Is Your Dog or Cat’s Dry Pet Food Safe?
For as many years as I have been feeding raw, vets have been telling me the same thing – “Raw dog food is dangerous – commercial kibble is the only safe food for your pet”. A vet at the University of Guelph once insisted on sticking a dying French Bulldog rescue puppy into immediate isolation, because I mentioned having fed it some (commercially prepared under ISO conditions, from human grade ingredients) raw turkey dog food. One of my first vets essentially fired me from his clinic as a patient – told me to collect my pet’s records, and find a new vet – because I insisted on feeding raw.
I’m not the only dog owner with stories like these, and for almost as long as I’ve been hearing them, I’ve been fighting back with the same argument – that raw dog food is safe when prepared properly, from human grade ingredients, and that we face a greater risk from dry pet food, not least because people become complacent about its safety. People who would never dream of leaving a dish of raw meat on the floor for hours will leave a bowl of dry kibble sitting out for days, in hot summer weather. People who bleach every bowl, utensil and surface that their raw meat touches will hand scoop kibble out of a bag. And why wouldn’t you? You’ve been told for years (decades!) that dry pet food is safe. It’s inspected! Approved! Tested! It’s the safe way to feed your dogs and cats – and this in spite of the fact that not a year (or month) seems to go by without a recall, or a story of pets sickening and even dying from eating dry kibble dog and cat food.
Susan Thixton at the excellent Truth About Pet Food blog has been tireless in her fight against this complacency, and her search for the actual truth about just how safe commercial pet food is. Last year, Susan crowdfunded for an exhaustive project intended to hire outside, independent laboratories to test popular commercial pet food brands for dangerous levels of mycotoxins and bacteria, and mineral content levels above AAFCO guideline levels considered safe. The results of that testing are now in, and it’s not pretty. 8 out of 8 pet foods tested contained mycotoxins ( a serious risk to your dog or cat’s health, even at low levels). Six tested pet foods had dangerously high mineral content levels. Eleven pet foods tested had alarmingly high levels of food borne bacteria, bacteria that are not just a risk to cats and dogs, but to the people who handle their food. The infographic below shows the results of these tests, and full results are available via the Truth About Pets page.
These tests are not exhaustive – there are literally thousands of more foods on the market, far too many for an independent analysis. But consider this – all of the brands tested were nationally sold, heavily advertised, and in many cases strenuously vet endorsed (in fact, one was a “Prescription” diet, available only via veterinarians, and sold specifically for pets with specific health conditions. How scary is that?). If these foods, owned by large corporations with deep pockets, have such disturbing numbers of issues, then they can only be regarded as the proverbial ‘canary in the coal mine’ – outliers of what is really going on in the food we feed our pets.
Via Truth About Pet Food – http://truthaboutpetfood.com/the-pet-food-test-results/
Read the rest of the testing on the Truth About Pet Food blog.
The Mitford Sisters – Britain’s Most Stylishly Controversial Frenchie Fanciers
What do French Bulldogs, fascism and Downton Abbey have in common? The answer is the Mitford Sisters – women who were among Britain’s most stylish and controversial fanciers of French Bulldogs (and all other things ‘au courant’).
The six sisters, Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity and Jessica (usually called Decca) were famous for being stylish, rich, eccentric and exceptionally witty. As young people, the sisters were best known for being among London’s “Bright Young Things” – a pejorative nickname given to a group of rich, hedonistic young aristocrats in Britain during the 1920’s who led a ‘bohemian’ lifestyle that included drugs, heavy drinking, excessively elaborate parties and promiscuous sex. Spending a great deal of time in Paris, they were exposed to the stylish “Bouldogues Francais” being paraded by the continent’s own stylish set.
Sisters Unity and Diana become reviled and notorious during the 1930s for for their close personal friendships with Adolf Hitler, and their championing of fascism. In 1938, Unity was attacked by a crowd in London for wearing a swastika on her shirt. Her devotion to Hitler and to Fascism was not simply an affectation – when Britain declared war on Germany, Unity attempted suicide.
Nancy, the eldest Mitford sister, became an acclaimed novelist and biographer – amazing in itself, considering her father did not approve of ‘formal’ schooling for girls, and Nancy’s formal education consistently entirely of a few months at a primary day school, and a year’s boarding at an upper lady’s college that was essentially a ‘debutante training center’.
Nancy appears to have owned several French Bulldogs over the years, including a brindle pied bitch, Lottie, a brindle dog, Dominic, and another pied bitch named Millie.
From the Biography “Nancy Mitford”, by Selina Hastings:
“She had acquired a couple of French Bulldogs, Lottie and Millie, on whom she doted: they were allowed to sleep, wheezing, under the eiderdown on her bed. It became a common sight to the neighbours, Nancy in a pair of slacks walking briskly along the tow-path with the pair of stout little dogs trotting along after her”.
Nancy made French Bulldogs a central plot in her 1940 novel, “Pigeon Pie”, in which an aristocratic and slightly ditzy heroine has her French Bulldog dog-napped, before going on to crack a German spy ring.
The popular BBC television show “Upstairs Downstairs” was said to have borrowed heavily from stories about the lives of the Mitford sisters, but their most famous influence has undoubtedly been on Sir Julian Fellowes, who credits them as being the inspiration for “Downton Abbey” (there are decided shades of sarcastic, prickly, intelligent Nancy Mitford in Mary Crawford, who was infamous for being as equally unkind as Lady Mary is to Edith to her own younger sisters).
The death this week at age 94 of Deborah Mitford, the last surviving sister, is truly the end of an era.
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- Nancy and husband Peter Rodd at Brighton, with their French Bulldog, Lottie
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- The Mitford sisters, with Nancy Mitford holding Lottie
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- Nancy Mitford with Lottie
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- Deborah and Jessica Mitford with sister Nancy’s French Bulldogs, Lottie and Dominic
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- The Mitford Sisters, with Nancy’s French Bulldog, Lottie
Whee! It’s Flying Frenchie Friday!
Marcella Casebolt and a few other friends sent me the link to this awesome video of a French Bulldog puppy practicing up for Flying French Bulldog Friday!
Go, little guy, go!