sandgrubber

Mars mostly markets confections, which wouldn't go very well in dog food. USDA and FDA both regulate pet food manufacture. They probably go pretty light on inspections, but I don't think recycling unsold human food would survive as a regular practice.

.No need to apologize. Sometimes some of us are quarrelsome, and there are a lot of people who, for good reason, are defensive about breeder bashing. The forum has had its share of trolls, and they are annoying. One factor I haven't heard anyone raise is the buyer's contract. If the breeder offered a guarantee on the pup's health to a certain age, that prevails. If not, some breeders will still accept responsibility even though they don't have to. For example, someone once bought a pup from me who developed late onset deafness, a condition rare in Labradors, but a similar condition did appear in a couple other pups with the same sire (I don't own the sire). Not clear when the condition developed. The pup may have been deaf for many months before it was diagnosed at two years. I gave them another dog, one I was going to rehome, to serve as a 'hearing ear' companion for the deaf dog;This was purely voluntary; it worked out well and I felt good about it. They were very good owners, and I was glad to be able to help them.

Not if it's an iPad . Sorry. Couldn't resist. <div>I think the general pharma rule is you can split tablets that have a score mark dividing them in half on one side.</div>

Market power tests aren't likely to be a problem with the acquisition leaving Mars a distant #2 to Nestles.

totally agree. Large fines for repeat offenders. Slap on the wrist may be appropriate for first offenders. Sometimes it takes a first offense to diagnose a fencing problem. Eg, it may be a surprise when you discover your puppy can dig UNDER the expensive fence you put up.

Sprocket, a rescue I had in the 80s, was big on doing jaw exercises with tennis balls, leaving them well coated with slime. Depositing a slime ball in a guest's lap was bad enough. Once she deposited one right into a friend's G&T. o,k. more funny than embarrassing if you have that sort of sense of humor.

Pull lovely smelling things out of the bathroom trash.

My dogs, and almost all the Labradors I've met, are obsessed with food, but paradoxically, not the least inclined to resource guarding. I don't regularly take their food off them, but I do periodically need to take something out of their mouths -- they pick up all sorts of crap, and a lot of it is literally crap, on their walks -- and sometimes I need to take it away from them -- like if it's a cooked bone. I get zero resistance, even if I put my fingers down the throat a bit. [A few weeks ago I went to remove something and it was well fermented cat poo, which I got all over myself and the smell was hard to wash out]. Point being, I suspect resource guarding is pretty rare in some breeds and if you're sensible with management of food, you won't have problems.

Given Mars is historically a candy manufacturers, I wouldn't expect attention to nutritional value, as opposed to the bottom line. Look for more product differentiation with price elevation for those who are willing to pay, as in the expensive breed-specifics from Royal Canin.

To Slim Down, Procter & Gamble Sells Most of Its Pet Food Brands to Mars Mr. Lafley set about addressing Mr. Ackman's criticisms on Wednesday, agreeing to sell most of Procter & Gamble's pet foods brands — including Iams and Eukanuba — to Mars, best known as a candy maker, for $2.9 billion in cash.Since A. G. Lafley returned last year for a second stint as chief executive of Procter & Gamble, investors have been waiting for him to make a big move. blah blah blah ... streamlining the company ... Another possible deal for Procter & Gamble could be the sale of the remainder of its pet food business. The company said it would sell the remaining 20 percent of that unit to Mars or another buyer, which could fetch $700 million. ... Mars, one of the largest private companies in the country, is best known as a confectioner, the maker of M&M's, Snickers and Twix. But the company also has a robust business selling food for cats and dogs. This is the biggest purchase for Mars since its $23 billion acquisition of the chewing gum company Wrigley in 2008. Mars has annual net sales of about $33 billion. Its stable of pet food brands includes Whiskas cat food and the Pedigree and Royal Canin pet food lines. If approved, the deal will give Mars 20 percent of the United States market for cat and dog food combined, up from its current 13 percent. But it will still be well behind Nestlé, which has 50 percent of the market with its popular Purina brands. In dog food alone, the deal will make Mars somewhat stronger, giving it control of 28 percent of the country's dog food market, up from 19 percent. Source: http://dealbook.nyti...type=blogs&_r=1 Spotted on Terrierman blog.

