How to Green Your Pet
by Jasmin Malik Chua, Jersey City, USA on 03. 5.07
What’s the Big Deal?
Ah, the pitter patter of four-legged feet as they whip through your living room at overclocked speeds or uproot your prize gladiolas with manic fervor. But Snookiepuss and Mrs. Fluffypants are practically family, right? So why should they settle for anything less than top drawer when their health and wellbeing are at stake? Throw the planet a bone while you’re at it; we’ve got the goods on how to reduce your pets’ carbon paw prints—without making your wallet roll over and play dead.Guide Navigation
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1. Adopt from a shelter
Pet breeders have only one goal in mind—to raise large quantities of purebred animals for profit. They’ve also been pilloried for misdeeds such as overbreeding, inbreeding, poor veterinary oversight, lousy food and living conditions, overcrowding, and culling of unwanted animals. Why buy when you can adopt one of the 70,000 puppies and kittens born every day in the United States? Love knows no pedigree. Check out Petfinder.com to find your perfect match.
2. Spay or neuter your pet
Did we mention 70,000 puppies and kittens are born every day in the United States? That’s 15 puppies and 45 kittens for every hairless biped that slides out of a birth canal. And “multiplying like bunnies” isn’t just any old trope. We don’t need any more homeless animals than we already have. As a bonus, spaying and neutering helps dogs and cats live longer, healthier lives by eliminating the possibility of uterine, ovarian, and testicular cancer, and decreasing the incidence of prostate disease.
3. Rein in your pets; protect native wildlife
Always keep your dog on a leash when outside, and confine your mangy feline indoors. Topped only perhaps by habitat destruction, cats are the biggest, baddest bird killers of all time. Even wind turbines have got nothing on them. While you may poo-poo high cat-related bird-mortality rates as collateral damage in the great Circle of Life, domestic cats do have an unfair advantage. Unlike wild predators, house cats are always well fed, well rested, and in tip-top fighting shape. They’re also present in more concentrated (and rapidly increasing) numbers than say, the San Clemente Loggerhead Shrike.
That aside, two out of every three vets, according to the Humane Society of America, recommend keeping cats indoors, because of the dangers of cars, predators, disease, and other hazards. The estimated average life span of a free-roaming cat is less than three years; an indoors-only cat gets to live an average of 15 to 18 years. If kitty needs to heed the call of the wild, an outdoor cat enclosure is a good compromise.
4. Swap out the junk food
Most conventional pet-food brands you find at the supermarket consist of reconstituted animal by-products, otherwise known as low-grade wastes from the beef and poultry industries—you know, inedibles you wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot fork. In fact, the animals used to make many pet foods are classified as “4-D,” which is really a polite way of saying “Dead, Dying, Diseased, or Down (Disabled)” when they line up at the slaughterhouse. Unless that can of Chicken ‘N Liver Delite explicitly states that it contains FDA-certified, food-grade meat, you should know that its contents are considered unfit for human consumption—but apparently good enough for your cat or pooch.
Now, since nutrition is one of the key determinants of health and resistance to disease, ideally you’ll want your pet’s chow to be comparable in quality with what we would eat.
Natural and organic pet foods use meats that are raised in sustainable, humane ways without added drugs or hormones, minimally processed, and preserved with natural substances, such as vitamins C and E. Certified-organic pet foods must meet strict USDA standards that spell out how ingredients are produced and processed, which means no pesticides, hormones, antibiotics, artificial preservatives, artificial ingredients or genetically engineered ingredients.
(Hemp dog beds from Earth Dog)
5. Clean up their poop
Scoop up your doggie doo in biodegradable poop bags so your buddy’s No. 2 isn’t immortalized in a plastic bag, while deep-sixed in a landfill somewhere for hundreds of years. Cat owners should avoid clumping clay litter at all costs. Not only is clay strip-mined (bad for the planet), but the clay sediment is also permeated with carcinogenic silica dust that can coat little kitty lungs (bad for the cat). Plus, the sodium bentonite that acts as the clumping agent can poison your cat through chronic ingestion through their fastidious need to groom. Because sodium bentonite acts like expanding cement—it’s also used as a grouting, sealing, and plugging material—it can swell up to15 to18 times their dry size and clog up your cat’s insides. Eco-friendly cat litters avoid these problems; a happy cat is a cat that doesn’t claw your face off.
