In the spring of last year, we had to put our 10 year old Golden
Retriever down. A tumor had ruptured in his gut and even the vet said
that there was nothing they could do that would be any kind of
guarantee. All of my family was crying as we left Jesse in that vet's
office after watching him breath his last breath. That is one of the
hardest decisions that I have ever made.

After moving to a new city for work and being without the wonderful
clutter and mess of a good family dog for 4 months, we adopted a
beautiful blue weimaraner puppy. His form and musculature and ears
and attitude are all classic AKC registered and approved weimaraner.
His color is a dark gray or "blue". As a result he does not meet
breed standard. However, I don't think that an animal that good
looking will be kept out of dog shows forever.

My wife is convinced that many of the "helpful" drugs that we fed our
golden contributed to his early death. We know that goldens have a
history of cancer problems but maybe that is just a congenital
weakness that we aggravate with heartworm poisons and tick poisons and
flea poisons. Does any one else have that opinion?

We are also concerned about the recent pet food recalls. I have set
up a blog at http://feedingmydog.blogspot.com/ to talk about that.
Are we guilty of putting our pets at risk with our good intentions? I
sure hope not.

"JimD" wrote in message
ups.com...
My wife is convinced that many of the "helpful" drugs that we fed our
golden contributed to his early death. We know that goldens have a
history of cancer problems but maybe that is just a congenital
weakness that we aggravate with heartworm poisons and tick poisons and
flea poisons. Does any one else have that opinion?

........To cut down on flea preventatives, sweep the carpet daily, wash dog
bedding weekly and groom your pet frequently. Flea combing 10 minutes a day
can get you a lot of fleas too. If there aren't huge flea problems (like in
the state of FL), you can halve the number of doses of spot-on flea
treatments during flea season and perhaps almost eliminate them, depending
on the environment.

If you use Heartgard you can use it every 6 weeks. If you look up the
original studies through FOI at the FDA/CVM site, you'll see that 6 weeks
gives the same results as 4 weeks. They just didn't figure people would
remember a schedule like this and shortened it to monthly. If you're lucky
enough to live in a place with a real winter, don't keep your pet on
heartworm preventatives year round - spend the money to get a heartworm test
before you start dosing again in the spring.

People focus on stuff like flea preventatives and still use plug in air
fresheners, spray weird things on the carpet the dog inhales all the time,
go nuts with roach/ant/wasp sprays, have their lawns treated regularly,
etc., etc. Life is mostly common sense.

We are also concerned about the recent pet food recalls. I have set
up a blog at http://feedingmydog.blogspot.com/ to talk about that.
Are we guilty of putting our pets at risk with our good intentions? I
sure hope not.

........so I went to your blog - are you selling the Lewis ebook? Really, I
hate that kind of come on represented in this book. I doubt highly there's
many *secrets*. I can get good information for free from www.dogaware.com,
the Yahoo group K9Nutrition and other groups not to mention doing my own
research.

I certainly hope you're feeding your puppy properly - the right amount of
calcium is highly important at this stage of life. The dogs of your
southern relatives probably also had squirrels and rabbits they could catch
when they wanted, which makes a huge difference.

buglady
take out the dog before replying

In article k.net,
"buglady" wrote:


People focus on stuff like flea preventatives and still use plug in air
fresheners, spray weird things on the carpet the dog inhales all the time,
go nuts with roach/ant/wasp sprays, have their lawns treated regularly,
etc., etc. Life is mostly common sense.

I avoid all of that stuff as much as possible, for MYSELF as well as for
the pets (but realize they are a lot closer to all of that). I admit to
not having gone to "organic" detergents and such, but I have at times in
my life. I'm not a completely green person, but I try to do what I can.
No bug sprays (the pets eat the bugs too - I don't want them ingesting
poison through bugs!). The closest I get to plug in air fresheners is
Feliway plug-ins (and they have been a very, very good thing - I WANT
those affecting the pets!).

My biggest thing to deal with right now is not letting the dogs ingest
the wood resulting from tearing down a 45 year old deck.

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com

On Jun 3, 9:41 am, "buglady" wrote:
"JimD" wrote in message

ups.com...

I certainly hope you're feeding your puppy properly - the right amount of
calcium is highly important at this stage of life. The dogs of your
southern relatives probably also had squirrels and rabbits they could catch
when they wanted, which makes a huge difference.

buglady
take out the dog before replying

Thank you for the dogaware.com site. I will check that out.

Yes we are taking care of the very perky and highly intelligent
Weimaraner puppy.

It is interesting to see that others have some of the same concerns
about the poisons (that is literal not dramatics) that we are feeding
our dogs to kill pests and parasites from the "inside out". I know
that is what chemotherapy is for human cancer but that is usually
short term and not for the life of the animal/human.

Interesting that you mentioned Florida. Last June we moved from Palm
Beach County, Florida to near Allentown PA. For the 4 years we lived
in FL we really did not have a flea problem -- but that was on the
coast. I think they were more afraid of heartworm there with all the
mosquitos.

Thanks
Jim D

"JimD" wrote in message
ups.com...

