Has anyone used this or heard about it? I have a LitterMaid, but I’ve never hooked it up and we’re still going old school
Flushable, washable litter. I’m always the last to hear about these things. You hook it up to a water supply and you don’t need to clean it or change it or anything.
It even looks like a human toilet.
Starting at $329, I’m not sure I could convince my husband this is an experiment worth conducting- but given the $10 a week I spend getting litter, it doesn’t really seem that bad.
Check out what I have decided is the greatest advancement in pet carrier manufacturing since the faux Louis Vuitton totes: the SleepyPod!
I saw this while surfing around at Krazy for Pets (way too much internet spending going on here) and immediately decided that it was amazing. Maybe it’s the futuristic shape that reminds me of a little Jetsons spaceship. Maybe it’s the fact that you can secure it to a seatbelt and the manufacturer has used crash tests to ensure its safety. Maybe it’s the fact that you can slip a little heater in it to make it extra cozy. Nah, it’s the Jetsons spaceship resemblance.
I would totally make spaceship noises while I was carrying my cat around.
That isn’t the only appealing thing, though. I love that the little top zips entirely off, turning it into a cat bed. As a vet, I have ulterior motives here. We have people leave their pets in the hospital in carriers all the time, and while I agree that they benefit from having a safe hiding spot, trying to extract them from said carrier can present more difficulties than prying a zebra leg from a hungry lion. It often involves shaking, splayed paws, prying rusted stripped screws off of old carriers, and occasional cursing. How much easier this would make my life.
Upon further reflection I also think it reminds me of a soup pot. Which I also like.
It’s a little too big to fit underseat on a plane, though the mini size might work. For those who tote their cats and teeny dogs around a ton, especially back and forth to MY office, I think it’s a great idea. I’m not sure I can convince my husband to let me spend the bucks for one (for research purposes, of course) but I would love to get my hands on one to see if it’s as easy to use as it looks.
*After posting this blog, the lovely folks at Krazy for Pets have offered two coupon codes for us:
- 10%off Sleepypod: N725X5ZLP3769
- 5% off anything else in the store: HKXZTWXEL
And this is good through the end of the year! Sweet!
Seeing as how 80% of the entering class at most vet schools is female, I think a sidenote to talk about mascara in a pet blog is OK. And if you’re a guy who likes mascara aka Adam Lambert, that is OK too. We do not judge here.
Vets are many things, but “fashion forward” does not immediately come to mind. Sure there are some of us who are well dressed, but as a vet school entrance requirement, not so much. I would say it was maybe 50/50 in my class as to how many people wore makeup at all. We just didn’t have the time for it, besides which, the pigs could care less how you look in your dumpy coveralls. In the world of large animal medicine and good ole boy farmers, makeup was a weakness.
I wasn’t anti-makeup myself, but I just got out of the habit for a while. A few weeks ago, I was looking in the mirror and thinking to myself, I could use some mascara. So I grabbed a tube of L’Oreal Voluminous, which my sister had told me was the best stuff ever, and swiped some on. (My sister works in a law firm, which is important to note here.)
Here is the key- once you get to work, things can get nuts. There isn’t much time to stop and look in the mirror between rooms sometimes, let alone reapply makeup. Between running around and putting surgery masks on and off and bending and sweating, you can really make a mess of yourself pretty quickly. So come 5 o’clock, when I sneaked off to the bathroom before the final after-work rush, I looked in the mirror for the first time since 8 am and was greeted with a sight of horror- HUGE black smudges under my eyes. I looked like a clown. I asked my staff why no one said anything, and I guess they were too busy to notice either. Clients were either too distracted, or more likely too polite, or even more likely too horrified to say anything.
So I did what any good scientist would do and researched the problem. A ha. I wasn’t choosing a waterproof mascara. What was I thinking? The next day I picked up a tube of L’Oreal Lash Out waterproof. Now we’re cooking. A whole day of sweating and running around and no raccoon eyes. Success.