6. Give them sustainable goods
Your furry friends can get in on some saving-the-planet goodness, too—and have plenty of fun—with toys made from recycled materials or sustainable fibers (sans herbicides or pesticides) such as hemp. A hemp collar (with matching leash) is a rocking accessory for a tree-hugging mutt. These days, you can even get pet beds made with organic cotton or even recycled PET bottles.
7. Use natural pet-care and cleaning products
You don’t use toxic-chemical-laced shampoos and beauty products, so lather up your cats and dogs (or ferrets, rabbits, or hamsters—we don’t judge) with natural pet-care products, as well. And if your cat horks up a hairball, or Fifi doesn’t make it all the way to the bathroom, clean up the mess with cleaning products that are as gentle on the planet as they are on your critters’ delicate senses.
8. Pets, not fads
Sure, everyone’s ovaries ping when they see a five-year-old moppet cradle a tiny chick or a bunny during Easter, but nature dictates that baby bunnies grow up into rabbits, and little chicks into full-size chickens. Unless everyone involved understands that a pet is a long-term commitment that involves demands on both their time and money, you’re better off giving the kid a stuffed animal. Impulse buying (say, rushing out an grabbing the next available Dalmatian puppy after watching 101 Dalmatians) isn’t a good idea, either, as the large numbers of fad dogs that pass through shelters (often to their death) can attest. Repeat after us—especially you, Paris Hilton: Pets are not fads or fashion accessories.
9. Melt the ice, nicely
Use a child- and pet-safe deicer such as Safe Paw’s environmentally friendly Ice Melter. Rock salt and salt-based ice-melting products, which kids and animals might accidentally ingest, can cause health problems, while contaminating wells and drinking supplies.
10. Tag your pet
It might be a stretch to call inserting an electronic ID chip into your pet an eco-friendly move, but losing your buddy causes extreme emotional distress that turns you into nobody’s friend. Then there’s the paper waste from printing out Missing posters, the fuel cost of driving around your neighborhood trying to find them, the phone bill as you bawl your eyes out to everyone you know … well, you get the idea. Ask your vet for more info. For hanging tags, check out these recyclable (and recycled) aluminum ID tags and these WaggTaggs made from recycled silver.
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(Susan Kralovec's cat trees are made from recycled cardboard, non-toxic adhesives, and non-toxic, zero-VOC paint.)
1. Compost their poop
American dogs and cats create 10 million tons of waste a year, and no one knows where it’s going, according to Will Brinton, a scientist in Mount Vernon, Maine, and one of the world’s leading authorities on waste reduction and composting.
Most of our pets’ poop either winds up in a landfill purgatory, where it’s embalmed practically forever in plastic bags, or sits on the ground until the next rainstorm washes it into the sewer where it can drift on down to rivers and beaches. You can compost the poop—just don’t use it with your vegetable garden, because the compost doesn’t heat up enough to kill pathogens such as E. coli., which could contaminate your homegrown produce and land up in your (very unhappy) belly.
If you have room in your backyard, you can bury an old garbage bin (note: far away from your vegetable garden) to use as a pet-waste composter. Or check out the Doggie Dooley. The makers of the Doggy Dooley also sell an enzymatic “Super Digester Concentrate” for your backyard pet septic system.2. Be a pet chef
If you want to know exactly what is going into your furball’s food dish, or your pet suffers from allergies, you can always make your own puppy (or kitty) chow. If the idea of becoming a fulltime pet chef is just crazy talk, making the occasional meal or treat is completely doable. Those broccoli stalks left over from your last stirfry also make some tasty morsels for your pup.
3. Get crafty
Your cat will love you forever if you grow your own organic catnip or cat grass. Scrap yarn and fabric you might otherwise toss can also easily be transformed into pet toys with some basic crafty know-how. And they wouldn’t have had to be trucked thousands of miles just to get drooled on.
4. Get ticks off
While you don’t want to douse your pet in toxins, it is also important to keep the bugs in check. Pets can carry ticks, and ticks can carry Lyme Disease, a serious and poorly understood disease that attacks the nervous system. If you live in an area where Lyme Disease is a risk, be very cautious and seek sound advice on keeping ticks off you and your furry friends.
