First drug for fat dogs

Pfizer has been granted a licence by the US Food and Drug Administration to market the world's first medical treatment for canine obesity. The product, called Slentrol, was originally tested as a potential treatment for overweight people. But it was found to cause undesirable side-effects including abdominal distension, colic, diarrhoea, flatulence and headaches.

Slentrol is a selective microsomal triglyceride transfer protein inhibitor, blocking the assembly and release of lipids from the gut wall into the bloodstream. It also appears to have effects on the nervous system in suppressing appetite but the company admits that the precise mechanism for this is unclear.

As carnivores, dogs can tolerate much higher levels of fat in the diet than humans and avoid some of the side-effects caused by preventing lipid absorption. Yet treatment can still cause problems in dogs such as vomiting, and the FDA licence authorises its use only under veterinary prescription. 

 

Obesity is a growing problem across the developed world in dogs as in their owners. Alex German from Liverpool Veterinary School, UK, estimates that about 40 per cent of dogs in the US and Europe are overweight, with about 10 per cent clinically obese. Slentrol, given as a liquid which can be taken orally or added to food, is likely to cost the owner between $1 (50p) and $2 a day, according to the company. In clinical trials, dogs on Slentrol lost about three per cent of their weight a month, without changing their diets.

German, who runs a special clinic for the owners of obese pets, acknowledges drug treatment may help in the short term but he is sceptical about its long term value. 'Canine obesity isn't a complicated issue - it's a simple imbalance between calorie intake and the amount of exercise that the dog takes. The bottom line is that successfully maintaining the dog at a healthy weight needs a change in the owner's behaviour,' he said.

Dog Food Allergies

Dogs are more like humans than we realize and, believe it or not, there is a such thing as dog food allergies. Just like in people, dogs who are allergic to certain types of ingredients commonly found in dog food can exhibit any number of symptoms from skin problems to digestive problems to hair loss.

Actually, dog food allergies are one of the most common type of allergy for dogs. While most people tend to associate a food allergy with digestive problems, this is not true in most cases. Commonly, a food allergy manifests itself through the skin with skin and hair problems in dogs. So, if you notice your dog having any type of problem, you might want to consult your Vet to rule out as dog food allergy before you start him on a battery of expensive tests and medicines.

If you find that your pet has an allergy to a certain food, then it is very important for health reasons that you figure out exactly what it is. Once you discover the allergy, it is your job to make sure you pet does not eat that certain type of food anymore. Luckily, this can be easily done, as there are special foods now that are made specifically for dogs with food allergies.

Generally, there is no cure for allergies. The only choice one has would be to avoid that certain type of food all together. Typically, dog food allergies are caused by dairy, beef, wheat, corn, soy and chicken which, coincidentally, are the most common ingredients in commercial dog foods. If your dog has a food allergy, you need to eliminate these ingredients one by one in order to determine which one is causing the allergy, then you must seek a food that does not have that ingredient(s).

So, how do you know if your dog has a food allergy?

Some common signs that your pet may have allergies are sneezing, scratching and itchy skin, hair loss, ear infections, hot spots and skin infections. If you believe your pet is dealing with dog food allergies, then it is your responsibility to take action to relieve them of the problem. The first step is a visit to the vet who can properly diagnose the problem and outline a course of action.

5 Ways to Establish a Healthy Relationship With Your Dog

Giving your dog the right amount of attention can sometimes be extremely time consuming. With work, school and other leisure activities we sometimes tend to ignore our dogs when we get home. A dog is a man (and woman's) best friend! They need some TLC (Tender Love and Care) as well. PetTastics has set out to provide our readers and clients with the ultimate guide to making your dog feel right at home!

1. Quality Time: Your dog loves to spend time with you, especially if he is the only animal in the house. The best way to spend quality time with your dog is to take it for a walk. It provides you with exercise as well as your dog. Animals have feelings too and can sometimes get lonely. Let your dog know that you still love them by going outside and throwing a ball around for a few minutes. Every minute counts!

2. Structured Routines: Your dog has a tight schedule just like you do. They sleep, eat and play at scheduled times. Keep them on a routine so they can get use to it. It helps keep your busy schedule under control as well.

