Posted on 01/06/2006 9:58:51 PM PST by crushelits
Like I said, you're lucky if you can get away with it up there, but I didn't want anyone else who might read that to think it was OK to even have a dog around cleaning fish. Just licking any of the blood is enough to make them very sick, and die without treatment.
It's only a problem in dogs, not cats, and it's only a problem with raw fish, not cooked. But it's not something to mess around with :~\
Some dogs (and cats) are very picky eaters. If the animal has a history of turning their nose up on a whim it can be hard to tell if it is a real problem or just a mood
"Science Diet and Hills. If it is good enough for my military dogs, its good enough for my pets. Hill's has a great number of Me too brands but I will stick with Hill's, the Mark Morris Foundation and Science Diet. There are of a great many that try to take a piece of their market but very few have the integrity and experience of Hill"
Both still contain corn.
Dogs don't digest corn well. They also don't digest other foods in the presence or corn, as well. Rice is much better for them.
You think that the military would only use the best? lol. Try... the military uses the lowest bidder.
I always wet my horse's food with water (and her liquid supplements) so that the dry supplements stick to the food, and I mist her hay to keep down the dust.
Well, the crunchier the better, for her teeth is all. :~D
Mine have never minded it dry.
Bless you. You sound like a wonderful person. There are no special skill to raising / caring for an animal - except paying attention.
Stay away from Science Diet - it's junk!
Look at the order of ingredients ... you don't want your pet eating overpriced junk. You're paying for the image and marketing of it - NOT nutrition since there is NONE in Science Diet.
Then you can hear her diligently licking the bowl to make sure she didn't miss anything. Then she takes a drink of water, then she licks the bowl AGAIN, just in case.
Then she wants her after-dinner walk . . .
I've been following your conversation about feeding raw salmon to dogs. When we moved to Alaska years ago, I learned that what my father told me was true....that Alaskans feed raw salmon to their dogs and the dogs thrive on it and do not get sick. I found that to be amazing as we suffered the tragic loss of a golden retriever when we lived in the Northwest. My husband and a friend were cleaning salmon in our driveway and somehow, one of our beloved golden retrievers got ahold of either a small piece or perhaps licked up some blood.
She became very sick and our vet was the one who figured out what was wrong with her...that she had eaten some raw salmon. The parasites in raw salmon laid eggs (fluke eggs) in her internal organ (liver?). Well, in spite of the best medical care in the doggy hospital, she died.
When I asked our vet why it is that dogs in Alaska do not get sick, he thought that perhaps it is because the dogs are fed salmon from the time they are pups and they could develop an immunity of sorts to the parasites. Or, that our salmon up here does not have these parasites.
I'll have to go read up on the links you posted, HairOfTheDog.
Purina One isn't all that bad. Nevertheless, I prefer Nutro Max Cat Complete Care. Science Diet used to be good, but after Dr. Hill died they got sold out to Colgate-Palmolive, and Iams used to be good too, but they got sold out to Proctor & Gamble. Now you see both brands in the grocery store.
Compare:
Chicken Meal, Ground Rice, Corn Gluten Meal, Rice Flour, Poultry Fat (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), Sunflower Oil (preserved with mixed Tocopherols, a source of Vitamin E), Flaxseed Meal, Tomato Pomace, Brewers Dried Yeast, Natural Flavors, Dried Beet Pulp, Mixed Vegetable Fiber (carrots, celery, beets, parsley, lettuce, watercress and spinach), Potassium Chloride, Menhaden Fish Oil, Soy Protein Concentrate, Oat Fiber, Choline Chloride, Cranberry Powder, Taurine, DL-Methionine, Dried Egg Product, Ferrous Sulfate, Vitamin E Supplement, Zinc Sulfate, Zinc Proteinate, Inositol, L-Carnitine, Ascorbic Acid (source of Vitamin C), Dried Bacillus Licheniformis Fermentation Extract, Dried Bacillus Subtilis Fermentation Extract, Dried Chicory Root, Lutein, Yucca Schidigera Extract, Niacin, Manganese Proteinate, Manganous Oxide, Beta-Carotene, Garlic Flavor, Biotin, Riboflavin Supplement (source of Vitamin B-2), Vitamin A Supplement, Calcium Pantothenate, Copper Sulfate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (source of Vitamin B-6), Copper Proteinate, Vitamin B-12 Supplement, Thiamine Mononitrate (source of Vitamin B-1), Lycopene, Vitamin D-3 Supplement, Sodium Selenite, Menadione Sodium Bisulfite Complex (source of Vitamin K activity), Ethylenediamine Dihydriodide (source of Iodine), Folic Acid.
