Does your attention span get shorter when its hot? Mine does. Ill keep these notes short and sweet.
Ive received some fascinating responses from pet food company executives regarding the long-term fallout, positive and negative, of the pet food recalls early this year. Ive received so many, in fact, that Im going to expand them into a longer article and run it next month. Id like you to be able to read, in their entirety, what some of the execs say their companies are doing to ensure that we dont experience anything like the gluten recalls again.
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For years, weve pressed pet food companies to disclose their ingredient sources and manufacturing locations. Many people are starting to realize that this is information they dont know about their own food supply and many have renewed their efforts to pressure Congress to stop blocking laws that would require country-of-origin labeling (known as COOL) for meats and produce.
Such a labeling law was enacted as part of the 2002 Farm Bill, but it has been largely blocked from taking effect. A July 2 article in the New York Times blames the meat lobby in general and former Representative Henry Bonilla (R‑TX) specifically for pushing through delays of the mandatory origin labeling. If you need motivation to act, here is Bonillas comment: No one was prohibited from putting labels on products. If consumers wanted this, they could have demanded it. Lets demand it!
Everyone who takes their dogs to swim in lakes or ponds should read CJ Puotinens warning (page 17) about toxic algae blooms in warm, shallow water. On June 27, we received an e-mailed account from a Michigan man whose dog died two days earlier as a result of swimming in and drinking toxic pond water. The man, with a lifetime of professional dog ownership, had never known of such a danger, and neither had we. We put an alert on the Whole Dog Journal website and sent out an e-mailed bulletin to dog owners as soon as we confirmed the story.
Which reminds me: If you havent signed up for the website access to Whole Dog Journal that comes with your paid subscription, you should. Those who do will receive any emergency e-mail bulletins we publish, sometimes weeks before we can get the information into the print version of the magazine.
Finally, a summer treat: If you are seeking an enjoyable and intelligent dog-related book to help pass these long, hot days, look no farther than Ted Kerasotes Merles Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog. Kerasote is an award-winning nature writer, and Merle is the Lab-mix former stray who came to share his rural Wyoming home. The duo had an enviable relationship, based on an uncommon degree of mutual respect instead of the dominant master/submissive pet paradigm, with remarkable results.
I dont agree with all of Kerasotes theories on canine behavior or condone all of his training practices, but I hugely enjoyed his thoughtful account of a special dogs lifeand gifts.