5. Offset your pet
Maybe Scruffy will only drink water from an electric-powered water fountain, or perhaps you have a self-cleaning litter box from before you went green—we all have corpses buried in our backyards. Why not purchase green tags, otherwise known as renewable energy credits, to offset your pets’ carbon emissions. Heck, buy ‘em for the whole family so no one feels left out. Or better yet, check if your state sells green power so you and your furry compatriots can go carbon neutral.
1. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that domestic cats kill more than 39 million birds annually—and that’s just in Wisconsin.
2. There are over 66 million pet cats in the United States; approximately 35 percent are kept exclusively indoors.
3. Certain studies have shown that children who grow up with two or more pets are more than 75 percent less likely to develop allergies later in life.
4. Sixty percent of pet owners have a dog; on average owners have almost two dogs (1.7).
5.Over 5,500 puppies and kittens (compared with 415 human babies) are born every hour in the United States.
6. The U.S. Dept. of Health found that 28 percent of heart patients who were also pet owners survived serious heart attacks, compared with 6 percent of patients without pets.
7.In 1994, Time magazine estimated that as many as 25 percent of purebred dogs were afflicted with serious genetic problems.
8. Shelter workers nationwide are forced to euthanize an estimated 3 to 4 million homeless cats and dogs each year.
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We’ve covered a range of sustainable pet playthings in the past, including a scratching post made from recycled cardboard and toys made from recycled materials and filled with organic catnip.
Swheat Scoop wheat-based cat litter is made without clays and chemicals, and is fragrance-free and biodegradable. It’s even flushable.
Pine cones make great kitty toys.
Oops, I Pooped makes biodegradable pet-waste bags.
Who says chickens can’t be urban pets?
We surveyed our readers to find out what you thought about keeping pets.
Make your hamster earn its keep by charging your cell phone.
Hemcore makes animal bedding from the inner core the hemp-plant stem.
Get some eco-friendly doggie travel gear from Planet Dog.
San Francisco has launched the nation’s first pilot project to turn dog poo into clean fuel by way of methane digesters.
TreeHugger stands drop-jawed at the awesome power of poo.
(Wagg Tags are made from recycled silver.)
With such a plethora of resources for greening your pet's life, we can't begin to scratch the surface of the what's out there, but here are some starting points for insight and advice.
Hippy Shopper reviews a CatBib you can make your cat wear if it absolutely refuses to stay inside. Feline dignity not included.
Simply search Google for dog- or cat-food recipes and you’ll find more directions than you can shake a well-chewed stick at.
GreenStyle has a list of organic and eco pet supplies.
Here are some alternatives to clumping clay kitty litters..
A pretty comprehensive list of cat enclosures you can get.
The Humane Society of the United States
Doggie Dooley Pet Waste Digester System
EarthDog Pet Hemp Products
Heidi’s Bakery Organic Pet Treats
PetGuard makes pet food with organic ingredients as well as the famous Mr. Barky’s treats for dogs.
San Francisco’s Pet Camp is one of the first pet boarding places in the world to go green.
I read elsewhere that cat poo contains toxins and should be kept out of compost piles where the compost will be used for food gardens.
the average lifespan is three years, which means some cats live to be eighteen and some only make it a couple of months. yours, apparently, is one of the lucky ones, but many die of injuries or diseases that they would never have sustained if they'd been indoors. depending on where you live, the risks can easily outweigh the positives.
humans don't need food fit for human consumption, either; it's about setting a standard. besides, the meat that comes from your butcher, even if it's a remnant, is fit for human consumption, and many veterinary nutritionists will advise against a raw diet (at least, many of those i spoke to over the ten years i worked in veterinary medicine did). meat from a diseased animal isn't healthy for anything, and meat from a cow that's been pumped full of antibiotics and fed on grain grown with chemical pesticides isn't any better for a dog or cat (or the environment) than it is for you.
cat feces can contain the toxoplasmosis parasite, but it's only considered dangerous to pregnant women or others with severely compromised immune systems. most healthy people who are exposed to toxoplasmosis don't experience any symptoms at all. the parasite is only transmittable by direct fecal-to-oral contact, so it isn't taken up by plants grown in feces-containing compost, but you could catch it if you didn't wash your hands well after playing in the dirt.