With:
Brewers rice, corn gluten meal, poultry by-product meal, animal fat preserved with BHA, ground yellow corn, soybean meal, turkey by-product meal, beef and bone meal, fish meal, dried whey, deflourinated phosphate, dried cheese powder, phosphoric acid, potassium chloride, dried liver digest, salt, L-lyine, artificial color, choline chloride, calcium carbone, taurine, wheat germ meal, zinc oxide, ferrous sulfate, citric acid, niacin, vitamin supplements (A, D-3, E, B-12, calcium panthothenate, manganese oxide, riboflavin, biotin, inositol, folic acid, thiamine mononitrate, pyridoxine hydrochloride, menadione, sodium sulfphate, calcium iodate, cobalt carbonate.
One thing that pet-owners should absolutely stay away from is anything that has ethoxyquine in it.
Definitely a Nutro fan. Started using it a year ago for all my fur persons. Really makes a difference. I've got three cats, two Great Danes, a Jack Russell and a Jackacockapoo.
We use Propac for our yorkies and they love it.
It's either an immunity or it's not present in AK salmon, I'm as curious as you are.
I have two toy breeds, a Maltese and a Yorkie, and they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The Maltese, like your Maltpoo, is picky, picky, picky. She will rarely eat commercial food, and if she does eat it she doesn't eat much. She doesn't care for dog biscuits or any commercial dog treat except for freeze dried liver. She gets a home cooked bone every night with a little meat on it to help her work on her teeth, and some nights she doesn't even touch it. I don't worry about her though, because she even though she is 10 years old and skinny, she is spry, quick, and has lots of energy.
If she were my only dog, I would just put out a high-quality dry food and let her graze. She'd eat if she got hungry enough. But my yorkie is a garbage disposal with legs. She doesn't turn anything down and would eat all day long if you let her. So I can't leave food around for the Maltese to eat when she "decides" that she's finally hungry, or the Yorkie will get all of it. Since I know my Maltese likes freeze dried liver so much, I make a homemade dogfood using chicken livers, eggs, whole oatmeal, and vitamin / nutrient powder (Missing link plus glucosamine). The Maltese will eat it right away about 95% of the time, but still sometimes she turns her nose up at it.
I have my theory about why she is so picky. The first couple of days after we brought her home, she had a touch of diarhea. She seemed to be eating OK, but she started wigging out and having seizures. We rushed her to the vet, and he rubbed a little honey on her gums and she snapped right out of it. He said that the diarhea was caused by a little bug or from the stress of being pulled away from her mom, and it caused her to have low blood sugar, which caused the seizures. He gave her some antibiotics and told us to she needed to eat something that would be easy on her system, and recommended we get a few jars of baby food meat, and feed her every few hours. I think that baby food diet is what caused her to become a gourmand, although I could be wrong. She just might have been born that way.
Chicken, brewers rice, corn gluten meal, poultry by-product meal, wheat flour, animal fat preserved with mixed Tocopherols, wheat gluten, whole grain corn, fish meal, brewers dried yeast, potassium chloride, malted barley flour, animal digest, calcium carbonate, salt, tetra sodium pyrophosphate, L-lysine monohydrochloride, choline chloride, taurine, phosphoric acid, zinc sulphate, ferrous sulphate, Vit-E supplament, manganese sulphate, niacin, Vit-A supplement, calcium pantothenate, thiamine mononitrate, copper sulphate, riboflavin supplement, Vit-B12 supplement, pyrodoxine hydrochloride, frolic acid, Vit-D3 supplement, calcium iodate, biotin, menadione sodium bisulfate complex, sodium selenate.
