petloversinfo

www.handicappedpets.com

2009-10-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

This is a very helpful site for someone who's pet has been injured, has chronic arthritis conditions or needs rehabilitation devices and much more. There is also a community to help give advice and support for the caretakers.

Water Purifying System--Zeta Rod

2009-08-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

Zeta Rod® systems work silently, behind the scenes to condition every drop of water in your home, pool and garden; and to protect valuable plumbing, water using appliances, and surfaces from the destructive effects of hard water. Zeta Rod system's green technology is patented electronic deposit control that accomplishes the goal of preventing scale and biofilms from forming by affecting the physical characteristics of water, rather than by altering its chemistry.

Imagine freeing yourself from the expensive and time consuming task of maintaining an obsolete salt-based water softener-- no more bags of salt to lug around, no more equipment to take up precious space, no more guilt about flushing salt residue into the environment. In fact, salt-based water softeners are restricted or banned in many municipalities across North America.

For over a decade, Zeta Rod systems have successfully improved water and energy conservation, optimized performance of industrial fluids, reduced chemical usage and eliminated scale and biological fouling in water systems. Originally developed for process protection in mining, pulp and paper, and beverage bottling, its use was expanded to reduce or eliminate chemical usage in heavy air conditioning and to protect drinking water systems for airports and municipalities. Water conservation and biological control for agriculture and food production allowed us to observe the beneficial effects that water treated with Zeta Rod has on plants.

Zeta Rod systems for the home are the natural extension of the expertise Zeta Corporation has developed in the industrial and commercial arena. The U.S. and international trademarks, patents, and patents pending that we hold for the Zeta Rod and for certain applications of capacitor-based technology attest to the originality of our research. In other words, we've done our homework.

We invite you to explore this website (zetarod.com) and to learn more about why protecting your home with a Zeta Rod system is a great choice.

Water, the silent killer.

2009-06-01T20:00:00.000-07:00

That goes for pets and people. By the time tap water reaches your sink, it's filled with chemicals like Strontium 90, and heavy metals like lead and cadmium, the products not only of groundwater pollution, but of the pervasive pollution by acid rain. By steam-distilling tap water for your own use, you may be shocked when you go to clean the distiller: brown sludge. Now imagine that residue collecting over time in your pet's body. The results may include arthritis, spondylosis, and cancer.

If you do nothing else as a result of reading this blog or picking up one of the reference books, put your pet on a healthy diet and buy a water-purifying system for your home. Bottled water can be healthy, although not great for the environment. The system is a great investment for your home, your pet and your health as well.

I purchased a reverse osmosis drinking water system called a Zeta Rod (www.zetarod.com) through my plumbing company. I love it. The Water Purifying System-Zeta Rod blog has more details. ;)

Why Best Foods? The AAFCO's "Guidelines"

2009-04-07T13:54:00.000-07:00

Which kind of meat is contained in some foods? Your guess is as good as mine. For that matter, your guess is as good as the AAFCO's (Association of American Feed Control Officials), because this group's only job is to declare what should be stated on pet food labels. Each state has an agricultural department or office of state chemist that may enforce AAFCO guidelines--or not. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) helps AAFCO draft its guidelines, but does nothing to enforce them. Indeed, the FDA takes no action on pet food matters unless a claim is made on a label that may be fraudulent, such as that a cat food may help feline lower urinary tract disease (formerly known as feline urological syndrome) when it does no such thing. There is, in other words, no federal agency that polices the pet food industry at all, and at best a patchwork of state regulators who may, from time to time, make inquiries. Unfortunately for your dog or cat, the pet food industry pretty much regulates itself.

According to AAFCO, meat can be derived from any skeletal muscle of any slaughterd animal. It can come from the tongue, diaphragm, heart, or esophagus, and it can include fat or skin. "If it bears a name descriptive of its kind," AAFCO's guideline goes on to say of meat, "it must correspond thereto."

An investigative report by the Animal Protection Institute of America (APIA), a national nonprofit animal advocacy organization, is both impressive in its scholarshop and utterly depressing in its conclusions. A book by Ann Martin titled Food Pets Die For is even more damning.

Why Best Foods? Chemicals and Preservatives

2009-04-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

Coming soon...

Why Best Foods? Rendering Plants!

2009-02-01T16:08:00.000-08:00

We like to think that commercial brand pet foods contain at least some decent cuts of one or the other, the truth is they contain none. Any cuts for for human consumption are consumed by humans: they're too valuable not to be. Only the heads, feet, and various organs are set aside for pet food. And that's the best of what's in the commercial pet food. More troubling, however, is the livestock fated to end up as pet food.

The poisoning of pet food meat begins with the hormones fed to livestock to make them grow faster, so they can be slaughtered that much sooner. Pets who eat hormone-injected, ground-up and processed meat by-products every day are definitely at greater risks.

