web for data, walking the streets to get a good sense of who (and how many) is on the sidewalk at different times of day, talking with people at the dog parks and coffee shops, and so on. Luck is being in the right place at the right time, that chance encounter with someone who shares something really helpful. And gut, not to be underestimated. As Malcolm Gladwell calls it, ‘thinslicing‘.

Missing that Rocky Coast

On living in the South End of Boston:  friendly dog parks, one officially-sanctioned (with excellent gates & hardscape) and another unofficial but more spacious; the lovely Polka Dog Bakery up the street; Chinese grocery store the size of Shaws in So Po; dogs welcome in even some of the big stores on Boylston Street, and in virtually all the small independent stores; cupcakes named after rescued dogs at The Buttery (they use Plugra butter in their buttercream…dreamy); neighborhood laundry service that knows you by name & washes/dries/perma-folds your clothes for not much more than it would cost to do it yourself; drip coffee that’s rich enough that you can pass on the latte.  And yes the restaurants.  We don’t have a shortage of great eats in Portland, that’s undeniable now….but I don’t think we’ll won’t go hungry here either.

What we miss the most, aside from our buds & our community in Portland, is that rocky coast…those beautiful beaches….not only Scarborough & Higgins at low tide, but our own neighborhood East End Beach.  I told Zip I’d take him to the beach on a sunny Saturday recently.  We made our way over to Carson Beach in South Boston, having read how great it was to live in Southie b/c of the beach, and it was pretty sad.   EEB, we think you are the downtown beauty queen.  Boston has nothing on you.

Leviathans Reading Leviticus?

Philip Hoare has an obsession with whales.  Thankfully he’s a writer, which means he has a depository for all the information he’s accumulated over years of research and hundreds of whale watches.  He was interviewed recently in The Globe Ideas about his new book, “The Whale: In Search of the Giants of the Sea”.  A glance at the stack of yet-to-read dog & cat-related books & magazines by the couch tells me I won’t get to Hoare’s book, but maybe you might.  Or maybe you’d just like to check out the interview.  What stuck with me was this comment by Hoare in the Globe interview (‘Whitehead’ is Dr. Hal Whitehead of Nova Scotia, whale scholar):

“The sperm whale’s brain has a very highly developed neocortex, which indicates its capability for abstract thought, for communication, and perhaps, Whitehead posits, a sense of self-awareness. He says that these animals might have developed a sense of morality, partly because the sound system they use to echolocate is so powerful they can possibly injure and kill each other. They know they have the ability to damage each other; living in a highly complex social structure, they must have developed a moral code about this. Then Whitehead goes even further – a sperm whale might also then question its place in the world to the extent that Whitehead believes it’s possible they might have evolved their own religion.”

Interesting, no?

Animals in Disaster, WSPA Blog on Haiti

A while ago I posted a note on Facebook & Twitter about where to send donations to help the animals in Port au Prince, but just realized I didn’t blog it.  Devastation on this scale unites us, which is good.  I’m circumspect when it comes to how to respond however.  Not when it comes to genuine compassion, which I think is never misplaced.  But in terms of what to do to help.  Right after 9/11, I remember packing up whatever we had on the shelves at the store in the way of dog booties, eye wash, ear wash, salves and first aid for the search & rescue dogs, and shipping them off to a Red Cross headquartered near Ground Zero.  I meant well, but it turns out money was really what they needed.

What I’m seeing on the web about the impact of the quake on Haiti’s animals is much like the impact of the tsunami.  Maybe they got the energetic memo, the high-pitched warnings out of our range of hearing, the subtle rumblings that humans are insulated from.  But they will need food, and treatment once the infections and diseases start to manifest in the aftermath.  WSPA is handling the animal welfare crisis in Haiti, and you can donate to the fund, and read their blog, ‘Animals in Disaster’, here.

Food of the Month, January…

Wellness has some strong products in its line of natural dog and cat foods.  My sense, from 4-footed customer ‘feedback’ is that the palatability is best in their canned foods, and their dry cat kibble.  They just seem to hit it square on in those areas, while the dry kibble for dogs has had just consistently OK reviews.  Some dogs love it, but enough have not been overly excited over the years (reported by our customers) that I would write this.  Again this is in terms of taste and/or texture, it’s not about effectiveness or quality of the ingredients.  But then again, who’d want to eat the same thing for too long, twice a day, if you aren’t getting some kind of yummy raw, canned, dehydrated or homemade top dressing?

Wellness Simple Food Solutions is a go-to food for dogs with sensitivities or allergies.  With one protein, and one carb, it’s a good start to an elimination diet.  The protein sources are novel proteins, which means that their profiles are unique compared to commonly-fed mainstays like beef or chicken (and because they haven’t commonly been fed to dogs, dogs haven’t had a chance to develop an allergy to them).  Keep in mind though that the carbohydrate is ground white rice, which is considered easier to digest than brown, though brown is more nutritious (I’m sure they make up for it in added vitamins and minerals); but whether brown or white, if your dog doesn’t tolerate rice or any kind of grain, you’ll want to wait for next month’s Food of the Month (we’ll choose one that’s grain-free next month to make sure you don’t miss out two in a row).

Wellness doesn’t make a Simple Food Solutions for cats, so we’re offering the Wellness Cat Food cans (original, as opposed to Evo, which we featured recently) as our cat food of the month.  In the spirit of hypo-allergenic foods, most of the Wellness cat cans are appropriate for cats with allergies (most of the cans are grain-free), urinary tract issues (especially topped with an acidifier like Wholistic Pet WholeCran Intense,  Wysong Biotic Ph Minus, or Solid Gold Berry Balance).  The moisture in the cans do make a difference in supporting the urinary tract (kidney disease is irreversible….and very common…the more water in their diets, the better). And cats love Wellness cans.  One of my two cats used to be prone to ’sending his food back’….up, that is….and Wellness was one of the only food he could consistently keep down.  I’d top his food with Digest All Plus, a probiotic/enzyme powder from Wholistic Pet (I do recommend an enzyme/probiotic as a supplement to any processed pet foods).  Check our January Newsletter for a coupon for a discount on any of our enzyme/probiotic supplements.