Friday was my real test, though. One other thing that people in other professions are less likely to come across on a day to day basis is The Conversation. The “I’m sorry, but I think it’s cancer” conversation. Or worse, the “I’m so sorry, but he’s gone” conversation. Or, as what happened on Friday, the “I am so, so sorry the person who hit your pet with their car in front of your eyes didn’t stop. And that you had to see your pet in the condition that person left him in. Despite the thousands you spent at the emergency hospital this week, a terrible thing happened that no one could have predicted and he has bled to death.” This is a real test of your mascara.
If you REALLY want to see how far you can push this product line, have their child ask you if their dog is in heaven with God. Just try to answer that without a little epiphora. I guess maybe some of you could, but I am not made of stone like some of you and that is why I need things like epic mascara.
I am pleased to report that Lash Out is an excellent choice for all your terrible, tearful emotion-ridden days, as well as creating nice volume without clumping. $8 or thereabouts at your local drugstore (what? I’m not an M.D. I can’t afford Dior.) 4 paws up.
How funny that I just posted last week about Southwest’s new “pet friendly” policy, and one of the comments was to the effect of how nice it would be to have an airline where all the pets were welcome in the cabin.
Their prices seem pretty inexpensive to me (in the mid $100 range each way), especially considering the alternatives. Flying a pet in cargo certainly isn’t cheap, nor is hiring someone to drive your pet if you cannot yourself. It looks like the pets go in a twin turboprop and hop across the nation in shorter segments. There are no pictures of the cabin on the website, but the YouTube video shows a stack of carriers restrained within the cabin much like a row of kennels.
The number one thing this has going for it, in my opinion, is the presence of an attendant to monitor the pets during flight, as well as what I would assume is better tracking than your typical pet cargo route. The most dangerous moments for a pet in the air are the times on the ground, ironically enough, when pets are on the tarmac.
I would love to hear from someone who has any experience with this airline, or any airline, actually, for comparison. The last time I personally flew with a pet was in 1983, so my personal anecdotes on the topic are a little sparse. That being said, this is definitely something I would consider should I need to get a pet across country, especially with a pet too large to go in a commercial cabin. If you had, say, a 40 pound English bulldog with a compromised airway, this would be WELL worth the money.
I just looked at their endorsements- what the heck, Pet Airways? All your endorsements come from men. Who, I wonder, is most likely to spring for this kind of thing? If you want to convince people to open their pockets for such a luxe experience, I recommend a few glamorous female endorsements- maybe a celebrity or two, or an- ahem- female veterinarian. I’m just saying.
I am admittedly a huge perfume-a-holic. I have an entire dresser drawer devoted to fragrances- bottles of various scents smelling of fresh ginger, sweet vanilla, fragrant gardenia. I can’t help it. I’m hopelessly addicted.
It’s not the most practical thing to have on hand, for, much like high heeled shoes and dry clean only blouses, this just isn’t something I can use at work. It would be cruel. Dogs, as you know, have noses that are much more sensitive than our own. They can sniff out corpses and bombs and treats in ways we can only dream of replicating. I think of this in the morning when I’m getting dressed for work. I think of people whose eyes run at the mere thought of perfume. I think of my sister’s love of Elizabeth Taylor Passion and how I can still smell it a few days after she’s visited. I think of this, and of the dog’s far superior olfactory receptors, then I skip the perfume drawer. Unless it’s my day off, and Emmett just has to deal.
So why, I ask you, WHY is this product even in existence?
Pepper and Tanky Fragrances for Dogs. For dogs. Yeah, right. Because if there is one thing a dog can’t resist, it’s the smell of bergamot and neroli. This is perfume for people who like their dogs to smell like people. It’s not a new concept, I admit. Take a peek in any pet supply store and there’s no shortage of sweet smelling shampoos, sprays, potions, and creams.
But they make no claims that it’s for the dogs. This is a vastly underserved niche. Therefore, I propose a line of perfume for dogs that really is for dogs:
1. Pepe de pew- top notes of skunk, grounded by patchouli and rotting moss
2. Rollin’ in da poop- raccoon poop mingled with grass clippings and dirt
3. Dumpster Diva- banana peels, sulfur and a basenote of Guinness
4. Eau de Butte- I don’t even know how to describe this but if you were a dog, you’d love it.
5. And we can’t leave out the cats, right? Anyone up for spraying their cat with a douse of parfum de tuna?
Personally, I think this is a great idea. I think these are perfumes I could actually wear at work. I’d be irresistible. Well, to the pets at least.
