Animals can adapt to change if it is done gradually and patiently.

Animals need time to adjust to changes.  With TLC and consistant gradual changes they will usually do fine.  Be patient.

Payson Roundup

Animals need time to adjust to change
Chandra Cushman

October 22, 2010

Here at the Humane Society of Central Arizona, we experience change on a daily basis. The change we see here, though, is positive. It sometimes is not something we notice until a few months have passed; it’s slow change.

Like when a young dog comes in and is so afraid we have to carry him from the car back to the kennel. Then, a few months later, it’s like we are working with a completely different dog.

As time goes by, these fearful dogs begin to trust and love us. They make great strides with manners, socialization and showing their love and appreciation. I’ve had previous adopters tell me that the shelter animal they’ve adopted showed them more affection than previous animals from their past that they bought from a pet store or purchased from a breeder.

Some animals need some time to adjust to the new change in their life after being adopted. With some, shelter life is all they’ve ever known. That’s why the benefits always outweigh the struggles when it comes to adopting a shelter animal. So let me ask you this: Is it time for a positive change in your life?

Many of you know of the newest addition to our family here at the Humane Society of Central Arizona. Her name is Sarah Hock and she is our new executive director. I wanted to sit down with Sarah and ask her some questions that were fun and would help you get a better feel of who she is. So, here we go!

Q: If you could be a dog, what kind would you be?

A: “I wouldn’t, I would be a cat. Cats are intelligent, independent and mischievous.”

Q: What are your immediate and long-term goals for HSCAZ?

A: “My immediate goal is to serve all animals in HSCAZ’s care to the best of our ability. My long-term goal is to do more education and outreach programs in the community in regards to preventative health care, pet responsibilities and the joys of adopting a shelter animal.”

Q: What makes you proud to be part of the family here at HSCAZ?

A: “The opportunity to work with such dedicated staff and volunteers here at HSCAZ.”

Q: What are your favorite music bands?

A: “Jackson Brown, David Bowie, The Pixies and The Constantines.”

Q: How many animals do you have?

A: “I have six cats, all are rescues. The latest addition is a kitten I bottle-fed from just 2 days old.”

Q: What is a common misconception about shelter animals?

A: “That if they are in the shelter system, there must be something wrong with them. We have plenty of healthy, happy animals that have simply had the misfortune of losing their home.”

Q: Aimes is our featured pet of the week. What do you think the ideal home for him would be?

A: “A patient, understanding home that will be willing to work with him. Someone who understands where he came from. Preferably a home with other dogs so he can play and continue to learn how to be a dog.”

AIMES

Aimes came in to the shelter on May 4, 2010. He was a nervous wreck and had to be carried from the car to the kennels in back because he refused to walk on a leash. He was shaking in fear, so thin his ribs were showing and covered in dirt and poop. His future didn’t look too bright, but we wanted to give him a chance.

After just a few days he started to come to the front of the kennel, showing interest in us. I remember washing him off to get rid of all the dirt and seeing that he was actually white underneath, not brown.

We slowly gained Aimes’ trust. With each day that went by we saw more and more progression with him. We had to put a harness on him to get him to go on walks because he refused to walk with just a leash and collar. Our dedicated volunteers were patient while they taught him how to walk on a leash; he probably never had before he came here.

Aimes really started to perk up once he got to go to the play yard and play with the other dogs. He was a little confused at first, not knowing how to play or interact with other dogs, but he sure got the hang of it quick.

Aimes is now house-trained and does well with all dogs and even children. We have taken him to mobile adoption events in the Valley and he does just fine in public. Since he is a Harrier hound mix, his nose tends to lead him while he is on walks and in the yard, so a decent-sized yard and plenty of activity is something he will definitely need.

Watching some of these animals come in and do a complete 180 is something we take pride in. If they can do it for us, they can certainly do it for you, just give it time. Remember, change is good.

Come down and meet our adoptable animals at 812 S. McLane Road. October is the American Humane Association’s Adopt-A-Dog Month®. For one more week, all dog adoption fees are just $25 at the Humane Society of Central Arizona. We have a special discount fee for our senior animals and our Lonely Hearts Club members of just $15. Adult cats are $50 and kittens are $70.

Don’t forget to vote for us every day during the Holiday Shelter Challenge at www.theanimalrescuesite.com!

