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First lets look at the dietary needs of a dog. Domestic dogs are closest genetically to the wolf. More importantly wolves and domestic dogs also have identical digestive tracts and are members of the carnivore family. Thus, dogs need to eat a carnivore diet – meat.
Before processed dry dog foods were put on the market, dogs were given table scrapes, raw meat, eggs and bones. The nutrients found in these foods are not found in processed dog foods, as the processing and cooking destroys them. The popularity of processed dry dog foods for the public is mainly convenience and the result of good marketing ads.
Dry dog foods are mainly cereal, consisting of a large part of corn, wheat, rice and soy. While dog food companies would have you believe that grains are a good source of protein, the fact is that dogs have a very difficult time digesting and utilizing the protein from these types of carbohydrates.
These carbohydrates are simply glucose molecules hooked end-to-end in long chains. Your dog’s normal digestive tract breaks down these chains into the individual sugar molecules, which passes through the intestinal wall and loads up the dog’s bloodstream with sugar
Now what do you feed your diabetic dog? Feeding you diabetic dog dry food, even if labeled for diabetic dogs, is the same as filling you dog’s bowl with sugar.
The closer you bring your pet's diet to what it would normally be in the wild, the fewer will be the health issues its body will have to face as it grows older.
There is nothing magical about a diabetes-management diet for your dog other than finding foods that are low in carbohydrates.
Bob Held is the Founder and President of the Wellness Support Network The Wellness Support Network’s mission is to help pets with health challenges such as Diabetes. This includes a diabetic medical food to lower blood sugar and addresses the causes for high blood sugar. (http://www.petremedy.com) The company also address neuropathy which can be side effects of the Diabetic condition.
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Why feeding a cat the correct diet can help with this health condition.
Diabetes is a common disease found in cats. In the vast majority of cases, it is directly linked to a high carbohydrate diet of dry food (carbohydrates convert to sugar).
Cats are by nature carnivores. A true carnivore is an animal that lives on a diet consisting only of meat. A cat may consume other products presented to it, but these products are not essential for good health and can actually cause damage to their health. True carnivores have difficulty digesting vegetable matter.
The food you feed your cat should be appropriate to cats for the overall health of the animal and should come pretty close to what the animal would normally eat in the wild. In the wild, cats would be eating rabbits, squirrels and mice (meat). They would not go to a cornfield or a rice paddy to find a meal of grain.
Since a cats body is not made to consume a high carbohydrate diet of grains or vegetables, feeding a diabetic cat a high carbohydrate diet is the same as trying to put out a fire with gasoline. Carbohydrates are long chains of sugar molecules linked together. Your cat's normal digestive process breaks up these chains into individual sugar molecules that pass through the intestinal wall and load up your cat's blood stream with sugar.
It is not recommend for any cat, much less a diabetic cat to eat any foods whose main ingredients is corn (meal), wheat, barley, rye, oats or rice. This also means no potatoes, carrots, beets, soy, peas, yams or beans. Feeding your cat this is little different than just pouring straight sugar into your cats bowl.
There is nothing magical about a diabetes-management diet for your cat other than finding foods that is low in carbohydrates, lower in carbohydrates than the majority of cat food products on the market.
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The Flea Life Cycle
Thanks to the many flea control products now on the market, flea management is easier than ever. Understanding the flea's life cycle will help control the fleas around your home and yard.
To get a bit technical and in giving you a little bit of information you probably didn’t want to know, the flea is a part of the Siphonaptera order, and has a siphon-like mouth and no wings. There are more than 2,000 species of fleas, but only a few affect your pet. The cat flea is the cause of almost all pet and environmental infestations.
From Egg to Adulthood
Again, on the technical side, fleas are metamorphic, meaning they grow from embryo to adulthood. Similar to butterflies, they evolve from eggs to larvae to pupae to adulthood. It can take as few as 12 to 350 days for cat fleas to go through growth stages and emerge from cocoons. The flea population typically is made up of 50% eggs, 30% larvae, 15% pupae, and only 5% biting adults.
The optimum temperature for fleas range from 70 degrees to 85 degrees, but the flea can also survive in temperatures as low as 37 degrees. Most fleas spend winter as adults on infested animals or as pupae in cocoons in areas protected from freezing. Flea populations typically increase about 5 or 6 weeks after warm spring weather begins and escalate during the fall in Midwestern and northern states.
Female fleas lay up to 50 eggs in a day and about 2000 eggs in her lifetime. Eggs can be found in an animal's hair, and then drop off onto everything your pet touches or is near, including bedding, carpet and soil.
After 1 to 6 days, the eggs hatch into larvae. Larvae dry up easily and relative humidity less than 50% is fatal. The typical larval stage can last 5 to 11 days, but if the humidity, temperature, and food availability are just right, the larval stage can last up to 3 weeks.
Full-grown Biting Adult Fleas
The newly freed adult flea will leap at any likely warm-blooded host, and can survive as adults for 2 weeks to 6 months, depending on its environment. Newly emerged adult fleas can survive only about a week without a blood meal. Female adult fleas will feed numerous times daily, for up to 3 to 4 hours at a time.
Fleas prefer cats and dogs, but humans, ferrets or domesticated rabbits can also become hosts. Adult fleas will not leave their hosts on their own free will and must be dislodged or killed with flea control treatments. Grooming and brushing, using a flea comb will dislodge the parasites.
The breakdown is a little overwhelming as for every adult flea found on a pet, about 100 fleas are developing in the pet's environment. It is important to treat the fleas on your pet as well as in your home and yard.
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OTC Drugs and Pet Safety around the Home
P.J Virk (PharmD)
As Pet owners we assume that pets can use human OTC products. However we need to be very cautious about OTC medication use for our pets. For instance Tylenol or acetaminophen can never be given to cats. Cats cannot metabolize acetaminophen and this can lead to liver failure. Therefore even small amounts can be lethal to cats. Aspirin use is also not recommended in cats because they cannot metabolize aspirin and this can lead to over-dosing. Antihistamines like Benadryl (diphenhydramine) and ChlorTrimeton (Chlorpheniramine) can be used to treat allergic reactions for pets
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