My advice, don't buy dogs any new toys after the first week. Give it your plastic recyclables. You have to watch it to make sure it isn't swallowing bits of plastic, but you can just recycle it after s/he is done with it.
A stick costs nothing, and has no environmental impact.
"Certain studies have shown that children who grow up with two or more pets are more than 75% less likely to develop allergies later in life."
That is a rigged statment. Allergies are hereditary, at least in some part. If one or both of the parents are allergic to pet dander, the odds they have a pet are low. Although my (adopted) Bichon Frisé if washed frequently doesn't upset my or my relatives allergies. Poodles and poodle mixes are also good. But be sure to find a way of testing yourself before you run out though.
In response to Jilted-
"In fact one of the best diets is raw food, spines and backs from the butcher and other left over meat products."
THIS IS ONLY FOR DOGS- not a good idea for cats.
It is not a good idea if the meat is from sheep, cows, deer, etc- especially the 'spines' as they have neural tissue- which is a potential source for TSE (transmissible spongiform encephalopathies) (eg. MAD COW). It can occur in cats, and is just as deadly.
The USDA/FDA declares brain, spinal cord, or neural tissue to be risk materials, and are not approved as food by humans, and limited animals.
There are no documented cases of TSE in dogs- but you never know.
Anonymous@3:56pm:
Allergies have a genetic basis, but they're not consistent across family trees. There's also a popular theory among scientists that allergies can develop in response to a lack of immune-system stimulation in early childhood--so if you've never been exposed to pet dander as a child, you're more likely to be allergic to it.
Although I have to agree that conventional pet foods (#4) are not the healthiest food for pets (I don't have the heart to feed them to my own dog) I fail to see how it is environmentally friendly to feed our pets high quality meat products. Pet food that consists of animal by-products that are rejected for human consumption is putting to use parts of the animals that would otherwise be discarded, thus reducing waste and, further, reducing additional resources required to raise human-grade meat. Isn't conventional pet food a somewhat effective way to reduce waste? I would think that the additional resources it takes to raise human-grade meat for pet food, whether responsibly raised or not, uses more valuable resources than food made from by-products.
Kerri, good-quality pet food is just one aspect of it. Natural and organic foods comprise meat that has been raised in a sustainable and humane way i.e. not force fed cheap corn feed and pumped with hormones and antibiotics. In terms of other ingredients, USDA organic standards also forbid the use of pesticides or genetically modified ingredients.
Feeding organic etc. pet food is fine.
But transistion your pet very slowly to ANY new food. Especially for any food that is not in a bag as dry food or in a can as wet food and not a common brand.
A $250 vet bill is the alternative if you don't transistion really slowly - as I once discovered...
I still feed a good quality dry brand name natural dog kibble. It is just not worth having my dog suffer to save a little energy or whatever.
Be sure it has an AAFCO approval.
ttp://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?cls=2&cat=1661&articleid=662
Also, the whole idea that left over meat is bad for dogs is crazy. Dogs and wolves in the wild eat dead or dying animals before they eat healthy ones (if they can even catch them). Also, they eat the intestines, organs, and guts before they even eat the meat, bones, and even fur! And they do eat it all.
Both wet and dry food (the same thing, one is wetter) are actually not cooked but by forcing the raw ingredients through a high pressure tube the food is cooked by the time it exits and is cut into kibble - like a pasta machine.
Do avoid buying food with "meal" in the ingredients - like chicken meal. That's the bad stuff. Also, if corn is the first ingredient, or even one of the top ingredients, avoid it.
We buy chicken/beef/pork/lamb innards from our local store and give it to our dog. It's cheap and last for three meals.
When we have green vegetables that's been sitting in the fridge for a while (still green but too limpy for decent cooking), we just blend it in the food processor and mix it with the innards, leftovers and rice.