Originally published at: http://www.paysonroundup.com/news/2010/oct/22/animals-need-time-adjust-change/

Dog food ingredients may be excellant but not meet your dog's needs

Every food contains a different ratio of macronutrients – protein, fat, and carbohydrates – and you have to learn by trial and error which ratio works best for your dog. Each product contains varying amounts of vitamins and minerals, and though most fall within the ranges considered acceptable by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), some may be in excess of, or deficient to your dog’s needs.

How to choose the best dog food for your canine friend.

At our home, we have two heavy golden retrievers who eat any and everything.  Meanwhile, a stray table scrap for our two greyhounds would have nasty consequences (loose stools).  I know that Whole Dog Journal rates dog foods, so I turned to their archives for some good insight on dog food.  I was impressed to find that they start by stating that you, the owner is the best qualified to pick the food for your dog.  There is not a one brand fits all solution.  Here is a snippet from their July 2005 issue:

" But dogs, just like people, are individuals. What works for this dog won’t work for that one. A Pointer who goes jogging with his marathon-running owner every day needs a lot more calories than the Golden Retriever who watches TV all day. The diet that contains enough fat to keep that sled dog warm through an Alaskan winter would kill that Miniature Poodle who suffers from pancreatitis. The commercial kibble that stopped my Border Collie’s itching and scratching in its tracks may cause your Bedlington Terrier to develop copper storage disease.

Dangers of raw pet foods: A Better Alternative

Fresh foods fed in variety are without question the perfect form of nutrition. Appropriately designed cat and dog supplements to help reduce the risk of food-borne pathogens and oxidation, and to help balance high meat meals and provide a spectrum of vegetable-based nutrients and nutraceuticals such as Wysong has developed can also be of great benefit. Anything less than this is a compromise. The next best alternative is packaged dried raw foods that have incorporated in them food technology to impede pathogens, parasites and oxidation. The low water activity of these products is a great inhibitor of pathogens and the low level of moisture make storage and shipping efficient and environmentally friendly. (See our Wysong TNT™ raw dog and cat foods .) Good quality table scraps and properly designed dry pet foods and canned pet foods can be mixed into the diet rotation with benefit as well.
Consumers must learn the principles of fresh foods fed in variety and to trust in nature. Every pet owner desires the best for their pet and they are correct in thinking food is an essential element in achieving that goal. But it is incorrect to believe that another person can do more for their pet’s health than they can do themselves. All that is required is a little understanding and use of common sense. To that end we provide a free e-Health Letter, a free one-hour CD by Dr. Wysong entitled, “The Thinking Person’s Master Key To Health,” healthy product alternatives designed intelligently with health as the number one objective, and books and recipes for anyone wanting to take control of their own and their family’s and pet’s health destiny so as not be led down health destructive primrose marketing paths.
(Note: Although the authors are associated with the technical development of the Wysong products mentioned above, the reader should not misconstrue the information as a commercial inducement. Wysong will teach people for free how to fresh-food-feed using only products purchased in the meat and vegetable aisles in the grocery. Although Wysong products provide convenient and supplemental alternatives and variety, no Wysong product is required to be purchased in order to achieve this superior method of feeding. The position is taken at Wysong that health professionals [which we are] have an ethical responsibility to help people prevent disease and thus are duty bound to teach people how to not need their services. So that is exactly what we do. Wysong pet products are a mere tool to help people along that path to the ideal goal of health self-sufficiency.)

Dangers of raw pet foods: Environmental

We live in an age of pollution and energy diminishment. RF pet foods require a tremendous amount of refrigeration and equipment all along the supply path. Freezing is energy inefficient and consumes valuable energy resources. Since RF pet foods are 70% water (at least) there are huge resources wasted in freezing and transporting the tons of this food-contained water through the supply chain. Along with all the equipment, trucking, freezing and frozen water handling inefficiency comes the pollution that parallels such industry.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Packaging

The best packaging for any pet food, particularly RF pet foods, is light- and oxygen-barrier and modified atmosphere flushed. In the absence of this, oxidation proceeds rendering the lipids toxic. None of the producers surveyed employed these technologies that we could detect. Even if they did, the other problems and dangers listed above would remain.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Parasites Are Ignored