The daily feed of livestock is also laced with "maintenance doses" of antibiotics intended to prevent disease. As likely, these drugs instill toxicity that increases cancer risks, both in the livestock and the pets that feed on processed meat. And again, a pet fed the same diet of antibiotic-laced substandard meat every day is at far greater risk of cancer than a person eating choice cuts on an occasional basis.

These guidelines (from the AAFCO), such as they are, ignore a whole other category of livestock: the direly sick animals who collapse from one disease or another and, as a result, never reach the slaughterhouse. These animals are deemed unfit for human consumption, killed, and sent off to "rendering" (the boiling of any animal substance discarded by slaughterhouses as unfit for human consumption) plants which supply meat protein used in livestock and pet feed. This is an established, if little-publicized industry and that "rendered" animal substances go directly into livestock and pet feed. These substances may include "4-D" meat: meat from dead animals, dying animals, and diseased and disabled animals. These 4-D carcasses may have cancerous tumors, worm-infested organs, and the like--basically, anything and everything goes in the pot. Worse, rendering plants happily accept road-kill, dead zoo animals, and, most appallingly, euthanized pets from animal shelters and veterinary clinics.

Shocked by these standards a questionnaire was sent to the state government of all fifty of the United States, asking, among other things, if state laws allow euthanized pets to be rendered and if rendered material is freely used for livestock and pet feed. Twenty states replied blithely that no laws forbid the rendering of euthanized pets or their use in pet food. The remaining thirty states did not reply, suggesting their standards are just as lax.

A couple of years ago, the Los Angeles Times ran a story about the sad fate of two circus elephants so maltreated that they died of tuberculosis during the circus's run. One of the elephants story: "Workers used a forklift to put the animal's body on a truck for transport to the San Bernardino State Diagnostic Lab. A necropsy showed that 80 percent of Joyce's lung tissue was infected either with cancer or tuberculosis. The body was taken to a rendering factory to be processed into animal food."

Best Pet Foods

2008-12-01T11:57:00.000-08:00

Top Best Pet Foods:

Dr. Bob's Earth Animal food

-coming soon @ www.earthanimal.com

Dr. Harvey's Canine Health & Feline Cuisine food Pre-Mix

-www.doggiefood.com, www.waggintails.com, and earthanimal.

Blue Buffalo ("Blue")

-Pet Smart, www.earthanimal.com, www.waggintails.com

Innova

-www.innovapet.com, www.waggintails.com, petfooddirect.com

California Natural

-www.californianaturalpet.com, www.waggintails.com, and www.petfooddirect.com

Next Best First-Rate Brands:

Solid Gold -www.waggintails.com, www.petfooddirect.com

Natural Life -www.petfooddirect.com

Wysong's -www.waggintails.com, www.petfooddirect.com, and earthanimal.

Cornucopia -www.cornucopiapetfoods.com

Precise -www.petfooddirect.com

PetGuard -www.waggintails.com, www.petfooddirect.com

Abady -www.waggintails.com

Raw:

Going raw is also an optimal choice. But not what you buy at the supermarket, it may not be safe. Plus a raw diet MUST be supplemented.

www.bravo-rawdiet.com

www.primalpetfoods.com

Daily Raw Complete Powder (supplement)-www.earthanimal.com

Note:

Search online and/or call your local health food store, grocery or pet food location to be certain they have your desired brand in stock or if they can order it for you.

Shocking Cover Story in USA Today 9/30/08

2008-10-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

Programs try to steer kids as young as 13 from dogfighting that has become a way of life -- and death.

A fight to save urban youth

The vast majority of dogfighters are not rich and famous like former football star Michael Vick or as organized as the pit masters who schedule high-stakes blood battles that rake in thousands of dollars a night.

The most active and numerous dogfighters, experts say, are 13 or 14 or 17 years old--inner-city youths who have trained their pit bulls to fight other dogs in the neighborhood.

"There are at least 100,000 young kids fighting their dogs under the radar in America," estimates Chicago-based anti-violence advocate Tio Hardiman, who built his estimate on conversations with young dogfighters and authorities in 35 states he has visited. In contrast, about 40,000 adults are involved in organized dogfighting, according to the Humane Society of the United States.

...Hardiman, says large numbers of youngsters are conducting street dogfights "in almost every urban inner city," and the numbers are growing. Among the cities he lists: Chicago; St. Louis; New York; Atlanta; Memphis; Detroit; Jackson, Miss.; Los Angeles; New Orleans; Milwaukee; Baltimore; Charlotte; and Newark.

"The kids are getting younger and younger," says Randy Grim, executive director of Stray Rescue of St. Louis. He roams the worst streets rescuing dogs, most of them scarred-up fight-trained pit bulls discarded because they weren't vicious enough. "I saw a kid in a park, he was probably 8 or 9 years old, training and strengthening his pit bull by having him tread water in a creek."

