Your Pet's Best Friend

Thanksgiving for Pets

My usual Thanksgiving rant is "Don't overfeed the pets!"  It's just not a good idea to turn the pets into garbage disposals under the guise of letting them share in the treat.  I hate treating all the unhappy pukers.  Skip the bones, skip the grease, skip the garbage.

So this is a little different slant on the rant. I got an email from the PR flack for Banfield: The Pet Hospital.  This is a corporately owned chain of veterinary hospitals.  Here's their press release:

Banfield has teamed up with the Meals on Wheels Association of America (MOWAA) for a national Pet food drive called Season of Suppers. Banfield hospitals across the nation are collecting Pet food at their locations and donating it to their local MOWAA program to feed Pets of senior citizens that receive meals. Isn’t that great?! Go to your local Banfield from now until December 31 to make your donation! Find your local Banfield here: http://www.banfield.net/hospital-locator.

So, if you're near a Banfield, and going there anyway, why not? 

Science Diet: Buy big and save big.

So here's a weird thing: just the other day I was writing about Science Diet, and this week it goes on sale... for four months.  All the prices went up in July, but if you buy a really BIG bag, the price is dramatically reduced.

Do they have a surplus of big sacks?  Is there some chicken going bad? Are they losing market share?  Is it cheaper to ship one big bag than eight little ones?  Beats me.  I forgot to ask the sales rep when he came in to announce the greatest thing since sliced bread.  He would have had some BS answer, but that might be better than no answer.

It's a good deal, though -- especially if you're a multi-pet household.   Get a big trash can with a tight-fitting lid and drop that big bag in there to keep the bugs and mice out of it. 

Hill's Science Diet and Me, part 2

The old time livestock feed industry used to have a tongue-in-cheek motto: "The way to make money is to remember that 1,800 pounds of grain makes a ton of feed."  In other words, add some inexpensive filler to adulterate the feed.  This would be the same philosophy that resulted in the Chinese sending us poisonous pet-food ingredients last year.  

This would make a livestock-feed company branching out into pet food somewhat suspect in those bad old days.  Even today, it's certainly possible to buy lousy pet food.  A food doesn't have to be a national brand and heavily advertised in order to be good.  On the other hand, generic and house-brand foods have their nutritional formulas worked out on paper, rather than being actually fed to pets for evaluation of their performance.  Beware of "Dog Food" if "food" is misspelled.

Premium diets cost more than others because (at least theoretically) the company's nutritional research has found what they believe to be an optimum formula, and they stick to this "fixed formula" when manufacturing the food.  They build in a fudge factor to give themselves some margin if the cost of ingredients rise.  The Science Diet people were kind enough to send me this graph of the rising cost of ingredients when they apologized for raising prices again.  Be sure and thank your legislators for corn-based ethanol subsidies. 

This is in contrast to a market-based formula approach.  In the market-based approach, you maintain a nutritious food, but if corn is cheaper this month, you put in more corn.  If soybeans are cheaper, you put in more soybeans.  This explains why you can buy the same brand of food and it looks a little different from one bag to the next (probably tastes different, too - try some next time).

Every time someone brings in a new pet, I ask them what they are feeding it.  Over time, this gives me a pretty good idea of how a food performs in the real world (versus their advertising).  There are lots of good foods out there, and I don't make any big effort to switch people over (unless they're feeding junk and the pet actually has health problems resulting from it).

Clients frequently ask, "What do you think is the best food for my pet?"  Long before I started selling the stuff, I recommended Science Diet because of my good experience feeding it.  "Where can I buy it?"  "You can drive fifty miles to a big pet store, or I could order you a bag.  I'm not selling dog food  here.  I'm a doctor."

"Why don't you sell it?"  It takes up a huge amount of space, the mark-up is pitifully low, and it's not medicine... except for the prescription diets, which are medicine... sort of.  Okay, I do sell those.