I think I am seeing some confusion between the idea of feeding animals meat scraps that humans in our society don't like to eat and the idea of feeding them poor quality food. The big issue isn't whether our pets are being fed poor cuts, viscera, and scraps (which in my mind is a great way to reduce waste), but whether they're being fed food that is diseased, contaminated, and rife with hormones, antibiotics, and additives. Another concern is the formulation of pet foods for the greatest profit, which often means the same as it does for human junk food - lots of additives and fillers.
I've searched TreeHugger before for reviews of organic petfood and come up empty, and this article doesn't help either. Not even a liink to an outside review, just links to various manufacturers! How are we to choose between them all? I need more info! It would also be useful to know where the products are sold, since petfood is usually too heavy to ship. Are you listening, ThreeHugger?
I feed my dog a combination of quality dry dog food and a mix of cooked meat (which I get free from a local farm shop), veggies, and grains.
If I had the time and money, I would feed him a completely home-cooked meal at all times.
The meat that I get from the butchers is left-overs that he cannot sell or that people will not eat. So, this is meat that would go to waste unless dogs eat it. Additionally, the farm shop also provides bone for free, which I roast and which my dog loves!
Cheers!
(Also, check out my website for some photos of the pup in question.)
it's important to remember that your dog is not a wolf or a coyote. a domesticated dog's digestive system is different from a wild dog's; breeding and genetic selection changes more than the external physical attributes. a wild dog's stomach contains different enzymes and is better equipped to digest raw food and subpar meat. also, a wolf's life span in the wild is significantly shorter than your average retriever's, and it would be tough to argue that diet doesn't play a part in that. and, like sarah said, it's important to look at more than which part of the animal the meat came from--you should consider where the animal came from. your dog might be happy to eat out of the trash, but that doesn't mean he or she should.
be careful about bones, too. any dog can choke on one if it splinters, even a wild one.
amanda--a lot of people i know like newman's own, but i couldn't swear that that isn't just because they recognize the name/brand. a comprehensive review would be good, but maybe tough to come by.
Amanda, my very very picky feline, Chekhov, recommends, Pet Promise. (Click Store Locator to find out where to buy.) We tried Petguard for a while, too, including the USDA-organic-certified Chicken and Vegetable but he just didn't take to the flavor.
It's also important to remember (and I realise this is getting off-track) that in the wild, canine creatures *get sick and die all the time*. The average lifespan of a wild dog/wolf/etc is about half that of a captive/domestic one.
So yes, they do eat all sorts of stuff in their natural environment. That doesn't mean it's best for them.
B
Suggestion number four is wrong, wrong, wrong. Dogs should absolutely be fed meat byproducts. The many vegetarians out there didn´t give up filet mignon just to pass it along to Fido. This is, sadly, a perfect example of environmentalism as a fad. Buy organic and you'll save the world! Wrong. Seriously consider the effects of your actions, wherever they occur in the lifecycle of the product or activity, then you may manage to shirk your footprint.
4.
"Natural and organic pet foods use meats that are raised in sustainable, humane ways without added drugs or hormones, minimally processed, and preserved with natural substances, such as vitamins C and E. .."
~~~~???
Oh What a joke- there is NO organic, or "natural" cow- from whitch "meat" is made-
there is no such thing for human consumpito- and there is specialy no that opetion for "Pet" food.
where can U see cows breed especialy for Pets (to eat)
there is no cow, chicken, lamb, pig that is not fed with growt hormones, antibiotics and other chemichasl for more "meat ".
All animals today are feed with chemichals just like people are fed to that same toxic "food"
.
Only those animals that live in Wild are still without chem., hormones...pesticides in them
. sadly- there is no animal- which has been labeled as "food source" - to be healthy enough to be eaten.
If your animal is not hunting on their own, then they should not eat meat.
B.....Byproduct means parts of the animal that wouldn't be used in human food (head, feet, etc.). I feed my dog food that has "chicken meal" as the first indgredient....not chicken byproducts.
And Chris.....superimposing veagan beliefs onto animals is as bad as dressing them up for Halloween. Like it or not...dogs need meat. I sort of know where you're coming from though...I don't eat red meat, so I feel odd giving food with red meat to my dog. That's why she eats a chicken and oatmeal dry food. But even if I was completely meat-free, I would have a hard time denying my dog the nutrients she needs from meat. Dogs don't have as varied a diet as we do, so they're food really needs to deliver.
