An amazing video of an amazing dog.

Sometimes, dogs, cats, and other pets itch. This can be due to a bite, a bad diet, or a side effect to several popular drugs.

We saw a severe reaction to a very common heartworm medication. The day after the first (and last) dose of the drug, both dogs who received the medication, started to vomit ‘empty’ which was unusual for them; occasional vomiting continued for several days. The skin of both animals became inflamed and pinker than usual. After a few days, the skin of one of the dogs started to break out so harshly, that the animal bit herself ‘raw’ in one area. A few hours later, she developed red spots on her now red-hot skin which soon turned into blisters. She itched terribly and scratched fiercely. That evening, she was truly miserable.

At this point I started to give her the homeopathic remedy Rhus Toxicodendron (Rhus tox.) which is an effective remedy for many skin ailments. I gave her several rounds in two hours (per mouth), and her skin started to return to normal; the blisters vanished within a few hours. It was obvious that her itch was gone as well, since she stopped scratching herself. The next morning, I gave one more dose although her skin was already almost normally colored with only faint pinker spots where the blisters used to be.

A day later, the skin was normally colored, and the former blister areas were almost invisible. The skin of her brother, who received a few does of Rhus tox. as well, also returned to its normal color. Curiously, both animals also stopped vomiting after they received the remedy.

Thankfully, homeopathic remedies are readily available and I had the right one at home. It is amazing how powerful these remedies are in both humans and pets.

There are many pet insurances available to provide coverage for cats and dogs. Years ago, we insured our pet rats with VPI and found that in their case, the insurance really didn’t pay off. Rats aren’t good candidates for insurance; they are too short-lived and almost every health problem can be classified as either a preexisting or congenital condition. Pet rodents also usually don’t have that many accidental injuries as they can occur with pets that have access to the outdoors.

Although the following video seems to be made by one of the featured pet insurance companies, it highlights how different the coverages through pet insurance companies can be.

There is a new marketing gimmick going around. The vendor pledge. Some health food stores state that they collect vendor pledges to assure high standards and integrity of their ingredients and products. And now, even some pet food companies have announced with great flourish (using paid press releases from PR agencies, friendly or associated blogs, their own websites, etc.) that they now require their vendors to supply them with pledges for each ingredient they use. The ingredients need to be GMO-free, cannot be sourced from China, the animals need to be raised and processed in the best possible ways, etc.

This sounds great. So what’s the problem, and why am I writing about it?
The answer is simple: None of these so-called ‘vendor pledges’ can be verified. Many comforting and reassuring words are flying fast and furious, but there’s no independent party that can verify all these great-sounding words. It’s as if a company released favorable results from a poll they conducted themselves. Now, honestly, how much faith would you place in such results?

Why advertise vendor pledges?
That’s an easy one: profit, pure and simple.

What are meaningful alternatives to such pledges?
The most meaningful alternatives are third party-enforced certificates.
Two examples are:
1) a USDA organic certificate; and
2) a non-GMO statement that’s also legally binding (they are required for any certified organic pet food that contains non-certified organic ingredients such as citric acid).
An additional alternative is a statement from the Humane Society that declares that a particular poultry farmer/processor is far above industry standards in respect to the humane treatment of animals (I might also mention here that, at Onesta Organics, we use such a farmer’s products routinely). As in the case of the first two examples, this declaration can be verified by a third party.

The nice thing about the USDA organic certificate is that any company (including Onesta Organics) that receives such certification is inspected at least once yearly (food factories for human consumption foods are generally inspected less than once per decade), and all ingredient choices must be shared with a USDA-accredited certification agent. This agent knows where the ingredient comes from, if it is human-grade, free of pesticides, antibiotics, and other synthetics, etc.

In the case of a vendor pledge, all you have to go on is the word of a given company and nothing more. The sad truth is that vendor pledges can’t be verified and aren’t based on any enforced standards. With an enforced certificate, at the very least you have the assurance that any false claims have serious legal consequences.

So, when you’re faced with a choice between a vendor pledge and a certificate from the USDA, a statement from the Humane Society, or any other entity requiring third-party oversight, you now know which one of the two is trustworthy!

This blog title seems too weird to be worth writing about. So why bother?

Because the competition doesn’t sleep. Perhaps they want to make sure they can’t be accused of actually breaking the law. Nevertheless, they may well be violating consumers’ trust. Oh well…why not, if you can make money hand over fist and no one’s the wiser?

For years, a pet food company that I can’t name here has promoted their pet foods (e.g., cat food and dog foods) as ‘raw,’ ‘dehydrated,’ and ‘human grade, among other things. But, they’ve also passed their products off as ‘organic’ even though none of these products have actually been certified as organic. Companies like mine work very hard to meet USDA organic standards, and we pay a heavy premium for our organic ingredients and certification fees to do so-not to mention the additional time we spend to maintain our certification. Anyone who purchases an Onesta Organics product can rest assured that they’re getting truly organic pet foods of the very highest quality. Anyone who purchases from the competitor I mention here can’t be sure what they’re getting; they can’t verify this competitor’s claims, and sadly, they probably don’t know any better.

Recently, this company posted updated information on their website about their raw dog and cat foods. They now admit that their “…fresh raw meats and white fish undergo gentle steaming at 140°F to 165°F.” You’ve gotta love the use of the terms, ‘fresh,’ ‘raw,’ and ‘gentle’ in this sentence - could it be that these words are meant to take the ‘heat’ out of the term, ‘steaming,’ which they also use in the same update?

Steaming at 140°F to 165°F may appear to be ‘gentle’ to many folks. But the reality is that steaming any food achieves the same end result as actually cooking that food, i.e., steamed fish and meat are indeed cooked. And curiously, as the company states in one of their own press releases, the products in question are ‘essentially cooked.‘

The revealing information discussed above isn’t easy to find on this company’s SEO-friendly, but somewhat confusingly organized, website without the use of key words such as ‘gentle,’ ‘steaming,’ ‘fish,’ ‘meat,’ ‘dehydration,’ and ‘pet food’ (as a matter of fact, after reading this, you should go ahead and google these very terms to see what listings come up; it’ll be very educational-I guarantee it!). This company’s site is so chock full of detailed information that one could easily overlook the fact that steamed (read ‘cooked’) ingredients are actually being used in products marketed as ‘raw’ and ‘gently dehydrated.’

No sour grapes here-just an impassioned plea to the consumer to educate themselves…and beware.

It’s sad that dishonesty of a few casts a bad light on all members of an industry.

Anyway. Just another hot topic to share.