Oh Yeah, You Blend

…or “Why I Now Love Customer Loyalty Programs”. We got an email today from Petco (big pet food superstore chain here – I shop there because they carry decent-sized Bully sticks and stock a couple of super-premium foods – they’re my emergency fall-back pet food store). The email said that our customer loyalty account indicated that I’d recently made a purchase of a food which is NOW RECALLED and that I should return it to the store for a full refund. I had one can of the recalled food left (I had fed one can on the list…but little Rakki seems to be a-okay).

The little sales dude in the store told me that apparently the manufacturer told Natural Balance that they’d altered its formula to make the food more profitable, and the Dick van Patten is personally involved now. I think (being, as I am, a crazy dog lady) that I will get a blood panel done to check Rakki’s kidney function anyway, but wow…this is way too scary, it gets bigger and badder every day, and nothing seems to be safe, not even humans.

Howl911 has a very comprehensive list of recalled pet foods to date. It’s getting much scarier now with the rice protein concentrate issue, since (unlike wheat gluten), rice protein concentrate appears in the ingredients lists of some super premium foods like Blue Buffalo Lamb & Rice, two of the Castor & Pollux foods, Karma (which is an organic food made by Innova) and the Wellness Simple Food Solutions venison formula. The Natural Balance venison formula was voluntarily recalled by Natural Balance a few days ago (their venison formula is made by Diamond). I have fed some of these foods, some of the other foods on the list include some Hill’s Prescription Diets (including, ironically, the canine k/d, which is supposed to be for dogs with kidney problems…now it can GIVE them kidney problems). Melamine: it’s not what should be for dinner.

The latest news about the Menu Foods pet food recall shows us just how much attention is really paid to the quality of some pet food ingredients. It’s looking like the first complaints about animals becoming sick came as early as December 2006, and that the initial statements about affected animals only included those animals which had become ill or died in Menu Foods’ labs (which, to be fair, might not be that unreasonable when you consider that those animals were the only ones they knew about for sure) – either way, given the popularity of the brand names on the recall list, I won’t be surprised to see the eventual death toll reach well into the thousands, and we may never know for certain, since kidney failure sadly isn’t exactly uncommon in cats. (more…)

On February 3, I drove down to Austin to attend the Pat Hastings seminar on “Structure In Action”. I’d read her book “Tricks of the Trade”, and I’d heard very good things about her “Puppy Puzzle”, so I was really looking forward to it, especially in light of the fact that I’m trying to prepare myself for finding Rakki’s little sister. Since the hypothetical sister will hopefully be my “real” performance dog, I plan to be as educated, aware and hard-line about selecting her as I possibly can.

Pat Hastings is an AKC judge, a longtime owner-handler and breeder (of many different breeds), and an author. She and her late husband developed a method for assessing puppies’ structure which has proven itself extremely accurate over many years of testing with thousands of dogs.
One thing I found very interesting was that Pat starts with assessing temperament (a subject very dear to my heart), and she does a single test which she feels gives her as much information as is needed to assess basic temperament (she holds the puppy gently and then slowly turns it over and cradles the puppy on its back in her arms to assess its reaction – fearful puppies will grab on for dear life and avoid eye contact, aggressive puppies with squirm and fight and sometimes even attack – what she likes to see is a puppy who relaxes and seeks eye contact, she says that’s the sign of a puppy who is confident and interested in working with people). (more…)