My friend Susi, who has a habit of asking very interesting and pointed questions, posed a great one to the people at Natura on our tour last week: What's the difference between Natura foods and Eukanuba? Now, the guy answering the question works for Procter and Gamble, which owns both brands, and they position themselves similarly in terms of the type of person who might buy them, so I was very intrigued to see how he would answer it. He gave a sports analogy. On one side of the coin, you ... Read more »
Features
Inside Natura: Part One
What makes a pet food good? How do you pick a pet food? I'm genuinely curious. The number of choices out there is dizzying, isn't it? It's one of the biggest challenges of being a pet owner, standing in those aisles, peeking up and down at the bags and trying to figure out based on the information we have at hand what is going to be the best choices for our pets. But where do we get our information? From our own research. From the guy in the pet store. From the vet. From the company who ... Read more »
Meet Joe. And get to know the word Esterilsol
Joe Tosini knows how to command a room. When he shakes your hand with an iron grip and leans in to stare you in the face, you know right away that whatever it is he's about to say, he feels it from his temples to his toes. "I used to be a preacher," he said to me, and I believe it. He has that ability to grab a group of people. I first watched him do it at an ACES session at the Helen Woodward Animal Center, when he was there to tell a group of animal rescue advocates from around the country ... Read more »
AKC/Eukanuba: Stealing Smooches
Everyone knows you should start the New Year off with a kiss. I love kisses. I live for kisses. Unfortunately for me, when I'm at work most dogs are not really that happy to give smooches. Sure they do at first, but one go with the thermometer and the honeymoon's over. This is one of the reasons I was thrilled to throw on my civvies and hit the Meet the Breeds booths at the AKC/Eukanuba show as a regular Joe. I thought, maybe I could ask owners about their dog's proclivity for herding ... Read more »
Sunday Shoutouts
It's a week of being thankful, and in that vein I'm reaching back into something I used to do regularly and make a Sunday post highlighting something great from around the web. Today, two large scale projects meant to bring more shelter pets into their forever homes: Home for the Holidays Iams' Home for the Holidays program has just surpassed the 6 million mark for number of pets who have been adopted since the program's inception in 1999. Way to go! They're still working on ... Read more »
Giveaway Tuesday: a very special souvenir
Yes, for my big Africa trip I have a giveaway Tuesday item from the trip. I don't know what it is yet, since I haven't bought it, but I'll make sure it;s an actual item from Tanzania and not something from the duty free shop at the airport on the way home. (I was so pleased to finally have a reason to drag my Zoo Vet Barbie out of the garage. I think I will have some adventures for her when I get back, no?) To enter, you simply guess what is the first cool African mammal I will see on the ... Read more »
Me Jane
Many, many years ago, in college, a group of classmates went on a group trip to Africa to see wildlife and go on safari. As a biology major, this was pretty much the penultimate experience of a lifetime. As they all took off excitedly for the airport, I sat in my dorm room and sulked because I was a typical college student, and as such, had no extra funds for gallivanting across the globe. I grew up idolizing Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, dreaming those typical romanticized dreams of the Out of ... Read more »
Pass me the monocle
I like to write. I think you probably know that. Whether or not anyone cares to read it, well, I just throw stuff out there and hope someone gets something out of it, but it's kind of a free form endeavor. Which is why I was so thrilled and grateful when Sonia from Nomad Editions Good Dog Magazine asked me if I would write an article for them about my trip to Peru with AmazonCares. Of course, I jumped at the chance. It just came out last week and I've spent the entire time thinking, "Woo ... Read more »
The true hero of the story: a Pet Doctor Barbie Post
A couple times a year, I take a stroll through Toys R Us to see if there is a new Pet Vet Barbie being inflicted upon the masses. There's a cat vet one, which I bought just because she has a slide on the exam table and that alone was worth the price- I mean, what cat doesn't love going down a slide at the vet clinic?- but that's not what really got me excited. The Barbie I had to grab was the Fashionista Barbie. Those babies have moveable joints. MOVEABLE JOINTS! Now, why fashionistas need ... Read more »
