PetLvr.com - [The Blog]

Every pet looks its best with a healthy, shiny coat. Whether it’s the family cat or a show-ring star, pets deserve proper skin and coat care. Healthy skin and coat can also indicate overall health and wellness, and a sudden change in the health of the skin and coat often indicates an underlying medical problem. For these reasons, every owner should take time to maintain and inspect their pet’s skin and coat regularly. These three tips will help you keep your pet looking and feeling great.

1. Brush Daily (no need to floss)

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Dear PetLvr Mailbag ..

My dog lifts his leg to pee, then poops instead. This may seem like a silly question, but it causes poop to stick to the hair on his hind legs. Yuck!

–Grossed Out

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Dear PetLvr Mailbag,

My 4 month old kitten totally dominates my 8 year old Australian Shepherd.

The kitten, Freckles, is 4 months old. She’ll walk up to the dog, Luke, and he’ll freeze in panic. She’ll rub around his legs, purr, snuggle against him, and he’ll stand in one place with the most pathetic look you’re ever seen on a dog’s face.

Dinner time? If she’s in the same room, she runs to his dish and starts to eat his food, even if he’s already there. She’ll whap him on the nose, and start to eat his food. The kibbles are bigger than her mouth, but she’ll chew on one until it’s eaten, and them move on to another one. It’ll be a good 15 minutes of this before she’s finished and the dog can eat.

And no, I don’t under-feed her. She’s got a dish of her own Iams kitten kibble that’s kept full at all times.

Is my dog just a big wuss, or is there more to it than I’m seeing?

Signed,

Erich

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For dogs with allergies, exposure to even a small amount of a food or environmental allergen can mean days of itching miserably, sneezing, and even outbreaks of hives or skin sores. Some dogs who have allergies can manage them with diet and lifestyle changes, but others need regular injections for life, and treatment with a steroid like prednisone during particularly problematic times. In rare cases, a dog can develop an allergy severe enough to be life-threatening.

So, it follows that where allergies in dogs are concerned, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you make allergy prevention a priority from day one, you can reduce your dog’s chance of developing allergies later in life. More →

Feeding a bird is easy. After all, you just toss some seeds in a bowl and give them some water and you’re done, right? Actually, if you want a healthy bird, you will need to do a bit more than that. There are quite a few different bird diets you can choose from.

Bird seed has been the diet of choice for many years, but it is no longer very popular with many bird lovers. However, there is actually nothing wrong with bird seed if it is used in combination with other types of food. Millet and safflower seeds are better for birds than sunflower seeds, which are high in fat and can cause obesity and related diseases in parrots that only eat sunflower seeds. If you feed seeds to your birds, you should make sure that the seeds do not comprise more than 30 percent of your bird’s diet.

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Nothing is more essential to good training than good health. And the foundation of good health is a good diet.

Depending on your budget you may or may not be able to feed your dog a larger proportion of fresh meat, but at least be prepared to spend enough for a good dry food. Here are a few things to look for…

All dog foods are labeled with the ingredients in order by proportion. That is, the material that forms the largest percentage is listed first, followed by the second and then others.

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Whether you are just starting out training your puppy or you have a long-standing relationship with your favorite canine of 15 years, there are plenty of things and issues to think about that all deal with the health and care of your dog. Many people think that taking care of their puppy or full-grown dog won’t be a lot of work. On the contrary, though, there is plenty of work to do, including regular trips to the vet, preventative health care that includes heartworm treatments, feeding your pet the right kind of food, as well as activities that should be done with your dog to encourage the bonding times with your beloved pet.

One of the most important things that needs to be considered, though, is the diet that your dog will be eating. From the time that he or she is a puppy a regular, steady diet of proper dog food is required. Some people choose to feed their dog the regular store and brand-name cooked pellets that are so common throughout the dog food industry. On the other hand, there are plenty of dog owners that insist on feeding their dogs a raw dog food diet. This often means that more care and guidelines need to be paid attention to. However, the benefits of a raw diet definitely outweigh the benefits of a processed pellet diet that dogs receive when brand-name packaged food is bought for them. A couple examples of these benefits include a shinier skin and fur, a lessening of the dog’s shedding, cleaner teeth, better breath, as well as an increase in the dog’s general health. If many more people knew the benefits of a raw diet, there would definitely be more people switching over. Still, the dog’s diet is an issue to be considered by the dog and the dog owner.

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So, you have a new kitten. You can just dump some cat food in a bowl and get on with your life, right? Well, there’s a bit more to the process than this. To keep your kitten healthy, you will need to be sure that you meet all of his nutritional needs.

For the first few weeks of his life, your kitten received all of his nutrition from his mother. As he reached four to six weeks of age, the breeder probably began supplementing the mother cat’s milk with canned kitten food or with hard kitten chow moistened with water. By the time your kitten reached eight weeks of age, he was weaned and eating a diet of kitten food. Your breeder should have given you some of the food your kitten was eating or at least the name of the kitten chow.
If you want to change the kitten chow brand that your kitten is eating, you should still buy a small bag of the brand he is currently eating so that you can mix it with the new food. This way your kitten will be able to gradually adjust to the new food without upsetting his digestion.

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Suddenly, your crystal clear fish tank is looking a bit cloudy. In fact, you aren’t quite sure your fish are all still there, because the water isn’t clear enough for you to see them. When this happens, you have reached the point where your aquarium will need to be thoroughly cleaned before your fish become ill from swimming in the dirty water. Of course, you really shouldn’t wait until there’s a problem before cleaning your aquarium. Ideally, a tank should be cleaned every two weeks.

To begin cleaning the tank, you should start by unplugging filters, heaters and any other electronic devices to avoid getting electrocuted. You won’t need any soaps or detergents as the chemicals contained in them could be dangerous for your fish. Don’t remove the fish from the tank while cleaning as this will often cause more harm than good. The fish are used to their environment and will become stressed if they are moved. When cleaning your aquarium, only use dechlorinated water as a cleaning agent.

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Periodic Newsletter from The IAMS Company:
From: “Iams Dog”
To: hart (at) petlvr.com
Subject: Iams e-news: Water Safety Tips for You and

Doggy Water Safety 101

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