3. Socializing With Other People and Dogs: Making sure your dog is well-behaved in public is one of the most important aspects of dog ownership! It is extremely important to train your dog so that they can enjoy their time out around other dogs as well as people. As dog owners we understand that many dogs are extremely protective over their owners and that can sometimes result in attacks. Let your dog know that it's perfectly ok to interact with other dogs and that they do not propose a threat.

4. Establish a Sense of Trust: No one wants to feel like a stranger in their own home. Give your dog respect and allow him to develop his own sense of territory, after all, it is their home as well. Pat your dog on the head when you come in from work or give it a kiss before you leave to ensure them that you will be returning. Providing them with that blanket of security makes them feel confident in their ownership.

5. Develop Communication: Often times we scream at our dogs when they mess up. Although we need to punish them and teach them a lesson when they mess up, we also should embrace them and applaud them when they do good. Carry treats around with you and reward them when they have done a good deed. Also,be aware of the tone of voice you use with your pet. Always using an aggressive tone of voice or using violent hand gestures may put your dog into defense mood and they may retaliate against you. Dogs have characteristics that are similar to those of people. They respond to tone of voice as well as facial expressions.

Please be reminded that PetTastics advice is for informational purposes only
.

Why Do Dogs Like to Kiss Us

Are Doggie Kisses a Sublimation of Their Urge to Bite?

They're sublimating their urge to bite.

In the Mike Nichols film, Wolf, Will Randall, a meek, downtrodden book editor (played by Jack Nicholson), is bitten by a wolf one winter night and finds himself becoming more and more in tune with his primal nature. He can smell things like tequila on a co-worker's breath from clear across the building. He can hear people talking from several floors away. He can read and edit whole manuscripts without his reading glasses.

Worried that the changes he's experiencing may have also caused a nocturnal blackout, Randall goes to see Dr. Alezais, an expert in animal lore. Toward the end of the interview the aging Dr. Alezais reveals that he's been told that he's dying. However, he thinks that if Will Randall were to bite him, he might become strong like the wolf and live forever.

Search for a mental health professional near you.

"I can't ask you to transform me with your passions," Alezais says.

"I can only ask you to honor me with your bite."

My dog Freddie was punished for biting when he was a puppy. This created some behavioral problems later on (severe panic attacks) that took me a while to unravel. However, once I did, I observed a funny, and very sweet side-effect to the new emotional freedom he felt once his fears were gone. Before that, whenever we came home from our walks, he would wait at the top of the first landing, and as I came up and got close to him, he would lick my nose in a kind of ... what, a "submissive greeting?" Perhaps, though he really wasn't the submissive type.

But oddly enough, once I'd helped him resolve his fears, whenever we came home and I got near the top of the landing, instead of licking me he'd slowly incline his head toward mine and use his front teeth to lightly pinch the tip of my nose. The experience was thrilling; it often gave me goose bumps. He used his teeth so gently and so precisely, it felt to me as if he was re-establishing an emotional connection between us that had previously been lost.

Wolves make a living with their teeth. Predators aren't really designed to be social animals because their urge to bite has to be kept under lock and key around other members of their group, otherwise there'd be bloodshed. And yet wolves are very social; they live together in almost complete harmony and are extremely cooperative when hunting. They even have the ability to share food, eating side-by-side, once their prey has been killed. This is pretty remarkable given the Darwinian view of nature as a cut-throat enterprise, even among members of the same animal group.

To me, all canine behavior is essentially a process of tension and release. When emotional energy builds up in an dog's system, it creates tension which then needs to find a release point through behavior. For wolves the most complete and most satisfying release of tension comes either through biting prey (during the hunt) or copulating (during mating season). In other words nearly everything a wolf does is a sublimation of his urge to bite (his prey drive), or his urge to mate (his sex drive).

One way of sublimating the urge to bite is "submissive" licking, commonly thought to be how a wolf appeases a more "dominant" pack member. But a) dominant and submissive behaviors are so rare in wild wolf packs as to be virtually non-existent, and b) if a wolf's emotional energy is geared to always be expressed primarily through biting, and c) if he also wants to maintain pack harmony at all costs, he may very well lick his pack mate's lips or chin, instead of biting them.