It's not about the dog

Getting and fighting a pit bull has become a way for inner-city youth to "show their toughness," "develop a reputation in the neighborhood: and "make some money,: says Kelly Daley... Urban kids see dogfighting as a stature builder, and they give no thought to what the animals endure, she says. "This kind of stuff doesn't have anything at all to do with the dog."

... Most dogfighting by young people is not the sort described during the Vick episode--big-money events held in well-constructed pits for large audiences. Youth dogfights are usually forced skirmishes between leashed pit bulls on the sidewalks or alleys, or low-stakes unleashed contests in backyards and basements. The results, however, are similar to organized matches: dogs maimed or dying by the thousands every year, enough cash or veneration bestowed on winners to keep them committed, and owners -- teens and pre-teens in this case -- growing increasingly non-empathetic and violence-prone.

Making dogs fight is "not something that's a thought process at all, it's just something they do" as part of the intertwined activities of violence, says Cynthia Bathurst of Safe Humane Chicago, a coalition aimed at ending inner-city violence against humans and animals. Hardiman agrees: "Violence against dogs doesn't even register."

Life expectancy: 18 months

The Vick case hasn't deterred young urban tough guy's. "It actually generated more interest among urban youth," Grim says. Suddenly, kids who had believed dogfighting was only a ghetto or rural Southern sport saw rich role models were involved. " They thought, if (Vick) does it, it's cool."

The fact that Vick got prison time and that dogfighting is a felony doesn't stop them because they reject both as establishment punishment leveled against the disenfranchised, Grim says.

Kids get drawn in at an early age, says Hardiman, motivated by the "glamorization" of dogfighting by rap and hip-hop music and by neighborhood values that prize machismo. They give little value to animals and assert that pit bulls "were born to fight."

"We discovered (in St. Louis) a group that held a dogfight for a church fundraiser, and that sends a pretty strong message to children," Grim says.

A kid gets a pit bull from a breeder who churns out litters in backyards or abandoned buildings, or from a pet store known to have a non-public cache of pit puppies, or they steal animals chained out in a yard or on a fire escape.

The youngster leans from friends or uncles how to turn the animal into a fighter, often starting by setting it against smaller dogs or cats referred to as "pit bait," creatures that almost never survive the encounters. Most kids also do torturous things to their dogs to make them meaner, more pain tolerant, more likely to go the extra mile in battle, says Robert Missari of Rescue Ink, which scours the boroughs of New York for abused animals.

"These kids may make some money on fights" Missari says, "but it's equally about the whole macho thing and security thing of being able to say, 'My dog is the toughest on the block, my pit bull can kill your pit bull.' "

Dogs that are decent fighters may survive several bouts before being mauled so badly they die or are killed. "The life expectancy of an inner-city pit bull is 18 months," says Hardiman. Dogs that won't fight or don't fight well are regarded as "not worthy," and they're shot, hanged or set loose.

Authorities sometimes take a dog away from its owner but these can be tough cases. There are few witnesses, kids claim the don't know who owns a mauled dog, and there has been a pattern of pleading down cases to misdemeanors, experts say.

Kids can quit

...But he (Hardiman) knows some (kids) are strong enough to leave fighting forever. His evidence is Sean Moore, 37, who works with him to steer kids onto a different path. Moore was a revered dogfighter from age 13 to 18. Fifteen of his dogs died in fights or he killed them to end their agony after hideous injuries. "I apologize ever day for what I did back then," Moore says.

He left that life when he realized "I didn't want to be a killer no more. It was an ego trip. I sometimes made some money. But I'm just not a killer."

Here are the helping organizations listed within the article:

Humane Society of the United States

Stray Rescue of St. Louis

Safe Humane Chicago

Rescue Ink

Campaign to End Dogfighting

humane-education camp

Best Friends Animal Society

References

2008-09-05T14:19:00.000-07:00

Martin Goldstein, D.V.M.-

The Nature of Animal Healing, The Definitive Holistic Medicine Guide To Caring For Your Dog And Cat

Robert S. Goldstein, V.M.D. and Susan J. Goldstein-

The Goldsteins' Wellness & Longevity Program for Dogs & Cats

Sharon Callahan-

www.anaflora.com, and Flower Essenses.

Cesar Milan "The Dog Whisperer"-

Episodes, DVD's, books.

Internet

Dedication

2008-09-05T13:45:00.000-07:00

This blog is dedicated to my sweet kitty of 19 1/2 years, Coco. My gift to him was a natural death which occurred February 20, 2008. He is often thought of and missed.

His transition story will be posted in the grieving menu of www.anaflora.com once their website is updated.

I've learned so much on pet health because of him and my 14 1/2 year old chow mix. A big thanks goes to Sophie (Oprah's dog who passed March 10, 2008). Oprah had one of her veterinarians on the show, Dr. Martin Goldstein D.V.M. who wrote The Nature of Animal Healing. That book was the beginning of my finding a holistic vet and the help and guidance I came across in my time of need. I am forever grateful.