March 2010
Letters
Don’t Villify Surgery
We received the following long – but very informative – letter from Evelyn Orenbuch, DVM, the vice president of the American Association of Rehabilitation Veterinarians. It helps further our readers’ education about their options for treating canine CCL injuries.
Whole Dog Journal's Dry Dog Food Review Update
Several of our eagle-eyed readers caught an error in dry dog food review in our February issue: “In the February 2010 issue, the picture of the approved dog foods includes Nutro Ultra but it is not listed in the article. Why the discrepancy?” “I see that Nutro Ultra is included in the photo on page 3; its caption says ‘these are just a few examples of premium quality foods.’ However, it’s not included on the ‘approved foods’ list. Can you clarify?” “I noticed that the Nutro Ultra Holistic food is in your picture, but I couldn’t find it in the actual list of approved foods. Is it one of the approved foods?”
Quackery? Or Life-saving?
Reading Whole Dog Journal is one of the most frustrating experiences I have each month. Side-by-side with the outstanding training articles by Pat Miller and Editor Nancy Kerns’ excellent series on dog food and diet, you publish the most mind-numbing foolishness about alleged alternative healing and medicine. Your training as a journalist was seriously deficient if it didn’t teach you to investigate all such claims before your implicit endorsement by printing them.
How Whole Dog Journal Helps
Please remember to mention rescue groups for people looking for specific breeds. We love Newfoundlands, and are celebrating the one-year anniversary of our adoption of Terra, a brown Newfie we rescued. Terra was very stressed by the move and I wasn’t really planning on preparing another BARF (bones and raw food) diet. She doesn’t like kibble, though, so here we are again. BARF diets are a little hard to get started, but once you get a system, they’re not bad. The hardest thing for me is getting enough fresh chicken necks, since my usual grocery store doesn’t stock them, so I have to make a special trip to a different store, but I think it’s a lot cheaper than buying the prepared meat meals.
Blossoming Dogs
I was so pleased to receive my August issue containing a piece (“Your Dog Nose No Bounds”) about scent training, K9 Nose Work, and specifically reference to Jill Marie O’Brien and Amy Herot. I am currently attending one of their classes and it is truly amazing work. The concept that I love the best is that, while most other dog activities are micromanaged by the human, scent work is the opposite, allowing the dog to be totally a dog and be rewarded for following her instincts! I cannot wait to take my other dogs through the program.
Persistence Pays
We were just about to let our subscription expire when we received the March issue and noticed the article, “Starving, Not Starved.” We couldn’t believe our eyes! Our black Lab-mix fit all of the descriptions of this horrible disease, endocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI). Despite many trips to, and many treatments at, different vets, this condition was never mentioned. We are sending a copy of the article to our vets with the hope that it will prevent suffering by pets thus afflicted. We’ll never know for sure if our dog had EPI, but if she had, and had been diagnosed, what a different life she would have had. Thank you for your excellent publication. We’re enclosing a renewal card and a picture of our late dog, Nala.
Challenging Topics
I have been meaning to write this e-mail for some time. Whole Dog Journal has done such a tremendous job of providing high-quality, informative articles this year. In particular, I was most impressed with the article about dental care and the vaccine article featuring Dr. Ron Schultz. Your writers did such a top-notch job of researching complex topics and providing fair and accurate information and opinions. As a veterinarian myself, I sometimes read such articles with an overly critical eye, but I could find nothing at fault with either of these. In fact, I was so ecstatic with the dental care article that I had my entire staff read it, so they could see from a dog-owner’s perspective why high quality dental care is so important.
More On Meat
I felt compelled to send a response to Patricia Coale’s letter (in the August 2008 issue) about the article on green tripe (“How Green Is Your Tripe?” July 2008). I wholeheartedly agree with her that the community in which we live is absolutely unaware of the atrocities committed to factory farm animals. I have actually assisted an animal rights activist to help get Proposition 2, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act, on the 2008 California ballot.