Submission? Probably not.

Sublimation? Probably so.

If much of a wolf's social behavior is based on sublimating the urge to bite, the domestication process for dogs is based almost entirely on doing that. The proto-human, proto-dog dynamic was based on one simple rule: dogs that bite don't live to mate. That was the primary behavioral aspect of the natural selection process. So dogs took what was already a natural aspect of the wolf's pack dynamic, and expanded on it exponentially in their relationships with human beings.

Meanwhile, it's been suggested (I think by Desmond Morris) that when dogs kiss us (which is anthropomorphic, since a kiss involves puckering the lips, and a dog's lips don't pucker), they do so because that's how wolf pups get their parents to regurgitate a meal when they come back to the den.

This doesn't make sense to me. It's like taking a decal from one behavior and sticking it onto another. Dogs are very practical and context-oriented. It would be very unusual for a dog to take a behavior specifically related to her parents, and somehow apply it to human beings. For one thing dogs move through space on the horizontal axis. Humans are vertical. There's no way a dog could mistake a human being for another dog. Also, dogs don't just lick our lips, they lick our noses, our ears, our hands and feet. Plus, the more stressed a dog is, the more he tends to lick. Plus dogs lick us a lot more when they're going through puppyhood than they do when they're adults. Why? Probably because puppies feel a lot more oral tension than adult dogs.

There's one more thing to consider. When we smile it's considered a signal of good will. But to a chimpanzee a smile communicates fear. Similarly, when a puppy sees your big human head coming toward him, a part of him reacts with fear, and that part wants to bite you. But dogs make their living with their hearts, not their teeth. They have strong feelings of love and affection for their owners. Plus, they retain the genetic knack of maintaining group harmony at all costs. So when your dog sees you come leaning in for a kiss, he sublimates his urge to bite, and licks you instead. Then, over time, as he accrues more and more feelings of trust on top of the love he already feels, he finds that licking you actually feels good, not just because it releases his nervous tension, but also because of how it makes you feel. (Our feelings are very important to our dogs; they're like the sails and rudders they use to navigate their way through their relationships with us.)

That's the simple, dog-centric genesis of why dogs lick us: it's a way of sublimating their urge to bite. That's why Freddie licked me when I reached the top of the stairs, back before his fears of being punished for biting went away. It's also why he replaced the less satisfying release he got from licking me, and started giving me those tender little love bites on the tip of my nose. He finally felt free enough to share a tiny bit of his deepest and most primal nature with me.

He honored me with his bite.

Is it Safe to Kiss Your Pet

We’ve all done it, or at least know someone who has. Animal lovers who kiss their pets — mouth to mouth. “Kisses” from mans’ best friend or a feline companion may seem loving and irresistible, but is it safe?

There are many myths surrounding pet smooches. Some believe a dog’s mouth is cleaner than a human mouth, others think their dog or cat’s mouth is a disinfectant and has no germs at all — which, considering how pets clean themselves, can probably be considered untrue right off the back.

We asked Dr. Paul Maza, co-director of the health center at the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University, how close is too close when it comes to your pet?

“Many of the different types of bacteria in dogs and cats are the same type of bacteria as in humans. At any given point in time they are probably not any dirtier than ours,” Maza said.
In fact, Maza said if owners practice oral hygiene on their pets, like with brushing their teeth, a pet’s mouth can actually be even cleaner than a human mouth.

 

“Because most of the bacteria and viruses in a dog’s mouth are the same as in a person’s mouth, it is safe to kiss a dog, just like a person. You can probably catch more from kissing a human than a dog or cat,” he said.

According to the Humane Society, there are approximately 77.5 million owned dogs in the United States and 93.6 million owned cats.

Although very unlikely, there are rare instances in which zoonotic diseases, or diseases that are transmitted between animals and humans, can occur.

Maza said disease transmission is very rare in cats and even more rare in dogs.

