Better safe than sorry, I always say.

Read the rest on The Oatmeal.

h/t to the ever excellent Bloggess, who’s probably knitting her Pug a tank as we speak.

Shelley - Missing French Bulldog, Chicago Land Area

A Chicago area French Bulldog is missing, and volunteers urgently need your help.

Shelley is a seven year old, spayed brindle French Bulldog. She has a white chest. A photo is coming soon.

Shelley has been misssing since 11:15 am on New Year’s Day, from the rear of a house located on Woodland Drive, in Plano, Illinois. She was not wearing a collar, and is not microchipped. Her foster mom let her out for a pee, and Shelley took off into the woods. She has not been seen since, and it is cold in Plano, and getting colder.

Please – if you are in the Plano area, and able to assist with searching for Shelley, call Mary Scheffke at (773) 931 4860.

If you are anywhere in this area, please keep your eyes open for Shelley. It can be surprising how far and how fast small dogs can travel when they are scared and disoriented. Most Frenchies will seek out human companionship, happily getting into cars or going inside houses. Look for neighbours who might have found a dog recently.

Check CraigsList and Kijiji for notices of found dogs – occasionally Frenchies are listed as Pugs, Bostons or cross bred dogs. Please spread word about Shelley on Twitter, Facebook and other blogs.

Mary sent us an update on the search –

8 hours out there today with 2 dogs trying to track her- several volunteers- some hunters helping us- can’t believe a 7 year old frenchie got far! No fresh kill from coyotes in a 5 mile radius of our search. We have hire findtoto.com- they call neighbors in a certain mileage radius and ask if they have seen the dog and to watch for it-no luck yet. Praying that someone found her yesterday in daylight and are waiting for the holidays to call the police, vet or shelter- as she is friendly and would probably go to a house or people if she saw them- many houses and farms nearby the wooded area she took off in.

Mary Scheffke

Have a great time, but take Tessa’s advice and don’t over do the champagne – it leaves less room for the caviar.

The same is true for the foods our pets eat. Pet labelling laws allow for a world of rather ‘interpretative’ descriptions of what the foods we feed our pets are actually made from. Labeling restrictions are mainly defined by AAFCO (the American Association of Feed Control Officials). AAFCO’s guidelines, however, don’t cover some of the newly emerging terms sometimes adding to pet food packaging, such as “All Natural” or “Organic”.

Here are some examples of what AAFCO’s labeling guidelines do cover – a set of descrptions sometimes known as the ‘named ingredients’ rules.

The 95% Rule

eg: Beef for Dogs

The ‘named ingredient(s)’ must make up at least 95% of the product by weight. A real life example of this would be Tripett’s Green Tripe for Dogs.  The named ingredient (in this case, tripe) makes up 95% or more of the ingredients in this food.

“Dinner” (also Entree, Formula, Nuggets, Platter, Recipe)

eg: Chicken and Salmon Dinner for Dogs, Beef Entree for Cats, Lamb and Rice Recipe for Dogs

The named ingredients must make up at least 25% of the product by weight, not counting water. Each individual named food must make up at least three percent. In other words, a food called -

Chicken and Rice Dinner with Real Fruit and Vegetables

Must have a total portion of 25% chicken, rice, fruit and vegetables, with each of those accounting for at least 3% of the ingredients. The other 75% of ingredients in this food can consist of just about anything.

“With…”

eg: Gourmet Kibble with Chicken

The only requirement is that the named ingredient accounts for three percent or more of the total ingredients in the food.

Flavour

eg: Beef  Flavored Cat Food

There is no specific percentage of ingredients required to conform to ‘flavoring’ labels, but the product must contain enough of the flavor to impart the claimed taste. They may use any of an assortment of products to achieve this, however – ie; beef stock for beef flavor, chicken pumice for chicken flavor, etc.

Light, Lite, Low Calorie, Reduced Calorie

eg: Reduced Calorie Beef Dinner for Dogs

The food meets the AAFCO limits for a reduced calorie diets for overweight cats and dogs. The other labeling requirements still apply, in addition to the reduced caloric count.

Grain Free

eg: Grain Free Chicken Dinner for Dogs

Protein in the product comes from non grain sources – in other words, no corn protein can account for the protein count in the food. However, this does NOT mean that the food doesn’t contain ‘other’, non protein source grains (oatmeal, amaranth, barley).

What Black Friday is to Americans, Boxing Day is to Canada and the UK (albeit with less hysteria, and much politer queuing).

The history of Boxing Day, from Wikipedia -

Boxing day was traditionally a day the servants had a day off from their duties. Because of this the gentry would eat cold cuts and have a buffet style feast prepared by the servants in advance. In modern times many families will still follow this tradition by eating a family style buffet lunch, with cold cuts rather than a full cooked meal. It is a time for family, parlour games and sports in the UK.

The traditional recorded celebration of Boxing Day has long included giving money and other gifts to those who were needy and in service positions. The European tradition has been dated to the Middle Ages, but the exact origin is unknown and there are some claims that it goes back to the late Roman/early Christian era; metal boxes were placed outside churches used to collect special offerings tied to the Feast of Saint Stephen.

In the United Kingdom it certainly became a custom of the nineteenth century Victorians for tradesmen to collect their “Christmas boxes” or gifts in return for good and reliable service throughout the year on the day after Christmas. The exact etymology of the term “Boxing” is unclear, with several competing theories, none of which are clearly true.

The establishment of Boxing Day as a defined public holiday under the legislation that created the UK’s Bank Holidays started the separation of ‘Boxing Day’ from the ‘Feast of St Stephen’ and today it is almost entirely a secular holiday with a tradition of shopping and post Christmas sales starting.

I did my Boxing Day shopping, mixed in with a generous helping of French Bulldog artificial insemination (because nothing says ‘festive’ like driving three hours round trip to get progesterone and cell cytology done). I did also pick myself up two very special gifts, but I’ll talk more about those later, once they’ve arrived.