I’ve spent a couple of entries deconstructing pet food, but I wanted to take a moment to specifically mention a brand that has done something really good.
When we suspect a pet of having a food allergy, it can be very difficult to get to the root of the problem. Pets can be allergic to anything, but usually they have a reaction to one specific protein or carbohydrate. Trying to figure out what it is- fish, beef, chicken, wheat, corn- can be difficult. If you read the labels on your pet food (which you should!) even those foods marked “sensitive stomach” or “sensitive skin” tend to have a variety of ingredients including some of the most common allergens.
Up until recently, pet owners have had two choices: home cooking, or prescription diets. A food allergy elimination diet typically entails eliminating all the major allergen sources, and providing a diet that has one single novel protein source and one single novel carbohydrate source (one the pet hasn’t been exposed to before.) The diets therefore have odd ingredients: venison, duck, peas, hydrolyzed soy (the latter being a protein that is broken down to the point that the immune system no longer recognizes it as an antigen.)
While some unlucky allergic pets react even to the prescription diets, most food allergic pets respond quite nicely. They are very effective. And, being a prescription diet, they are also pretty pricey. Unlike other prescription diets, such as the renal disease diets and the heart failure diets, there isn’t a nutritional imbalance that would make it a poor choice for your average healthy pet, so it’s fine to use long term. There’s no reason a similar diet couldn’t be produced for over the counter use, aside from the fact that the ingredients are more expensive.
Dick van Patten’s Natural Balance has responded to the need with a great over the counter line of Limited Ingredient Diets. They have one protein source and one carbohydrate source, and the ingredients are very similar to those of the prescription diets. I used their vegetarian formula with good success when I needed a lower-fat, lower-protein low allergen diet for Mulan (who was allergic to the prescription renal diets.) I know the prescription diet manufacturers are extremely strict about their processing of the allergy diets (as in, they do not share equipment with other types of pet foods), and I can’t say how this brand’s manufacturing compares. That being said, for pets with a mild to moderate allergy that is suspected to be food related in origin, this could be a nice alternative to at least try out. In this economy we all appreciate saving where we can, right?
The line is available for dogs and cats, in canned and dry forms.
It’s amazing the weird, innovative, useless, and useful you can find on the internet when you actually look. I’m not sure what category this one falls into:
The Porch Potty, a self-contained patch of grass that waters itself. A mini yard for your mini dachshund. Emmett would destroy that with one big pee, so clearly this is intended more for the toy chihuahua apartment dwellers.
If I lived on the 5th floor of a walkup in Manhattan, this would seem a very viable alternative to schlepping a 4 pound dog downstairs in the middle of a snowstorm. It’s small enough to fit on a little balcony and self-contained enough for crummy gardeners such as myself to probably manage to keep alive for a bit. My sister, who lives in an apartment in an area with some extreme weather, has pee pads in her foyer for her shih tzu- I’d imagine this would be a little less smelly and labor intensive. She has a birthday coming up, but I imagine if I present her with a box of grass she’s going to wonder if I’ve finally snapped.
I picked this one to try first because it looked cool. Freeze dried cat food? Is that like astronaut food but for cats? The answer is, of course, yes, which makes it more interesting and fun than boring old kibble.
Ingredients: Chicken, Ocean White Fish, Potatoes, Flax, Carrots, Celery, Apples, Cranberry, Blueberry, Taurine, Vitamins and Minerals. So far, so good.
Let’s pour some into a bowl to examine it more closely.
Let’s see, hmmm, looks like Potato buds, mostly, with some airy crunchy striated meat like things hanging out on top.
I use paper bowls because although I like the idea of being eco-friendly, used wet food bowls (especially raw food bowls) gross me out so I have to be able to toss them afterwards. (I drive a hybrid to balance things out.)