“Cats may have bartonella, or cat scratch fever, that can cause disease in people. Taxolpasmosis, or certain parasites that have eggs in fecal matter — the transmission of parasites can cause disease in people. But again, it doesn’t happen very often, it is unlikely,” he said.

But we had to ask — what about fecal matter in a pet’s mouth? That is their way of taking a shower, after all.

Maza said that although the grooming technique of pets can cause fecal bacteria in the mouth, it is often swallowed and out of the mouth quickly.

“Fecal matter could be considered comparable to any other normal bacteria,” he said.

For many people, kissing a dog or cat may be less of a safety issue and more of a mysophobia issue, or fear of germs.

“A dog licking a baby on the head or hand is probably safe, but some like to avoid germs at all costs. Others say there are germs everywhere and it is too hard to avoid them all the time,” he said.

Those who should think about avoiding a kiss from Fido include anyone with a compromised immune system like those with HIV or other diseases, as well as the elderly.

There are debates that a kiss from a dog or cat may be beneficial for the immune system of young children.

“Babies that are ill shouldn’t be around too many germs, but others say it is good for children—it stimulates the immune system and establishes early immunity,” Maza said.

As far as preventing any possible illness from kissing a pet, Maza recommends “common sense hygiene.”

“Many people will use gloves to clean litter boxes and pick up dog poop, and you can even wash hands after petting. If you want to prevent bacteria of the mouth, you can brush pets mouths and use rinses just like people do,” he said. “Don’t allow pets on kitchen counters and if it can’t be avoided then wipe them of before preparing food.”

Overall, Maza said the mental health benefits of kissing your pet far outweigh the risks of getting sick.

“I kiss my dog all the time, “ he said
.

How to Train a Dog to Give Kisses

Giving kisses on command is a favorite dog trick for many people, especially children. It also happens to be one of the easiest tricks to train a dog to do.

What You Need
Some yummy treats are all that you need to train a dog to give kisses. Peanut butter or cream cheese works well because it's easy to smear a small bit on your cheek or hand. You may also want to keep a towel on hand, especially if you are working with a dog known to be a big drooler, like a St. Bernard or Mastiff!
Here's How to Do It
Take a little peanut butter or cream cheese and place a dab on your cheek (or wherever you would like your dog to kiss).

Give the command "give kisses."
Lean towards your dog, and let him do the rest. He should be eager to lick the treat from your cheek.

Practice this dog trick for a few minutes several times a day. It won't be long before your dog comes over to give you a big kiss every time you give the command!

Capturing the Behavior
Another method of training a dog to give kisses is tocapture the behavior. Here's how:

Anytime your dog licks you, tell him "give kisses."

You can also use a clicker to mark the behavior, just click the clicker anytime your dog kisses you.
After your dog has given you a kiss, tell him "good" and give him a treat. Your dog will soon be trained to offer a kiss on command, and all you had to do was to capture his natural behaviors.

TroubleshootingSome dogs get a little overly exuberant, and once you teach them to give kisses it can be tough to get them to stop. In this case, you can put an end to the kisses on command, too. When your dog is kissing you, tell him "enough." Wait for him to stop licking you, and then tell him "good" and give him a treat. Do this each time your dog is giving you kisses, and you'll soon be able to tell your dog to stop licking you whenever he gets out of control.

Some dogs are resistant to giving people kisses on the face. If this is the case for your dog, you can try using a treat he really loves, or you can train him to give kisses somewhere else, such as on your hand. Use the same steps as used above, but put the treat on the back of your hand rather than your face.

TipsKeep in mind that even though you may like big, wet sloppy kisses from your dog, not everyone will appreciate the affection. If you are going to try out this dog trick on your friends or visiting children, you may want to teach your dog to give kisses on the hand rather than on the cheek.

Why won't your dog kiss you?

Q: Reggie is the love of my life. He is a 4-year-old red wheaten cairn terrior and has been with me since he was 8 weeks old. He's friendly and well behaved with everyone from babies to grannies. The problem is he does not give his mommy, or anyone else for that matter, "kisses". He watches other dogs give their owner loving licks, but when I ask Reggie to give me a kiss, he literally runs away.Dog trainer Laura Garber helped TODAY’s Natalie Morales train her adopted dog Zara, and now she'sanswering your questions! This week, Garber tackles doggie kisses, solving eating problems, dealing with house training issues and more.