– A wide range of parasites can be found within RF pet foods. Although there is technology in terms of freezing and natural ingredients that can be used to thwart this problem, none of the producers examined employed any of it that we could detect.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Quality

In order to make their foods anywhere near affordable, RF pet food producers must search the ingredient market for items that can carry the name of real food but may in fact be only a hollow shell of the real thing. Inferior meat and organ ingredients, heat processed grains and vegetable riffraff (for example “broccoli” on a label may really be broccoli stems – like eating a branch from an apple tree rather than the apple) are used because they are of low cost. That is not to say the marketing brochures and labels do not make it appear as though the brand is not a true gourmet meal. If one reviews the various labels it becomes clear that the race is on to see who can put the fanciest and most exotic ingredients on labels ... as if that is the road to pet health. (It is not.) In a brief ingredient survey this is what we found:
Every manner of “pureed” vegetable Organic beef, rabbit, chicken, turkey, goat, lamb, duck, pork Organic honey Organic papaya, persimmons, blueberries, oranges, apples, pears Organic yogurt Organic alfalfa, millet, quinoa and barley sprouts Wheat grass Nettles Bok choy Cultured kefir Cod liver oil Capsicum Watermelon
The reader is challenged to go to the store and total up the cost of such ingredients. Some of the organic ingredients can cost over $15 per pound. But the RF pet diets containing them can retail for as little as $2-4 per pound. Take away margins for distributors and retail stores and the producer is selling them wholesale for close to a dollar per pound. Now on top of the cost of ingredients is the production, advertising, packaging, freezing and in some cases a sales force making six figures. Something most certainly does not add up. The only thing that can be missing is true ingredient quality. But how can the label say these expensive ingredients are in the food? All the RF pet food producer needs to do is put in pinches of the expensive ingredients just to say they are there.
The only economic hope for a RF pet food producer is to create the perception of “value added.” They simply could not put the costly ingredients in the food to any degree and make a profit for themselves and all the middlemen up and down the chain. The price they would have to charge would be ridiculous. In effect, in order to be successful, producers must become accomplished at propaganda, not health and nutrition.
Consumers interested in cutting through to the truth do themselves and their pets a service by going to the grocery store with a list of the ingredients ostensibly in a RF pet diet. Although some RF diets in the lower price range appear to not be attempting to mislead, consumers should do the math comparing the exotic ingredients in RF pet foods to the prices for the real thing in the store and decide for themselves whether either value or honesty resides in RF pet products.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Temperature And Time Are Critical

– Ice nucleation, as opposed to ice crystallization, is the primary vector in producing a stable, tasty, frozen pet product. Freezing is a technically complex process based on the optimum combination of temperature and time, amongst other factors. In the wrong processor’s hands, slips in proper freezing care can lead to a microbiologically unstable product and/or a sensory inferior one. Rapid freezing leads to nucleation, thereby preventing undesirable large ice crystals from forming throughout the product. With rapid freezing the molecules don’t have time to form positions in the characteristic six-sided snowflake, so nucleation overrides crystallization. On the other hand, slow freezing (the usual RF pet food situation) creates large ice crystals, which on thawing causes cellular damage to the meat. This in turn causes meat to “drip” – lose juiciness – and form a perfect liquid medium for bacterial growth.

Mycotoxins Go Undetected

– RF pet foods, particularly those that are a mix of cooked grains (which of course negates the claim for “rawness”) and vegetables, can contain mycotoxins. None of the RF pet food producers surveyed addressed this problem.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Microwave Thawing Dangers

 – If RF pet foods are thawed in the microwave as a matter of convenience, the value of the food is greatly compromised. Microwaves can virtually boil the liquid phase within cells and electromagnetically alter important food components rendering them not only useless nutritionally, but toxic as wel

Dangers of raw pet foods: Supply Chain Time Dangers

– Time is the enemy of nutrition and safety. The longer the time between the farmer’s field and the belly, the greater the potential problems. RF pet foods create the illusion that time is not a factor. Because the frozen state masks toxins and odors, the consumer can be given the impression of value and freshness when, in fact, they may be getting age and toxicity.