Wherever I may roam
The fourth of July was lovely. And thank goodness for that, because the fifth was pretty brutal, as it has remained since then. Humid, sticky, 100 degrees plus, the sort of weather that leaves you glued to the couch by your own sweat, unable to get up even if you wanted to, which you don't. Brody goes outside long enough to jump in the pool, then hightails it back into the house to allow it all to evaporate in a nice sauna-dog-smell combo. I used to call this "Hawaii hot." But now, now I call ... Read more »
CSI: Hands Off (a Pet Doctor Barbie post)
The other day, my daughter was invited to a birthday party and told to bring a favorite doll. She brought down one of her special amputee Barbies, the arm neatly chewed off below the elbow. "Aw honey," I said, "Do you want to pick a doll that has all her limbs?" She looked at me askance. "ALL of my dollies are like this." She said this without a hint of regret or remorse. "That's just what happens when Brody shares." I guess when all you've known is a pet serial doll killer, it doesn't ... Read more »
A look inside a research facility AND a giveaway
One of the main reasons Iams invited a group of pet bloggers to Dayton for Behind the Paw was to show off the Pet Health and Nutrition Center in Lewisburg, Ohio. Before I get into what we saw at the facility, I wanted to give you a little background into the wild and wooly topic of animal research. Background It is obviously a controversial topic. An institution who is going to use animals for research purposes needs to have a clear justification as to the benefit of the research as well as ... Read more »
Behind the Paw: the promised post
So, I asked and you guys answered: yes, you want to hear what Iams has to say about the "Iams Cruelty" PETA video fiasco from 2003. OK. You got it. I had to recruit Brody to sit with me for moral support, though. It became quickly apparent after trying to present it in a coherent manner that the intricacies and nuances of something as complex as animal research protocols are not something that can be presented in one post. So I am going to break it down in a few pieces to make it a little ... Read more »
A snapshot of surgery
We were a pretty tech-heavy crew in Peru with the April Amazon Cares trip. One of the items I packed was a Flip camera, which unfortunately chose to poop out entirely about one week into the trip. For the first half, though, it was a cool camera to have since I could set it up on a tripod and just film a half hour of activity. I put together about 40 minutes of footage from 2 clinics the first week in Iquitos. I then sped up the footage so you can see all of this in two minutes' worth of ... Read more »
Behind the Paw: Part Uno
As you all know, last week I spent a couple of days in Dayton, Ohio attending the second Behind the Paw Summit at the invitation of Iams/Eukanuba. When I wasn't leaving computers on buses or throwing gutterballs in a sad attempt to unconvincingly demonstrate my bowling prowess, I actually did learn a lot about the pet food manufacturing process. I'm always a little leery of doing trips like this, because I have two competing agendas when writing about them: mine and theirs. My agenda, of ... Read more »
Wordless Wednesday
A beautiful statue calling to the skies on the banks of the Amazon. ... Read more »
As fate would have it
(As you can see, I'm still turning out posts related to the Amazon Cares trip as I get the chance. It's something I could go on about for ages, in so many different ways.) One of the things that will strike you the most when you are in a third world country is the sheer number of street animals. We're not used to it here. Here, they are picked up, and placed out of sight and out of mind, until of course we either rehome them or kill them. That is how it works here. In other places like ... Read more »
The Grotesquerie
One of my favorite parts of going to Peru was wandering through all the little markets in Iquitos and Lima. It was exactly how you might imagine it: a small, dusty storefront. A man sitting lazily behind the counter with a cigarette watching soccer as you wander to the back of the store. The back, seeming to stretch out before you as if by magic, revealing oddities and strange items choking under a layer of dust. I felt like Indy in search of ancient artifacts. They had a knife that I would ... Read more »