Do you think maybe he's just a gentleman and doesn't kiss and tell? Is there anything I can do to get this little guy to be a little more loving?

Also, Reggie is not a lap dog. He'll sit beside me, but never sits on my lap for more than 30 seconds. If I try to pick him up to hold him, he wiggles and squirms until I put him down. Also, Reggie only plays with girl dogs. If a male dog gets too close, he goes into his alpha dog mode — even if the other dog outweighs him by 50 pounds. So far no fights or biting, he just growls and the other dog takes off. Is there anything I can do to train him to be more social? — Carol from St. George, Utah

Do you have a dog training question? Ask Natalie's trainer!

 

Hiya, Carol! I think what’s standing in the way here is the great divide between canids and primates. What we humans call “kisses” with our dogs are anything but affection. Puppies lick their mother’s lips to elicit her to regurgitate the contents of her stomach for them to consume. Later in life, one dog may lick another dog’s lips as a submissive gesture to invite interaction but not a loving one. So, the anthropomorphic assumptions we make — and labels we choose — regarding dog behavior are, if anything, muddying the waters.

That your dog snuggles up against you and seeks such closeness speaks volumes about his attachment to you and is a very loving gesture.

— LauraAs for his reactivity towards other dogs, though I would need to see it to be definitive, it’s most likely defensive aggression due to fear and anything but the behavior of a secure dog. I would suggest that you seek the aid of a certified dog trainer in your area who works with aggression.

Q: Our 8-month-old Chesapeake retriever, Jack, is fully house trained. We rarely (if ever) have an accident in the house. However, he also will not relieve himself in his dog kennel! He has a large 15 by 15 kennel with fresh shavings and he holds himself until we let him out after work, sometimes waiting six hours! This can't be good for him. We've tried scooping his poop and pee and leaving it in a corner of the enclosure but he still won't do it. What can we do? — Lauren from Berlin, New Hampshire
Hiya, Lauren! By Jack’s age a pup can hold his bladder a good long time, certainly longer than the six hours required by your daily routine. If you have to leave him longer than eight or ten hours you should get a neighbor to give him a bit of a break half way through, as much for a break from the monotony as for pottying. But six hours is quite doable.

So I would most emphatically say don’t leave poop and pee in the corner of his enclosure. He’s trying to keep his area clean.

Hope that helps!

— Laura

Q:I have a 9-year-old Westie who is very smart, very protective and is the love of my life, but he has one very annoying problem. When the TV is on and he sees any animals, birds, or sometimes young children, he barks like crazy and runs to the windows and door — thinking the TV is a window. How do I get him to understand that it's only TV? — Debbie from Ossining, New York

Hiya, Debbie! When a dog is exhibiting an undesirable behavior, I try to imagine what I would prefer and then shape that behavior. In the case of a dog who’s getting aroused in front of the television, I would imagine that you’d prefer that he be lying quietly beside you as you watch TV.


Secondly, I would work on building his ability to relax, first in a calm environment and, again, gradually building to being relaxed in front of the TV. Check out my description of a relax protocol in my answer to Lisa from Vienna, Virginia back in May.I would train him to do this coming from a couple of different directions. First, I would work on the café-ready default down, an exercise which was described in my recent article "ShapingCompanion Behaviors." This will teach him how to lie beside you. Start by practicing in a quiet environment with no distractions; then gradually increase distraction until he can do this while the TV is on. (Remember that your rate of reinforcement — or treating — may need to be fairly high when you finally put it to the test in front of the TV.)

Though it’s not explicitly part of your question, I would suggest that you not allow your pooch to look out the window and bark at passing people and animals. It can accentuate territorial behavior in the home, a phenomenon I describe in more detail in my recent dog blog entry.