Add an equal amount of warm water, and let sit for 3-5 minutes. At this point it still looks like Potato buds, or maybe toddler food. The nice thing about it is, it isn’t nearly as smelly as canned cat food, which makes me happy.
And 5 minutes later, we’re ready to rock:
Wait a minute…what’s missing…
Note to self: cover bowl while waiting for water to resorb. Someone liked the crunchy bits.
Day 1: Both cats ate it like gangbusters, as in, licked that bowl clean. Success! On day 2, both cats developed a pretty gnarly flatulence issue, but that resolved by the end of the week.
On day 5, the day after I finished my sample bag, declared it a success, and opened the non-returnable big bag, Callie decided she didn’t like it anymore. When I placed it on the floor, she looked at me with a raised eyebrow and a baleful expression, and left Apollo to the entire thing while she went inside to cough a hairball onto my pillow in protest.
By day 10, even Apollo was ambivalent. I put a bowl of it out this morning and when I came home this afternoon, it was mostly full (and these are cats who love all food.) I ended up giving them a can of Avoderm I had hanging around out of desperation and they attacked it like starving hyenas devouring a zebra.
Emmett likes it. Emmett is on a dry food strike but will eat the cats’ food, which the cats will not eat but they instead will happily nibble on Emmett’s leftover kibbles. There is just no winning. And now I have a $23.99 3 pound bag of fishy potato buds.
Verdict: I’m disappointed. I really wanted the cats to like this product. It’s easy to store and measure out any amount you need like kibble, with the dietary advantages of high water content once it’s rehydrated. The price was reasonable and the quality seemed good, but for whatever reason my cats decided within a few days they weren’t that excited about it. Their site does offer free samples, which is worth a try because it is a neat food- and maybe your pets will like it better than mine. If anyone has experience with this or another brand of freeze dried dog or cat food I’d love to hear it.
Next week: I’m tackling some pre-made raw food patties.
Unlike most veterinary drugs, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration, spot on flea and tick preventives are overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency due to their classification as pesticides (the exception being those products that also function as a heartworm preventive.) I’ll be honest with you, the inner workings of the EPA are as much a mystery to me as they are to you, and I have no idea how prepared they are to deal with adverse event reports, since they do not primarily function in that capacity. But last year alone they fielded 44,000 reports about suspected adverse reactions.
Adverse events both mild and major can and do occur with any product. There are many flea and tick spot on treatments available these days, and not all are created the same. The ingredients, and their likelihood to cause adverse reactions in pets, vary widely. Some are considered so safe you can douse a pregnant dog in a 4x overdose and not expect a problem for mom or babies. Others are so scary that a single application of the dog product to a cat can cause seizures and death.
Veterinarians, and owners whose pets have suffered the consequences of a poorly chosen product, have been clamoring for years for better oversight of these products. There is no one right product that I would recommend, since it depends on your pet, your risk factors, and what bugs you are trying to prevent. If you do have a question about flea and tick control, ask your vet- there are many wonderful products out there that are safe and effective. And sadly, some that are not.
At least once a week, someone comes to me with a flea infested dog or cat and proclaims they are treating their pet for fleas and it’s not working. Rule of thumb: If you bought it in the grocery store, toss it. This is one of the times where you get what you pay for- and it’s not worth saving a couple of bucks for a product that at best, doesn’t work that well, and at worst, results in a bad, bad outcome.
Not that you asked, but I, personally, not-meant-to-endorse-solely-or-discredit-anything-else-that-isn’t-this….I use Advantage.
Emmett the good sport is currently taking antibiotics and pain meds to combat the swelling and bacteria from Easter Smackdown 09. He usually takes his Rimadyl with no complaint- it’s a chewable beef flavored tab- but he’s less than enthused about his Clavamox.
Normally I just stick the pills in peanut butter and he’s happy to take them that way, but my husband is mightily protesting my use of his Jiff stash for such purposes. I’ve also been known to hide them in aesthetically pleasing swirls of pressurized Kong stuffing cheese flavored product, but I ran out of that last week. I suppose I could just manually put the pills in his mouth, but I hate doing that when I have a pet who is perfectly happy to take them in a food product.
