Santa Paws is Coming to Town!

It’s that time of year when everyone is hustling and bustling, zipping from store to store, wracking their brains trying to find that absolutely perfect gift. And then in your travels, you see the sweet little face in the shop window, with the waggly tail and sad eyes to match, melting your heart and begging you to come in and take him home. Stop. Do not go in that store. Do not ask how much is that doggie in the window. DO NOT DO IT!

But little Jimmy has been wanting a puppy for so long! He would be thrilled with the gift, you say. That may be so, but now is hardly the time to introduce a puppy to a household unless you’re prepared.

So many Christmas puppies end up being turned over to the animal shelters in the New Year because people who purchased them on impulse didn’t understand what they were getting themselves into and too late figure out that they are unable to cope with raising a puppy or looking after a dog. And children cannot be held solely responsible for the task of taking care of and training a puppy. They need to have adult assistance and  the entire family willing to look after the dog.

Christmas time is the absolute worst time to think about introducing a new puppy to your or anyone else’s home. It’s such a busy time with activities going on in the house or being away at friend’s houses or work functions or shopping trips or – you get the picture.

Plus it is important that anyone getting a puppy do their homework before introducing a puppy to their household. See our Buying a Puppy Guide on the main website to help you find the perfect puppy for your family.

If you absolutely want to get someone a puppy as a gift, give them a creative IOU. When the craziness of the Holiday Season has subsided, then you can go out a pick the perfect puppy or dog and introduce him to your household when you have time to pay attention to him and properly train him. So instead of putting the puppy under the tree, write a creative note or make up a certificate saying “This certificate entitles the bearer to one happy puppy of their choice” or something like that. Use your imagination to customize it to your recipient. Along with the note, here are some other gifts ideas you can give in anticipation of your recipient getting a dog:

• A stuffed toy dog for your recipient to cuddle until he/she gets the real thing
• A welcome basket for the new puppy: include puppy treats, toys for the new puppy and a soft puppy blanket
• A puppy grooming kit with shampoo, de-shedding tool or brush/rake and nail clippers or other nail care tool
• Dog bed
• An introductory book on raising a puppy and/or puppy training
• Items such as bitter apple spray and Nature’s Miracle

Choosing some of the above items will be dependent on what type of puppy/dog you will be getting. If you already know, then choosing those items will be easier. Although you can never go wrong with puppy training treats or dog information books. Essentially, anything for the dog, except the dog itself!

And by the way, never buy your puppy from a pet store! Few things get me up on my soapbox than pet stores that sell puppies! Get your puppy from a reputable breeder or getting your dog from an animal rescue or shelter would be even better. I won’t go into my rant about pet stores that sell puppies, but the Buy Guide on the Puppytropolis main site gives you all the reasons why you shouldn’t.

Look take special care of your doggie friends and they’ll take care of you too.

From all of us at Puppytropolis, we wish you and your puppy pals (or soon to be puppy pals – in the New Year, right?) all the very best that the Christmas season and the New Year could possibly bring for you!

Ready to take your dog with you on vacation? Think again.

So you’re planning on going on vacation far away from home and you want your faithful canine companion to come along with you. Think twice. Flying on commercial passenger airlines is far from safe or comfortable for your pet.

If you’ve read the Traveling with Your Dog article on the main Puppytropolis site, you’ve probably gathered that I absolutely frown on flying your pet on commercial airlines. If you are re-locating and can’t avoid it, then I suppose that’s a different story (although if it were me, I’d take the time to drive wherever I needed to go, just to avoid flying my dog). If you’re going on vacation, leave Fido behind. Find a dog sitter, kennel or friend to look after him. Unless you happen to have a pooch that is under 18 lbs, your beloved dog is going to be treated as cargo. That’s right, crammed into the belly of the plane as though your canine companion was a big old piece of luggage.

If you’ve never been treated as cargo, let me tell you, it is not a pleasant thing! There are restricted times that you can transport your dog – weather dependent. Your dog is shoved in with the rest of the bulk items, the temperature is not regulated (hence the reason you can’t fly your dog when it’s too hot or too cold),  there is no monitoring to make sure Fido is okay and no potty breaks. Your dog is treated just like your suitcase and you know how often the airlines lose suitcases! Compound that with the fact that many dogs experience anxiety when traveling and you’ve just built an equation for one unhappy and uncomfortable pup.