— LauraStory: Practice with your pooch: Shape companion behaviors


Q: My dog Charlie is a young adult schnauzer Westie mix. He was a rescue from a puppy mill. We have had him for a few weeks and recently noticed Charlie likes to grab a mouth full of food and throw it onto the carpet where he proceeds to eat it piece by piece. How do I stop him?
— Ali from Chicago, Illinois

Hiya, Ali! I’ve had countless clients who have rescued dogs from puppy mills. The life these dogs, particularly the breeding pairs, have led up to the point of finding a loving forever home is just unimaginable. That you have opened your home to such a little soul is laudable and so special! If only more people did this, rather than buy puppies from pet stores who are the product of this appalling industry. Story: Dig, dog, dig! Stopping your pooch from making huge holes


That said, many of these dogs may have odd little idiosyncrasies due to their earlier impoverished lives. These behaviors may fade as time passes. You might try feeding him from different vessels (ceramic, plastic, etc) to see if he’s disturbed by the reflections in his metal bowl, for instance. Or he may not like the sound of his tags against his bowl, or he may feel a little uncomfortable where his food bowl is placed. If it’s against a wall, perhaps he feels cornered, or if it’s the middle of the room, he might feel exposed. I would experiment with different variables and see if you can find a way to make him more comfortable.

Hope that helps!

— Laura

Do you have a dog training question for Laura? Submit it here!

Laura Garber is a dog trainer and behavior specialist. She is the owner of WoofGang Dog Training.

My Dog Licking or Kissing

Is your dog kissing you when he slurps your facelike a lollipop? Although we may never know,there are several possible explanations for thisbehavior, not all of which are mutually exclusive.The motivation for face licking appears to vary fordifferent dogs and different circumstances.

Background

Dogs lick for a number of reasons, some of whichare purely biological:

• Bitches lick their newborn pups to arouse them from theirpostpartum daze. In this situation, licking serves to remove clingy membranes from the pup, freeing him up to move andstimulating him to breathe. 

•  Once the birthing and clean-up processes are over, the mom dog's licking her pups stimulates them to eliminateboth urine and feces. It is a couple of weeks before pups will eliminate spontaneously.

• Licking also serves another more romantic role in the sense that it is a comfort behavior that assists with pups'bonding to their mom and spurs on their mental development. 

• From about six weeks of age, some pups lick their mom's lips when they want her to regurgitate food for them.They lick; she vomits; they eat it. This behavior is a vestige of their wild ancestry and was designed to ensure thatthey profited from the spoils of the hunt. 

• Licking can also be a signal of submission and so is part of dog's body language communication system. 

• Pups and adults lick and groom themselves. It is part of normal survival-oriented behavior. Licking their own lips, limbs, and trunk removes traces of the last meal that would otherwise begin to decompose and smell. Quite apart from the hygienic aspects of this behavior, it also serves to keep dogs relatively odor free and thus olfactorily invisible to their prey. Domestic dogs retain these instincts even though they are not vital today. 

Psychology
Dogs, like people, engage in a number of "displacement behaviors" when nervous or stressed, and many of these behaviors involve self-grooming. You only have to glance to the side the next time you are stuck at a red light to see what I mean. The driver next to you will likely be stroking his hair, looking in the mirror, or trying to pick something out from between his teeth.

 Dogs do not experience the stop-go conflict of the traffic lights but they do have their own share of dilemmas. Take going to the vet's office, for example. We vets expect our more anxious patients to begin nervously licking their own lips as they enter the clinic. They may even lick or nibble their feet or flank.

 There is no doubt that some dogs lick as a gesture of appeasement and goodwill. They may lick their own lips or may lick a person to whom they wish to signal deference. If the recipient of the licking interprets this behavior as "make-up kisses," that's just fine. Perhaps the behavior is analogous to some forms of human kissing and thus their interpretation may be close to the truth.

 However, not all dogs seem penitent when they slurp the faces of people they meet. For some dogs, it seems that they engage in face licking because they can get away with it and because it gets a rise out of the person. When licking is performed for such a reason, it may be component of the "center stage," attention-demanding behavior of dominant dogs. No lick! is a good command to have working for these guys.