Economics

Consumers are under the mistaken assumption that a nondescript package mix of ingredients with an officious label and from a producer posing as a nutritional authority (none of the producers we examined had people at the helm with expertise or credentials) would be the best choice. Little do they realize that they could avoid essentially all of the caveats listed above by simply going to the grocer and buying fresh meats and produce. Pets do not require every nutrient in existence at every meal, as is the impression given by the 100% complete RF pet food producers, and for that matter the rest of the pet food industry. Why would people choose to pay a producer to mix inferior ingredients, package them, label them, freeze them, transport them, advertise them and pay the margin for the producer, the distributor, sales force and the retailer when they can avoid all that cost and put their money into real quality fresh foods? Some people are so convinced that RF pet food manufacturers perform some sort of magic that they will pay to have such foods put in special insulated containers packed with dry ice and overnight delivered! This is particularly ridiculous when one considers that no real convenience – and certainly no health or nutritional value – is added in the process. The consumer still has to go to the store and buy something.
At the grocer a person can buy fresh, raw, untainted meats and produce appropriate for pet carnivores at less than $1 per pound. Slightly out-of-date meats, sale items, trimmings or other still excellent products that cannot be put in the meat case can be even less. True, if you are to purchase the ingredients listed above in perfect human grade organic form (as many RF pet food producers boast) the cost could be far greater. But at least you would know what you are getting. RF pet foods can cost as much as $7 per pound with an average of about $3-4 per pound (not including shipping to the customer’s door) and most of that cost is going into freezing, transportation and profits through a whole chain of participants. Here is a case where a consumer gets to pay more (a whole lot more) and get less (a whole lot less).

Frozen Pet Foods Can Lead To Acidemia

 – Tissue degradation and oxidation under high heat freezing (above 29° F), which occurs along the supply chain with RF pet products also leads to acidification. Increasing acid consumption can contribute to acidemia that lies at the base of virtually every chronic degenerative disease plaguing modern pets. (See references below.)

Frozen Pet Products Are Not Inert To Degradation

– In frozen storage there is deterioration in organoleptic quality – meat texture, fat turning granular and crumbly, and discoloration. Microbial enzymes also remain active, especially lipases that break down fats increasing their susceptibility to oxidation.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Freezer Burn Indicates A More Serious Problem

– Air reaching the meat surface is the cause for the freezer burns that result in the typical grayish-brown leathery spots. Frozen water on the surface or just beneath it sublimates (from solid state directly to vapor) into the air, causing moisture to be lost from the meat over time resulting in discoloration and a dry, leathery texture. Proper pet food packaging helps maintain quality and prevent freezer burn, however most packaging is permeable to air. The prevalence of freezer burn in RF pet products speaks to the fact that the product is being oxidized and with that creating free radical toxins to lay the seeds for various degenerative diseases.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Free Radical Problems Masked

– Essential fatty acids and other health enhancing lipids are critical in the diet. Once foods are ground, mixed, exposed to air, light and pro-oxidants such as heme iron and other metals found in plant and animal tissue, the contained lipids are oxidized to chain reaction producing free-radicals, causing rancidity and oxidant toxins. Freezing at appropriately low temperatures slows this process but does not stop it. The temperature in conventional freezers used for RF pet foods is not insurance against such oxidation. Because the frozen state masks olfactory detection of rancidity, foods that would be otherwise rejected end up being consumed. The free-radical pathology potential can then work its chronic degenerative disease and immune weakening effects.

Freezing Masks Inedibles

– Raw meat and organ tissue continues to use ATP (source of energy) until it is exhausted and the tissue enters a state of rigor. Endogenous enzymatic activity within the tissue continues to digest the muscle tissue (proteolysis) softening it until it becomes tender and develops the typical palatable taste. This process is retarded by cold. The freezing of properly aged meat presents few problems, however, any residual ATP present in the tissue during freezing will contract the muscle upon thawing resulting in a more unpalatable product. Mixed RF pet foods would hide this problem.

Dangers of raw pet foods: Raw Frozen Foods Are Not “100% Complete”

– Many RF foods make (or imply) the same spurious 100% complete and balanced pet food claim as heat processed foods and thus carry with them the same health dangers. Feeding any food exclusively, let alone a nondescript packaged food containing who-knows-what from who-knows-what manufacturing environment is a bad choice if health and safety are of concern. (See The Truth About Pet Foods by Dr. Wysong).

Display Packaging Causes Free Radicals

– Light, as well as air, can promote free radical production. Retail display pet packaging that is clear or light permeable permits light to catalyze the free radical (disease promoting) process.