Every year, dogs flying on commercial airlines are subjected to injuries, being lost and even death. Airlines are required to document any incidents with companion animals in their cargo holds. You can check out the reports from the U.S. Department of Transportation Air Travel Consumers Report to find out more about what goes on each month with the transportation of pets on commercial passenger airlines. It really is quite shocking the number of injuries, deaths and lost pets that occur each year. The report is by month and you can jump to the last page of the month’s report, in most cases, to find the stats for traveling animals. In the November 2010 report, a total of 5 animals were killed and 1 was injured. In December 2010 report, a total of 39 animals were killed, 13 injured and 5 were lost. Would you want your pet to be included in those stats?

Thankfully, there is an alternative. Dan and Alysa, the founders of Pet Airways, have introduced a much needed service to the pet world. Pet Airways was created because they are of the same mindset as the rest of us – Pets are not cargo! On their flights, pets are treated just like passengers, in fact, they are the only Pawsengers! The airline only carries animals and they are transported in the cabin of the plane, not the cargo hold.  This means is that their environment is climate-controlled, fresh air circulates and there is light. Also, because pets fly in the cabin, there are no time of year/temperature restrictions on when they can fly! Plus pets even get their own trained flight attendant to check on them constantly throughout the flight.

Each pet gets their own carrier, supplied by the airline, which means you don’t have to spend money on an airline approved carrier. These carriers are secured to the plane to keep your pet safe during transit (unlike the cargo hold). Pets are also given potty breaks. You can even track your pet’s flight in real-time! And each travel location has a Pet Lounge, where your pet is well taken care of both before and after the flight. Pet Airways also offers lodging, just in case you need to board Fido prior to or after his flight.

Flying with Pet Airways is even gentler on your wallet in a lot of cases. While most of the big commercial airlines charge from $125 all the way up to a whopping $275 for your pet to be treated like cargo, Pet Airways flights are as low as $99* for your pet to travel first-class. It’s pretty much a no-brainer to me. However, the one downfall is that service is not available everywhere. Right now, you are limited to the major hubs such as New York, Los Angeles and Chicago,** but they are adding new destinations all the time. This summer, Pet Airways will add Lone Star State cities of Dallas, Austin and Houston to its list of destinations. Also, Pet Airways has decided to “show Missouri” by adding St. Louis as their 14th destination to their expanding network in the Mid-West.

So spread the word about this fantastic service for pets. The more people who know about and use Pet Airways to transport their pets, the more destinations they will bring us! And happily, pets finally have a safer and more comfortable way to fly.

Find more information about Pet Airways. The pet-only airline!

* Prices as of Spring 2011, consult the Pet Airways website for updated pricing.

** As of the date of this post, Pet Airways flies to the following cities/areas:

• New York, serving NJ, CT and Philadelphia, PA
• Washington DC / Baltimore, MD
• Chicago, IL
• Omaha, NE
• Denver, CO
• Phoenix, AZ
• Los Angeles, CA
• Ft. Lauderdale, FL
• Atlanta, GA

Coming soon, summer of 2011

• Houston, TX
• Austin, TX
• Dallas, TX
• St.Louis, MO

Poor Izzy had a little bit of a weight problem last year. Yes, she’s a Lab and of course, Labs eat everything that is remotely edible and even a few things that aren’t. But the thing nobody ever tells you about Labs – is that they are just so darn much fun to feed! Maybe it’s the way they enthusiastically take food or the look of appreciation they give you when you hand them a tasty morsel. Or maybe it’s just the pathetic “I’ve never been fed in my entire life, ever” look they enjoy giving, trying to persuade anyone who is sucker enough to fall for their crafty charms.  Well, Sucker right here. With an emblazoned “S” on my forehead.

So… Izzy got a few more tasty morsels than she should have otherwise had. Compound that with the fact that she was also being fed too much dog food. (This is where the advice of not following the directions on the bag of dog food, but adjusting for your own individual dog comes in.) Plus throw in a not so active winter – okay, yes, we were slackers on the diligent walk your dog every day rule, but… do as I say, not as I do! – and it all adds up to a chunky monkey of a dog.

Realizing what had happened and that Izzy’s annual check-up would be approaching, we started getting worried. We were going to get raked over the coals. I mean barbequed up. We were going to be reprimanded. We’d be made to hang our heads in shame. We were terrible, terrible dog owners because we had allowed our dog to become <<gasp!>> fat. We were just the worst kind of puppy parents imaginable. So scrambling to figure out what the heck to do to make her drop all that excess weight before they called us to come in for inspection. Oh, the horrors we would be subjected to for allowing her to get into such a state. By now our terrified minds had us quivering in fear with thoughts of the vet visit to come. Desperation set in. What do we do, what do we do? 