Here's a crazy thought....Why don't you ask a vet??
Also, just want to say this page has been a great help for me and my new rescue dog. Thanks Treehugger.
I think its cool that so many people are so passionate about what to or not to feed their pets. I work in the organic food business and see people who are sick because of their ignorance about what food does and does not do. People turn to modern medicine instead of being proactive about their own health. I love how so many people say they can't afford organic or can't afford high quality food. -this is me being ironic. I can't afford the doctor bills or sad future of not buying organic. I feel the same for my pets. I can't afford the vet bills and sickness because they haven't been feed right. A healthy dog helps to keep me healthy. I wish people spent as much worry about what they eat as they do what their dogs eat. I am happy that all these pets are being well fed and loved!
Clumping cat litter is very dangerous to cats and dogs alike. Both tend to ingest it (cats by cleaning themselves and dogs by sneaking to the litter box for a "snack") and if it can clog plumbing, imagine what it's doing to the animal's insides. Another very dangerous litter is the kind with "pearls" or "crystals", which are silica. Silica adheres to moist surfaces and sucks the moisture from them... and inside an animal, this can lead to dehydration and many other serious problems. My best friend found this out with his cat when the cat began to have convulsions only a few days after he switched the litter from "scoopable" to "scoopable with crystals". Fortunately, his vet had seen this problem before and tragedy was averted... but they don't tell you this stuff on the packages. I've switched to the Swheat Scoop mentioned in the article and my cat loves it... and it does control odor very well, too. PetCo and PetSmart both have it at a good price...
I was so excited to find treehugger, and then the green your article How to Green Your Pet. Then the first thing I read is this? "Always keep your dog on a leash when outside, and confine your mangy feline indoors. Topped only perhaps by habitat destruction, cats are the biggest, baddest bird killers of all time."
You mention "topped only by habitat destruction" as though it were simply a minor inconvenience! How about adding habitat destruction of nearly every animal on the planet?
I 've read glass window are the biggest killers of birds-made by man-kind, I might add. And when birds have been dropping dead out of the sky all over the world for years now, I highly suspect birds have a minor oxygen problem as well- created by man-kind.
These kinds of statements perpetuate cruelty to cats and then they fill up local shelters for euthansia. We kill for food and for the same reasons, and apparently for any other reason man-kind can find. STOP BLAMING CATS FOR WHAT THEY WERE CREATED FOR AND START BLAMING MEN FOR DESTRUCTION. This is the last place I would expect to find such an uninformed statement. I guess I will be deleting my treehugger bookmark--already.
I find #1 on the top 10 tips to be offensive. I am all for adopting from shelters, and in fact two of my cats and one of my dogs are all rescues. However, the blanket statement "breeders are only interested in money" is a load of crap and is insulting to the many reputable breeders out there.
A good breeder usually LOSES money on every litter they raise. That's because good breeders aren't out to make a buck, they are doing it to improve the breed. If it weren't for breeders going out of their way to select dogs for temperament, ease of care, and suitability to human companionship, there would be no random mutts at the shelter, just wolves and coyotes. The random dogs at the shelter are a lot more likely to be the result of irresponsible behavior (ie allowing random breedings, not getting your pet spayed/neutered) than those from a good breeder, which are going to be bred with an eye towards genetics and disease testing, to produce the best-tempered, healthiest pet possible. Two of my dogs are purebreds from wonderful responsible breeders, and I wouldn't trade them for the world.
To the person with the 18 year old outside cat, you are very lucky. I wish all kitties were as lucky.
My neighbor had two cats at one point...many a nights I woke to hear one of his cats fighting with another cat...and I would run out of the house to rescue the cat. That was the younger cat. One day, the cat disappeared...never to be seen again. Nobody knows what happened, but I do not even want to imagine.