The bottom line is this: veterinary medicine is a service business.  When clients ask for something over and over again, you'd be wise to get it for them.  It's nice to see people stop in for food when there's nothing wrong with their pet (which is our goal, after all: a healthy pet with an enthusiastic owner).  Hill's has been good about the business relationship.  They send this truck to us every week, and if there's any problem they take care of it (albeit a little slowly last year with the recall fiasco).  Their guarantee is unconditional.  They take care of my clients, which means they are also taking care of me.   They aren't perfect, and their promotional material has moved with the times: more flash and less data [good to know that the dumbing down of America isn't trying to exclude me].

Still and all, I have confidence in the product, and confidence in the company.  If my clients have had a problem, we've gotten it fixed.  All our staff feed it to all our pets.  Too bad they just raised all the prices.

Hill's Science Diet and Me

So how did I become a shill for Hill's Science Diet?  They're sure not paying me.  In fact, it was their latest price increase that got me thinking about this.  No, it all started in 1981, when I got into the dog business for the first time.  I had never had a dog of my own  when I was growing up.  We had spent nearly two years researching the breed and bloodlines and finding a breeder and reserving a puppy.  This would be the super-dog (would uberhundt be more accurate for a Rottweiler?).

When I was in veterinary school we learned a lot about basic nutritional principles.  However, when it came to what you would actually feed your pets, it pretty much came down to "feed dog food".  Yes, it's complete and balanced nutrition for your pet... if you believe the advertising.

When we picked up Anna, the breeder had this long list of things we were supposed to supplement her with.  No matter what type of puppy food we used, Rottweilers (supposedly) needed so much bone meal, calcium pills, cottage cheese, raw eggs, canned peaches, little colored marshmallows and I don't know what all.  My wife is feeding me cold sandwiches, but I have to cook for the dog.  Right.

Now these breeder folks weren't dopes.  Their dogs looked great and they were winning in national specialty shows.  On the other hand, my professors had said "feed dog food".  I got the feeling there must be some middle ground, so I began calling around until I found some big nutrition experts.

The nutrition gurus told me that early commercial dog foods (as in 1950's and before) weren't that great.  Dog owners who wanted serious performance (hunting, breeding, showing, obedience competition) found that they had to supplement to get good results.  If you've ever been involved in any competitive endeavor, you know that when somebody wins, all the other competitors jump on their bandwagon.  You do what the winners do, because that's what it takes to WIN.

Even though name-brand dog foods had improved dramatically, the tradition of supplementing to win had become cast in stone.  Hence, the breeder's insistence on providing a smorgasbord for my puppy.

I decided to bite the bullet and follow the advice of my professors: "feed dog food".  BUT, I decided to get what I thought was the best dog food.   I picked Hill's because the company was founded to make prescription diets for dogs with special medical needs.  From there they branched out into optimum nutrition for normal dogs (unlike other companies that started as livestock feed operations, branching out into pet foods; we're talking 1981, remember).   I fed Anna nothing but Science Diet puppy formula and she did absolutely great, so I was sold on it. 

So, that's the nutritional testimonial aspect.  Stay tuned for the business aspect.

Dog Food Advertising - Live longer with Purina

I started to call this post "Part of this complete breakfast".  Google that phrase and you'll find a lot of take-offs on that time-honored advertising slogan.  I remember it as the tag on commercials for my favorite sugar-laden cereals.  A bowl of sugar-saturated cardboard chips would be featured in a photo that also included bacon, eggs, toast, milk and orange juice, and the announcer reminded us that our sponsor's fine product is "...part of this complete breakfast."  Which part? Why, the unnecessary part, I believe.

Before sugar became demonized, it was considered a selling point when advertising to kids.  Honey Smacks used to be Sugar Smacks.  Golden Crisp was Sugar Crisp.  Frosted Flakes were Sugar Frosted Flakes.  Pops were Sugar Pops.  Remember old Sugar Pops Pete here?  "Oh, the pops are sweeter and the taste is new, they're shot with sugar, through and through."  My kids couldn't believe that one.   "I sweeten them up with my sugar-popper!"