My cat gets dry kibble Nutro as standard fare. On holidays only she gets a can of goody-goody. There's some good stuff out there, and you pay $0.50 a can for it (in the pet supply store). I was particularly fond of this particular canned food called Unique. I'm not sure if its still available but it had visably discernable seafood in it (huge chunks) of various kinds. I got that and the Iams, and Whiskas too.
It's got that un-named animal fat, so it's out for me. Which was which on the two you compared above?
I empty the bags out into a bin and then throw the bag out, so I can't transcribe what's in the local stuff I buy. It seemed pretty good, and easy enough to get.
I really hate canned food and try to never feed it. Frankly, it looks and smells like it's already been through the pet. :~\ I had to feed it to my old cocker mix when she was really on her last legs, canned food with Red-Cell supplement poured on top that looked like blood, it was really disgusting, and the only thing that could hope to keep weight on her.
And our two little kittens we fed soft for the first couple weeks... they were really too young when we got them and we fed canned cat food and milk replacer.
Anybody that's a fish keeper would be horrified at the thought of sushi anything. Fish come down with stuff that thinks penacillin is a snack. For example piscine pseudomonas is one vile and nasty bug. Psuedomonas in general is some bad news. Piscine tuberculosis is another bad bug. It makes antibiotic resistant TB in people look like a 95 pound weakling going up against Mike Tyson. Fish also carry some pretty nasty parasites too (that need another species to complete the cycle). I don't want to be an alarmist, but porcine trichinosis is the sniffles in comparison (that being some pretty nasty stuff in its own right). There's a big problem with that in Mexico.
The problem with trich is that it depends where the larvae germinate, e.g., brain tissue. This leads to some really interesting sympoms.
No raw fish for me! :~\ And I don't think that's a particular sacrifice either.
I used to feed the Science Diet exclusively. I'd pour 20# bags of it into the Deli Cat containers to preserve freshness. About 3 years ago my one cat started major league puke fest. The other one refused to eat the stuff. I was astonished to see how quickly the puke molded. I had already noticed a change in the cat's stool. There were these little bits of stuff in there (it reminded me of sawdust). That's what it reminded me of: sawdust poop held together with play-do filler. It wasn't until he started having seizures, that I took him to the vet, the vet suggesting that the food be tested, that I check the lable of the food. Because I keep the food bags around for disposal of the cat waste (I use the scoopable Pestell litter), that I discerned that the Science Diet formula had been changed, and one of the top ingredients was: ground yellow corn. And they were using BHA to preserve the fat, and ethoxyquin to preserve the food. I was horrified.
The vet notified me that the test results indicated there was nothing wrong with the cat food and that I could come back to pick up the 18# or so that I left with her. I told her she could keep it. She insisted that there was nothing wrong with the food. I think vets are in cahoots with Science Diet. That's a scam and a half with that Science Diet C/D. What kind of pet food is prescription only?
It just so happened that when I went to the pet supply place (K-9 Specialties bulk distributor) to get some food (since I took the whole bag I had to the vet), that a rep for Nutro was standing right next to all the cat food. We had a conversation about what was going on with my cat. That's when I found out about the reformulation (when I went back home I was able to compare the lables on a few different bags and seen that the Science Diet had been reformulated like three times in succession (based on the expiration date on the bag).
Anyways, she sold me on the Nutro by saying one thing: read the lable. So I did. She pointed out what animal/poultry by-products meant. I received a real nasty mental image of feeding beaks, hooves and claws (among other vile and disgusting things) to my dear animals. She said, if it doesn't sound appetising to you why force your animals to eat it? She told me that some people won't eat hotdogs because of the bad reputation they have from several decades ago. I thought about that for a second, and said to myself I don't have to worry about that because I buy all of my meat from the butcher. I walked out the store with a bag of Nutro.
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