I remembered at this point that we have a box of Greenies Pill Pocket samples, which I have been sending home with clients and getting good feedback on, so what better time to give them an official test run than now?
They are pretty great.
Emmett took them with no problem- of course, he’s a Golden and he has been known to eat trash and diapers, so I don’t know how discriminating his palate is. But what I really like is how easy they are to use.
It’s like a little squishy can with no lid. You put the pills inside the pocket, and seal the top off with your fingers. It’s much neater than peanut butter or making a meatball out of canned food. I admit it. I am lazy. I like to do these things with maximum efficiency, and anything that leaves me with no sticky fingers or utensils is aces in my book.
Per the website, you can also put liquid medications in the pill pockets. Clever little product! Emmett and I both give it two paws up.
I’ve spent lots of time pointing out fun, helpful, and interesting things that a pet lover might be interested in, but today I want to show you something that is a really stupid idea.
The Walky Lock car lock may, in fact, be just about the worst idea I’ve seen in a long time.
This is basically a little prop that holds the back of your trunk open just a wee bit. It’s kind of like rolling your window down, except it will cost you $20.
The ad says, “How many times have you rushed your shopping because you felt guilty about your dog being “caged” in your car. … The WalkyLock is the ideal solution when you need to leave your dog inside the car for a short period of time, while you’re shopping or visiting a friend.”
Oh, I beg to differ! Leaving the back hatch cracked 6 inches doesn’t give you carte blanche to go running around the mall or drinking lattes with your BFF. This is a false sense of security and it does NOTHING to make your dog safer.
If you’ve ever left your dog in a car on a warm day, thinking, “It’s not that hot…” PLEASE STOP.
Study after study has shown that the temperatures inside a car can skyrocket, even on a relatively cool day, even in very short amounts of time. If there is direct sunlight, your car acts like a little heat trapper even when the outside temperature is nice and cool. People and pets have died of heat stroke when it was 70 degrees out. And cracking the windows doesn’t do a thing, nor does this useless product.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was out having lunch with my kids when I saw a little dog’s head pop up in the back of a Suburban in the parking lot. The back windows were, of course, cracked about 2 inches. It was 82 outside, and the car had been there for 45 minutes. As I was calling the police to come break the windows, the cashier managed to find the dog’s owner- enjoying a smoothie in the air conditioned restaurant while his dog slow-boiled in his car. The bitterest irony was that the place had outdoor seating, where dogs were allowed.
Needless to say, this product does not get the pawcurious seal of approval.
(Extra points to anyone who knows the title reference without Google!)
At least a couple times a week, a client with a particularly hard to deconstruct mutt asks me, “So what do you think my dog is? I’ve heard schnauzer/chow/Yorkie/pit bull but I’m not really sure.”
I look at the dog and hazard a guess. “Well, he does have Australian shepherd eyes, and his tail looks like a chow chow….” and we both shrug.
Sometimes, people are obviously misinformed. “I bought this Pomeranian/chihuahua mix from a great breeder in North Dakota,” said one owner to me, petting her 30 pound dog who looked like neither a Chi nor a Pom. The breeder told her he wouldn’t top 10 pounds. Caveat emptor, my friends.
At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t really matter, does it? Your dog is your dog regardless of his genetic history. The type of people who adopt a mutt aren’t the types who are going to be overly concerned about breed breakdown. Nonetheless, sometimes people are genuinely curious about their dog’s lineage, and to that effect, modern science has provided an answer.
The Wisdom Panel is a DNA analysis of dogs that compares a dog’s DNA to 157 AKC breeds. All it takes is a blood sample, and in return you get a written report breaking down what breeds your dog is made up of, and in what percentages.
I’ve sent out a few of them, and it’s fun to see what comes back. Sometimes you get the obvious- OK, this 50 pound fluffy gold dog is 75% Golden Retriever- and sometimes you get something out of left field, like a 15 pound dog that is 15% Rottweiler.
It provides what I would estimate as 0.01% medically important information, but it’s very interesting and pretty easy to do. The kit is available online, at some vets, and I’ve even seen them in the checkout aisle of a big national petstore chain.