In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, there was an article noting that research seems to indicate that kids (just kids?) watching more food ads will eat more.  Interestingly, they don't seem to necessarily crave the advertised product -- they just eat more.  So if you fill the house with more raisins and almonds and carrot sticks, they'll eat more of that, just as they would eat more Twinkies and Root Beer if the house were full of that.

So what does any of this have to do with the post title above?  Today I saw an advertisement for Purina stating that "...research shows that a diet of Purina Puppy Chow and Purina Dog Chow, when properly fed, can add years to your dog's life."  The italics, as you might guess, are my own.  What does that mean, exactly?

In 2002, researchers at Nestle-Purina published the results of a study showing that dogs fed a calorie-restricted diet lived longer and healthier lives.  They took Labrador Retrievers and paired littermates.  One dog ate an "average" amount of food, and the other was fed 25% less.  In other words, the "average dog" gets 4 cups a day and "healthy dog" gets 3 cups.  The dogs getting 25% less to eat each day lived an average of two years longer, and the onset of age-related health problems was also delayed by years.  Similar data had been found in rodent studies and many folks think that the data is probably applicable to people, as well, though it's rather difficult to do the same kind of controlled study in humans.

The key here is that it wasn't feeding Purina products that added those healthy years -- it was staying lean and hungry all the time.  Of course, you could say that the dogs who ate 25% fewer Purina products lived 2 years longer.  That doesn't make such good advertising copy, though, does it?  Don't get me wrong:  I think Purina makes good pet foods and is a reputable company.  I don't think the ad is designed to get you to feed your dog less Purina Dog Chow, and that is what "...when properly fed" actually means in this context.

What's the old saying?  "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics."  Something like that, I think.   Reminds me of the old cold war joke where the Russians and the U.S.A. have a two-boat race.   New York Times reports, "Americans Beat Russians".  Pravda reports, "Russians finish second, Americans finish next-to-last". 

Part of this complete breakfast indeed.

Nutritional Wisdom

Nutritional wisdom is the concept that an animal somehow innately knows what nutrients its body needs, and also where to obtain them.  For example, if your body were low on potassium, you would instinctively know to eat a banana.  And you thought those banana cravings were just evidence in support of the "Man-from-monkeys" evolution theory.

This always comes up when a dog has eaten some bizarre or unpleasant substance, such as cat poop.  Today, I performed an ovario-hysterectomy on a young Golden Retriever.  When I checked her abdomen during the surgical prep, I thought I was feeling a urinary bladder full of stones.  It turned out to be her rectum, which was full of pea gravel. 

The dog's owner can be predicted 100 percent of the time to ask, "Do you think there's something missing in his diet?"   Well, let's look at the ingredients on your bag of Science Diet puppy food.  By golly, you're right: neither cat poop nor rocks are listed anywhere on the label.  This dog has a granite deficiency and has made her way unerringly to a pile of igneous rocks.  Or wait! Maybe it's a limestone deficiency and she has eaten sedimentary rocks. But wait! What if she can't tell the difference? What if she's deficient in sedimentary rock, and has eaten metamorphic rock instead?

Dogs just eat anything that can't get away from them.  When someone says that an omnivore will eat anything, they usually mean both plant material and meat.  A dog is an omnivore's omnivore.  He will literally eat anything.  If it can't get away, he's going to eat it.  If he only vomits it up twice, he'll probably eat it a third time.  It doesn't have to be tasty (from our point of view), much less nutritious.  It doesn't even have to be digestible.  It doesn't have to feel good (like the patient who ate the Brillo Pad... twice). I guarantee you that all today's patient derived from her meal of gravel was that good feeling you get when you swallow a handful of rocks (and that cool clinking noise it makes when you go poop, of course).