Psychopathology
 Some sensitive dogs in stressful environments compulsively groom themselves to the point of self-injury. Licking of this type leads to acral lick dermatitis (a.k.a. lick granuloma). Compulsive licking by dogs is not always self-directed. Some dogs take to licking floors, walls, or furniture. Whatever the outward expression of compulsive licking, the mechanics underlying the disorder are the same. In treatment of this condition, first the underlying anxiety must be addressed though, in some cases, it is also necessary to employ anti-compulsive medication to help break the cycle.

Lovey Dovey?
I don't believe dogs express their sometimes quite profound feelings for their owners by licking or "kissing." In fact, I don't believe dogs really "kiss" at all. Perhaps some dogs are so awed by their owners that they feel the need to signal their ongoing deference by face licking. Call it love, if you will.

One other thing we should always bear in mind is that any behavior can be enhanced learning. Psychologist BF Skinner immortalized the concept that reward increases the likelihood of a response. So it is with licking. If a dog licks his owner's face – perhaps as a vestige of maternal lip licking, perhaps out of anxiety, or just because his owner's face tastes salty – and his behavior is greeted with attention, hugs and (human) kisses, he will likely repeat the behavior in future. In such cases the dog learns just how to push he owners buttons and the owner becomes analogous to a vending machine.

So while face licking may not represent true romantic love, it nevertheless can sometimes be interpreted as some token of a dog's affection or respect ... and that's nothing to sniff at.

The Best Ways To Store dogs Food

Pet food can turn out to become a pretty huge expensive, especially if you are the owner of large or many pets. But still, paying good is not enough for providing quality foods to your puppies pets. For proper pet care, it is necessary to store the pet foods appropriately so that they don’t lose their nutritional value.

Pet food storage helps in preventing the food from a wide range of possible threats, including bacteria, insects, mold, and even oxygen itself. For your kind information, the oxygen presence can leads to oxidation which is the same process that results in iron rust. Although oxidation cannot be absolutely prevented, you can at least try to reduce the process. Keep pet food in its original container whenever possible and also place it inside a sealable container. This helps the pet food to stay fresh and hygienic for a longer period.

Bacteria are also one of the major threats to the safety and quality of pet food that your lovely baby pet no matter pet dog or pet cat will rely on to survive. Bacteria thrive in circumstances that are dark, moist, and warm. Well, it might be tough to remove the darkness factor from the storage of pet food but you can no doubt try to control the moisture and temperature to some extent. Store the pet food in a dry, cool place.  Avoid bathrooms and basements as they tend to encourage moisture. The same guidelines apply when it comes to mold prevention.

Moreover, insects also can cause a huge harm to pet food -causing a negative impact to pet care. So, make sure that the seal of pet food container has been sealed tightly enough to not let them secure their entrance.  Lastly, don’t forget to check the expiry date of pet food before purchasing it. Keep in mind that there is no point in trying your best to store the pet food as perfectly as possible keeping proper pet care in mind if the pet food you bought is already expired. Get only the best pet insurance policies from Bow Wow at great prices.
If you’re looking for quality pet supplies, visit Pets Corner, an online pet shop.

ability sense toxic compounds of Pet dogs

Washington, April 27 : Pet dogs could serve as 'biosentinels' for monitoring human exposure to toxic compounds present in shared households.

Marta Venier and Ronald Hites environmental scientists from the Indiana University believe pet dogs could help sense these compounds, thanks to the presence of chemical flame retardants in their blood at concentrations five to 10 times higher than in humans, but lower than levels found in a previous study of cats.

Dogs may be better proxies than cats, they say, because a dog's metabolism is better equipped to break down the chemicals, reports the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The study focuses on the presence of polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in the blood of dogs and in commercial dog food, according to an Indiana statement.

PBDEs have been widely used as flame retardants in household furniture and electronics equipment. The compounds can migrate out of the products and enter the environment.

"Even though they've been around for quite a while... The bottom line is that we still need to keep measuring them, particularly in homes," said Venier.

PBDE mixtures made up of less-brominated compounds are regarded as more dangerous because they bioaccumulate in animal tissues.

These mixtures were banned by the European Union and were voluntarily removed from the US market in 2004, but remain in the environment. Mixtures with more-brominated compounds remain in use in the US, but will be phased out by 2013.(IANS)