On the other hand, his other cat, who had been with him a few years, always went out of the hosue as well. I continued to tell my neighbors to please keep their cat indoors, because I was so afraid something would happen. They always told me that the other cat was younger and just didn't know...but that this older cat knew his way around, etc...Again, many a nights I would wake up to hear a dog barking at him...and again, I would go running downstairs to scare the dog away. One morning I went to water my front plants...and a neighbor from across the street called me and asked me if I knew if the cat laying on her lawn was my neighbor's cat...I lost it. I screamed at my husband to come downstairs and he went to see...yes, it was my neighbor's cat. I still remember the last day I saw that poor kittie...and how her owners also thought nothing would ever happen...I cannot even begin to imagine how horrible her death must've been. It has been almost a year, and I still cry about it...I still remember her...I still have nightmares of thinking how I couldn't rescue her.
Please, I do understand that we think that our animals know what to do, nothing will ever happen...that's what my neighbors continuously thought...but no kitty deserves a death like that. No animal deserves a cruel death like that...
So, please, if you love your pet...keep him inside. No matter what, he depends on you for protection...and deserves it as well.
I had a mutt (shepherd/husky/lab) that I picked up from the shelter. I cooked 90% of the meals she ate. She was never sick, never had to have her teeth cleaned, never had a weight problem and lived to be almost 16 years old. Anyone who considers cooking for their pet as too time consuming or too expensive (it's cheaper than vet bills) needs to rethink their position. The food I used was fresh, human palatable type food-no spoiled garbage. And, unlike humans, dogs don't need a different menu every day. I had three recipes that I rotated, and it got to where I could cook them up in no time.
I would absolutely LOVE to give my soul-owning cats homemade food...I have always wanted to do this and when all of those horrendous pet-food recall were going on, I was DETERMINED.
My problem was this: My girls HATED every recipe that I tried. I did everything that I could to tweak the meals I was giving them, but found that my normally piglet-like felines would rather starve than eat what I had prepared for them. THEN we switched to organic food, which they barely tolerate, but they are still pining for the creepy generic junk food.
Suggestions?
Those broccoli stalks left over from your last stirfry also make some tasty morsels for your pup.
just wanted to point out broccoli is poisonous to dogs.
I'm surprised that there was no mention of flea collars in this article - which are absolutely toxic and evil to the environment. I've always fed my animals brewer's yeast on top of their food once a week -- they love the taste - and they have never had fleas.
I have read all the comments and wanted to let your readers know about a great resource for organic products for companion animals. I would like to suggest that those who are thinking about making their own, homemade dog food, that it can be a lot easier if they do it with Dr. Harvey's pre-mixes. I have been making Canine Health for my dogs for years and it is a great time saver and I know I am doing the very best that I can for my companions. Canine Health is called the miracle dog food and it really is. Canine Health uses only certified organic grains, such as barley and brown rice and there is no wheat or soy or corn. Some dogs have a problem with those grains. For those who want to feed raw or don't want any grain in their food, Dr. Harvey's also makes Veg to Bowl, another great product that is just vegetables. You have to add stuff to make it a whole meal but it is great and you are making a fresh, healthy and delicious meal for your companion. My dogs do exceptionally well on Canine Health, but many of my friends who feed raw use the Veg to Bowl. These foods are freeze -dried and dehydrated and all you do is add warm water and your own protein and oil. It is really simple. You can get free samples or even talk to Dr. Harvey himself if you call their toll free number.
The website is www.drharveys.com. It is a really great company with great products and great customers service. I have been working with them for my dogs for years and they have been a great resource for me. I highly recommend contacting them for any nutritional questions about your dogs. Feeding like this is a little extra work, but really not as much as you may think. I have four dogs and 3 human kids and I find time to do this and I believe it's worth the little extra effort to keep my guys healthy.
I thought your readers would be interested.
Hey treehugger!
What happened to the huge segment of the population that keeps fish, freshwater or saltwater? I was only able to find a couple posts in the whole site about aquariums.
Many of us have moved over to using CF lights in our aquariums, recycling (nutrient-rich!) water from water changes, and buying only captive-bred fish, but we would love some more help on greening our aquariums.
I think there's a large portion of the aquarist population that would be interested in an aquarium-focused post (or two, or five). We're constantly balancing CO2 and oxygen in our planted tanks, thinking about the nitrate cycle, finding the plants that best absorb harmful chemicals from the water, balancing our mini-ecosystems. Serious aquarists see the effects of changes on the environment mirrored in our own tanks.
So how about exploring aquariums?