It is interesting to see that others have some of the same concerns
about the poisons (that is literal not dramatics) that we are feeding
our dogs to kill pests and parasites from the "inside out". I know
that is what chemotherapy is for human cancer but that is usually
short term and not for the life of the animal/human.

It's a jump from this to the assumption that you seem to be making - which
is that feeding a small amount of a substance that is quite poisonous to one
type of critter is necessarily cancer-causing to another type of critter.

Cancer, btw, is not a parasite. I don't understand the phrase "I know that
is what chemotherapy is for human cancer."

Or if you mean, chemotherapy is a substance especially poisonous to cancer
cells, like ivermectin is especially poisonous to heartworm larvae, then
yes, I guess there's a parallel.

Otherwise, I don't understand where you're going with this. Cancer is a
disease not only of exposure to known carcinogens, but also of old age.
Whether the "old age" part of that necessarily means an exposure to unknown
carcinogens over a long period of time, or some other mechanism, is
anybody's guess at this point.

There are a couple natural substances I can think of offhand, exposure to
which in food quantities (or less) is strongly suspected of causing cancer.
Bracken fern, which is eaten by people in some places, is implicated in
stomach cancer if consumed frequently over a long period of time. The
African milkbush is implicated in Burkitt's lymphoma, a too-common childhood
cancer in Africa.

"Natural" doesn't necessarily mean safe. And "chemical" doesn't necessarily
mean cancer-causing.

flick 100785

On Jun 3, 9:41 am, "buglady" wrote:
"JimD" wrote in message

ups.com...

My wife is convinced that many of the "helpful" drugs that we fed our
golden contributed to his early death. We know that goldens have a
history of cancer problems but maybe that is just a congenital
weakness that we aggravate with heartworm poisons and tick poisons and
flea poisons. Does any one else have that opinion?

.......To cut down on flea preventatives, sweep the carpet daily, wash dog
bedding weekly and groom your pet frequently. Flea combing 10 minutes a day
can get you a lot of fleas too. If there aren't huge flea problems (like in
the state of FL), you can halve the number of doses of spot-on flea
treatments during flea season and perhaps almost eliminate them, depending
on the environment.

If you use Heartgard you can use it every 6 weeks. If you look up the
original studies through FOI at the FDA/CVM site, you'll see that 6 weeks
gives the same results as 4 weeks. They just didn't figure people would
remember a schedule like this and shortened it to monthly. If you're lucky
enough to live in a place with a real winter, don't keep your pet on
heartworm preventatives year round - spend the money to get a heartworm test
before you start dosing again in the spring.

People focus on stuff like flea preventatives and still use plug in air
fresheners, spray weird things on the carpet the dog inhales all the time,
go nuts with roach/ant/wasp sprays, have their lawns treated regularly,
etc., etc. Life is mostly common sense.



We are also concerned about the recent pet food recalls. I have set
up a blog athttp://feedingmydog.blogspot.com/to talk about that.
Are we guilty of putting our pets at risk with our good intentions? I
sure hope not.

.......so I went to your blog - are you selling the Lewis ebook? Really, I
hate that kind of come on represented in this book. I doubt highly there's
many *secrets*. I can get good information for free fromwww.dogaware.com,
the Yahoo group K9Nutrition and other groups not to mention doing my own
research.

I certainly hope you're feeding your puppy properly - the right amount of
calcium is highly important at this stage of life. The dogs of your
southern relatives probably also had squirrels and rabbits they could catch
when they wanted, which makes a huge difference.

buglady
take out the dog before replying

Thank you for that link. I have put it on the blog.
Jim D

On Jun 4, 12:40 am, "Many Dogs \(flick\)"
wrote:
"JimD" wrote in message

ups.com...


It's a jump from this to the assumption that you seem to be making - which
is that feeding a small amount of a substance that is quite poisonous to one
type of critter is necessarily cancer-causing to another type of critter.

Cancer, btw, is not a parasite. I don't understand the phrase "I know that
is what chemotherapy is for human cancer."

Or if you mean, chemotherapy is a substance especially poisonous to cancer
cells, like ivermectin is especially poisonous to heartworm larvae, then
yes, I guess there's a parallel.


"Natural" doesn't necessarily mean safe. And "chemical" doesn't necessarily
mean cancer-causing.

flick 100785

Amen that "natural" does not necessarily mean safe. The quickest
unsafe natural examples that I can think of for humans is belladona
and opium. And I understand that eating tomato leaves can poison a
dog.

I am unfortunately quite familiar with the various forms of cancerous
tumors so I know that they are not a parasite and I know that
heartworm, ticks, and fleas are. I got some education in cancer
therapies by talking with doctors and relatives and friends that
suffered from it. What I have been told by both patients and doctors
is that chemotherapy is a delicate balancing act of introducing
poisons to the body in the hope that the cancer dies and the patient
does not. That is what I was referring to. It seems as if we are
introducing poisons to our pets bodies in the hope that (rather than
the certainty that) the poisons will kill the pests but not the
patient. Maybe the parallel is not quite parallel but they are at
least similar concepts.

You are probably correct that "chemical" doesn't necessarily mean
cancer-causing. However, I am very suspicious of chemicals that are
intended to kill -- even if it is not intended to kill my pet.

Thanks
Jim D