Despite our harrowing experience with the pet food recall of late, name-brand commercial pet-foods are going to be a lot better balance of nutritious ingredients than what most dogs would pick out for themselves foraging.   How well do I recall the dog-food ad "...with more of what your dog likes!"  I envisioned dumping out a bag of dried toads, cat poop, possum vomit, and dirty kleenex.  I bought Science Diet instead.

Home-Prepared Diets

In light of the recent spate of pet food recalls, many folks have considered preparing their pet's diet themselves from fresh ingredients.  Since any fresh produce that is out of season must be coming from South America or someplace, I'm not sure how that makes us feel that much safer.

There is nothing inherently wrong with eating table food: after all, that's what you are eating, right? We know that there are many pets who subsist on table food, eating only what they like the best.  Unfortunately, this seldom results in a balanced diet. Rather, it usually results in health problems over the long haul, particularly noticeable in bones, skin and teeth.  I suppose you could live on little colored marshmallows for a while, but you would begin to lose strength, endurance, and your beautiful complexion.

Good name-brand pet foods supply good, nutritious ingredients in the proper proportions.  When not contaminated with poisonous ingredients, this is the simplest way to provide your pet with a good diet.  Most pets eating Science Diet, or Iams, or Pedigree, or Purina, etc. have obesity as their most common medical problem related to nutrition.

If you are bound and determined to feed a home-prepared diet, here are a couple of resources recommended by Veterinary Information Network:  BalanceIt.com and PetDiets.com

If you are looking for someone to validate the fact that you feed your dog nothing but bologna (I know, I know, you remove the stringy wrapping first: good for you), I don't think you'll find that.

Weight Loss Drug for Dogs

Last night the Pfizer company broke the news about their amazing weight-loss drug for dogs.  They have put nothing out in the veterinary journals, no teasers from their representatives who call on us, no nothing.  Then it's suddenly on CNN.  Generally speaking, drug news that hits the fan in this manner has been less than good in my past experience.  Naturally it's blog fodder, and I'm far from the first (see this cute intro;  the guy's funny, I must admit).

I'll be the first to admit that we have lots of obese dogs and they certainly need help.  It's easy to make fun of "diet pills for dogs" (though Slentrol is a liquid).  Sure, the cheap answer is to feed the dog fewer calories and give it more exercise.  That would mean that we would have to have just a little more will-power than the dog does, though.  The dog has no money, he has no can-opener.  If he's too fat, we did it.  The least we can do now is give him drugs along with his treats.  Maybe they'll soon make Slentrol in a delicious chewy treat instead of yucky liquid.

As Americans, I'm not sure when we jettisoned the pioneer spirit and decided that the lazy way is the American way.  It sure happened sometime, though.  "Say NO to drugs" only applies to drugs from South America.  For everything else, it's "take a pill, take a pill, take a pill".  Not happy?  Not thin? Can't sleep? Take a pill.  We make Huxley's Brave New World look tame.  Heaven help us.

Slentrol can produce side effects of vomiting (most common), diarrhea, lethargy, and loss of appetite.  Sort of sounds like getting an eating disorder by prescription.  No wonder you lose weight.  What it's SUPPOSED to do is to interfere with fat metabolism.  While Pfizer admits that the mechanism of the weight loss (in the absence of the above side-effects) is uncertain, dogs do lose weight while they take it.  If they stop taking it, the effect is lost immediately.  Their research indicates that the obese dog could lose up to twenty percent of its excess body weight.

If you give it to other species (like people) you only get side-effects, no good effects, so taking the dog medicine is a no-no.

So, you can blow off diet and exercise, give two dollars worth of medicine every day, and reduce your dog's weight somewhat.  Depending on how big he is, he could still be obese even with that.

I can hardly wait for the testimonial pictures, complete with the little asterisk *.  I wonder if the newly skinny dogs will get breast implants, too, like the skinny ladies do.

* Results not typical.