Better Dog Nutrition Tips

If you would like to gradually improve your canine companion’s diet but are not quite ready to cook a doggie stew every few days, here are a few easy changes to make.

• Water: One of the easiest things to change is your dog’s water supply. Author Pat Lazarus strongly recommends buying a water filter to attach to your faucet.

• Veggies and Fruits: These should equal one-third of the daily diet. Use raw or cooked veggies: beans, split peas, lentils, carrots, zucchini, and broccoli are good. Add raw, cut-up fruit occasionally. Organic, unsprayed produce is best.

• Garlic: Garlic is used widely for animals with various conditions. It can help build the immune system and is a good flea and worm repellent, but it may cause anemia if given for long periods of time. Adding a crushed clove of garlic to your dog’s food every day is appropriate.

• Dairy: Raw eggs and cottage cheese. Other possible additions are yogurt and cheddar-type cheese. All provide protein and iron.

• Grains: Cooked grains should equal one-third of a dog’s diet. A few appropriate choices are barley, brown rice, buckwheat, oatmeal, cornmeal and, even, crumbled whole wheat bread. These provide carbohydrates.

• Vitamins: Lazarus would add more of vitamins C and E to a general multiple supplement. In fact, many dog specialists recommend additional vitamin C. Vitamin B is also vital for a healthy immune system and can be found in brewer’s yeast, another possible daily additive. However, adding arbitrary supplements of vitamins or minerals is generally not recommended without consulting your veterinarian.

• Oil: Many veterinarians and breeders recommend a tablespoon or two a day of vegetable or canola oil, especially for a dry coat or skin. However, oil may add calories.

People for Animals via care2.com

Iowa Shelter Dog Nurses 9 Kittens

A pooch in Burlington, Iowa, is taking care of nine kittens that lost their own mother.

Read Full story and watch video:
http://www.local10.com/family/15972844/detail.html

People for Animals

First Aid

Maggoted wounds are most common to be seen in stray dogs. . With a little bit of learning and experience you can heal them yourselfs! Contact your local vet to teach you how to use injections and medicines. This is how we heal maggot wounds.

1) First of all put a leash in the neck to restrain the dog.

2) Then put some turpentine oil (medical not the paint one) directly on the wound and ensure that the whole of the wound is engorged with turpentine. If possible plug the wound with a cotton swab soaked in turpentine.

3) Then inject "Ivermectine" SC (Subcutaneous) 1ml per 50kg body weight. Please learn how to use injections from your vet.

4) A strong antibiotic should be given as well. Amikacin is a good choice. Give 100 mg to an adult IM (intramuscular) or SC (Subcutaneous).

5) Injection Ivermectin may be repeated after 48 hrs. and a third dose may be given after one week if required.Daily dose of anti biotic alongwith application of turpentine will help in healing the wound fast..

6) If the dog is aggressive you can calm him by using tranquilizers. Please dont use them unless you are experienced.

Deep seated maggoted wounds or wounds in ears, skull and some other portions of the body are almost impossible to heal especially if the patient is a stray. So the voice of humanity is EUTHANASIA (PTS). Call a doctor as early as possible.

People for Animals

From food to fad: It’s a dog’s life in China

Despite the emergence of Western-style pet rearing, dog meat remains a popular winter cuisine in parts of China. Beijing has more than 120 restaurants serving dog meat, although recent media reports say that many are closing as the city tries to change its image before it hosts the Olympic Games in August. Known as “fragrant meat”, dog meat is purported to have medicinal benefits and improve blood circulation in winter. REUTERS

Guangzhou: If you’re a dog in China then you’d better hope to be of the cute and furry variety sold in pet shops rather than a homely-looking mutt sold at a live animal market as the main ingredient in dog meat stew.
“We still eat dog, but not this kind of dog,” Liu Ming, a pet shop salesman said, pointing to a toffee-colored puppy with floppy ears on sale for about 500 yuan or $70. “We eat much bigger dogs”. Keeping pets is becoming all the rage among the affluent in China, even though some Chinese still consume dog and cat meat.
Combined spending on pet food and pet care in China will be worth an estimated $870 million in 2008, according to Euromonitor International. That’s up roughly 15% from the $757 million spent in 2007. “In China, more and more people are raising pets. It’s not as difficult as before,” Liu said, as curious onlookers crowded his stall in a dusty street of the southern boomtown of Guangzhou.
One thing is certain: the old belief that pets are a bourgeois indulgence held during the rule of Mao Zedong no longer has currency in the booming economy of the world’s most populous country.
In the marquee cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, a growing nouveauriche class even sees pets — particularly dogs — as fashion items, outfitting them in designer clothing, paying for spa treatments and dyeing their fur unnatural colors.
That trend, experts say, is a stark contrast to the tradition of eating everything from silkworms to pangolins.
“In Beijing, there’s a huge market with pitiful dogs waiting in cages to be sold as meat, and literally a few yards away standard poodles dyed in all colors of the rainbow,” said Jill Robinson, CEO of Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong-Kong based animal welfare charity.
China’s thriving industry of fake designer goods is even taking on designer doggywear. In Guangzhou, hawkers sell fake Louis Vuitton dog carriers as a dog in a faux Louis Vuitton sweater naps nearby on the dusty sidewalk.

THE LUCKY ONES: Pet dogs are displayed for sale on a street in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou

TOI : 18March'08

People for Animals