Always More Than One Way
First, I want to say I love getting WDJ every month and the information has been very timely for me. But as much as I like Pat Miller’s advice and philosophy for dog training and I refer to her always, I need to respond to the article about teaching dogs to walk nicely on a leash. I am a Tellington TTouch Practitioner and dog trainer (for 30 years) and the TTouch method of teaching dogs to walk in balance is another very positive and gentle way of working with them. Please check it out with a TTouch practitioner near you!
Evade These Potential Dangers to Your Dog
Environmentally concerned scientists believe that both polyethylene (recycling codes HDPE #2 or LDPE #4) and polypropylene (PP #5) are among the least toxic plastics available at this time. (Both are plastics, not rubber.) They offer toughness, durability, and flexibility, and don’t need additives the way vinyl does to attain these qualities. My Bouviers, who are great chewers with powerful jaws, love to play with their Jolly Ball and I feel it’s one of their best and safest plastic toys. Thank you for the excellent article “Why Vinyl Stinks,” which alerts consumers to the hazards of vinyl toys and products for dogs. As a professor of interior design, I am very aware of the problems associated with PVC and many of the products that are made from this plastic. PVC is a prevalent material in our world and it is used for a multitude of things that we use every day, many of these things we may have direct contact with. As the author points out, most PVC is fairly stable and may or may not present a hazard to the user. Primary hazards for end-users are the softening agents that are added to it or if it is burned.
Floored (Letters and Correction)
I just finished reading “Why Vinyl Stinks” (Whole Dog Journal April 2007). While I think the article is wonderful, there is a problem with the reference to “vinyl linoleum flooring.” The descriptions “vinyl” and “linoleum” are frequently and incorrectly interchanged or combined. Linoleum is a natural material, made from linseed oil (flax oil) and wood pulp or cork dust and backed by burlap or canvas. It is considered a “green” or “sustainable” building material. If there is anything synthetic added, it is no longer considered linoleum flooring.
Food and Friends
Regarding the article about canine anorexia ("Tales of the Lost Appetite," March 2008): As an RN and 50-plus-year dog owner, I appreciated it very much. However I did notice a mention of one cause of anorexia that almost took the life of my Boston Terrier: grief. I had two dogs at the time, the other being a 10-year-old Pug who suddenly became critically ill with a lethal brain tumor. We had gotten both dogs at the ages of eight weeks and they were very, very close. When the Pug did not come home from the veterinarian and her crate was put away, the Boston totally stopped eating and became very lethargic (she had always inhaled her food and was extremely active prior to this.) We were frightened that we were going to lose her too, and made numerous calls and visits to our vet to investigate. To make a long, terrifying story short, we never found a physical cause for her inappetence; it was grief. I spent several weeks tempting her with various treats, human food, and finally baby food mixed with her dog food. I also took her to a local pet supply store for a change of scene. She picked out - on her own - a small latex ball slightly larger than a golf ball, proudly carried it out to the car by herself, and it became forever known as "Happy Ball." That was what started her back on the road to health! Well, that and much loving care and snuggling from her human family.
Details, Details
On page 21 of the December 2007 issue, you promote a book by M. Christine Zink as titled Peak Performance: Conditioning the Canine Athlete. Shouldn’t it be Peak Performance: Coaching the Canine Athlete?
Knowledge Is Key
Your article “Diets and the Older Dog” (Whole Dog Journal December 2006), asserting that kidney diseased dogs do need protein, is right on! Before my Whole Dog Journal days, I owned a Sheltie who was diagnosed with kidney disease. In the first stages he started refusing to eat. He had dropped from a lean 28 pounds to 24 pounds.
Catching Up
Thank you for saving my dog’s life. I had read “What Promotes Bloat?” in the January 2005 issue. The article made a huge impact on me because it described the alarming way that a perfectly healthy dog would die within minutes/hours from a seemingly random act. With bloat (also known as GDV, for “gastric dilation and volvulus”), instead of passing gas normally, the dog’s stomach twists, cutting off blood supply to the entire area. In subsequent issues, there have been occasional letters to the editor thanking Whole Dog Journal for the article and for saving a dog’s life. Those letters kept the memory of the disorder fresh in my mind.