Starvation wasn’t exactly the answer, although, she always looks at you like she’s starving, so what would be the difference if we did? Hmmm. Exercise her like crazy? Wouldn’t work either. She just lays down and refuses to move if she’s had enough. Leave town? Go on the lam? Assume aliases? Go underground? We were going to be busted. There was no way we could get all the extra weight off her before that dreaded day arrived.

Then there it was. The voicemail on the phone.  Time for her check-up. The dreaded check-up. After a mountain’s worth of procrastination, we had put the appointment off as long as we dared. It was time to face the music. Time to walk the plank. Time to go to the gallows. We finally went into the vet’s office to accept our verbal lashings.

We went through the entire check up and it was as though the Vet was teasing and torturing us. She said nothing about her additional padding. We held our breath, waiting for the inevitable chastising. For a brief moment, we thought we might actually get away unscathed. We might actually escape intact! Hope soared for a few glorious, heady moments until…

“Izzy needs to lose some weight.”

And all the hope came crashing down. Big giant pile of hope lay crumpled and trampled, dead on the floor. Damn. No escape. We were trapped in the tiny exam room and we were about to get it. And the Vet didn’t disappoint. There was nothing to do but nod silently and hang our heads in shame. Ironically, Izzy lay grinning because she had just been fed a handful of freeze-dried liver treats in order to distract her from her vaccinations. The Vet ended her lecture by saying that Izzy needed to go on a calorie-reduced diet and that they had prescription diets specially formulated for overweight canines. We had previously been warned about the richness of her current diet, that perhaps it was too much for a Lab. Okay, we conceded, we’d think about putting her on the Vet’s choice of dog food.

So as we finished up the appointment and were waiting for the assistant to complete our invoice, I started browsing the bags of pet food on the metal shelving that lined the wall. So many different formulations specifically made for all kinds of doggy ailments. I finally found the one that was being prescribed to slim down my plump poochie. I flipped over the bag to examine the ingredients. And there it was. The very first ingredient. The very first horrible, terrible, catastrophic ingredient. Corn.

Dreaded corn. Corn, that has absolutely no nutritional value for dogs. Corn, that was the culprit of so many dog allergies. Corn, one of the Unholy Dog Trinity of wheat, corn and soy – the worst ingredients you could possibly give to your dog. Corn, a carbohydrate, which dogs cannot properly process and is stored as fat. The rest of the ingredients in the food weren’t much better – healthy helpings of low quality ingredients, not to mention preservatives that are suspected of causing cancer, in addition to another of the UDT – soy. No way in hell was one kibble of that garbage going in my dog’s mouth. Granted, it was meant to be a short-term diet. But to put my dog on this stuff, I felt, was nutritionally akin to eating cheese puffs to lose weight.

I asked the receptionist to take the dog food off the bill. We would find another way to bring Izzy’s weight down. I couldn’t in good conscience feed that garbage to my pet, knowing what I knew about dog food and its ingredients. I went home and double-checked the dog food on www.dogfoodanalysis.com just to reassure myself that I wasn’t over reacting. I wasn’t. It was rated a 1-star food. Complete and total crap.

We scaled back the amount of food Izzy was getting, cut out treats altogether except for her “sleepy time bone biscuit” and increased the exercise. The result – a lot more of the “I’ve never been fed in my entire life, ever” looks, but also a slimmer, svelter, more active Izzy without bending to the recommendations of a very bad, very evil diet. So the moral of the story? Don’t just accept what your vet throws at you. Do your homework. It’s your pet and in the end you have to do what you feel is right for your dog.

I've never been fed in all my life, ever!

I have to admit that getting the Puppytropolis website up and running again wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. My first mistake was that I thought I had a back up copy of the website to protect against deletion from cyberspace. I thought wrong. While I had the skeleton of many of the pages, there were still many that had disappeared into thin air. Which means back to the drawing board. A little frustrating, but as my dad used to say, in those early days of home computing, when I would have forgotten to periodically save my work and the computer would decide to malfunction, forever banishing my hard work to the land of the lost - It’ll be even better the second time around. Little comfort to the devestated soul that just saw literally hours of work go down the central processing drain.

As I piece the remnants of the old site back together and try to improve on what was there, I’m hoping that father knows best. So here’s hoping that the second incarnation of Puppytropolis will be even better the second time around!

Some of the old aspects of the site have been re-instated, some have been banished all together. Some may re-appear in time. But one thing is certain – we have lots of fantastic ideas and information for the website that will be implemented over the coming months. And as always, our focus is on educating potential puppy owners, existing puppy owners and even owners of grown up puppies.

Here’s to a happy, healthy and long relationship with your furry best friends!

Denise (and Izzy)