How about educating themselves to know that males in the wild kill the young. They could have separated them. Unfortunately, zoos function as public entertainment and the public loves baby animals. This sets up many ethical problems. I'm sure they know that males will kill young. But they would probably have to euth the young in any case if they don't have the facilities to care for them. For all we know, the bears were an unwanted gift from Putin. To turn them down would have been an insult . . .

Glad you've worked it through. They sound like typical Labradors . . . super keen on food, but not prone to aggression.

Quoting from the article: 'Zoos have too many captive bears and it is almost impossible to send them somewhere. Surplus bears have to be euthanised, and it is better to do that at a very young age when the mortality in nature is also the highest.'

Cutting tempered glass and engineering the result to get it back to original strength would be prohibitively expensive. I don't think anyone does it. Go for a click in . .. or build one if you're handy.

I feed my three labs together. I fill all three bowls at the same time and set them down simultaneously. The puppy finishes last. I've never had any trouble with growling or stealing, although I think it would be less peaceful if they were feed sequentially rather than simultaneously. You do not want the pup finish first and come over to the older dog to see if there's anything to be had from the other bowl.

Have I missed something? I've seen no mention of how large this class is, and little mention of how the trainer set forth, communicated, and enforced rules. Also no mention of discussing the incident in class with those involved. I've attended classes that were utter chaos . .. too large, no one can hear the trainer, people pretty much doing what they see fit. Such classes may be ok for easy-going dogs whose owners want to learn basics, but they are not appropriate for working through the problems of reactive or DA dogs. The club or the trainer or whoever set up the class should be ensuring the safety of everyone involved. Should this situation have come to a bad end, I would guess that the club or the trainer would be legally liable, moreso than the owner of the aggressive dog. From what I've read (not everything carefully) the humans involved learned from this event . . . other than aversion.

I don't have much to add, other than to say KISS. Too many treatments at once and you'll never figure out what is working. Also, remember, histamic reactions are at least as often an out-of-balance, over-reactive, immune system as they are a weak immune system. It's hard to achieve balance when you're juggling several meds/supplements.

No one is at fault. This is a training situation. You can't learn if you don't have permission to make mistakes. If the attack is serious, the person running the class is responsible. Such situations should not be allowed to develop. I would hope that the trainer would use the event to teach a lesson, though.

It's easy to romanticize. In the 60s and 70s people didn't think twice about drowning unwanted puppies and kill rates in shelters were extremely high. (I got Turnip, my first dog, when the neighbors appeared saying "sure hate to drown these pups"). As for vaccinations . . . parvo didn't appear until the 1978 and it took a few years for vaccinations to be developed. So pressure for vaccination was low in the 70s. I don't know how active distemper vaccination programs were . . . but I'd guess not very active until the 1990s. p.s. I grew up in the 50s, so saw the 70s as a young adult. It's easy to think the time of your childhood was problem-free. Kids get shielded from problems, or look right at problems and see nothing wrong.

In my kennel days we sometimes constructed warm 'caves' for small dogs by bending weld-mesh into an arch and piling blankets on top of it. Then place the cave on or over the dog's bed. We started doing this for cats, and then found it worked for dogs as well. That is, many dogs preferentially sought out the 'cave' for a sleeping place, and if you stuck your hand into it on a cold morning you could tell it was warm. Heating pads didn't usually work cause the dogs generally avoided them. Seems more natural to keep a dog warm by giving it an environment that preserves its body heat.

The dogs being advertized as pocket pitbulls in our area are not described as ratters. The term seems to be being used by rescue organizations to describe smaller pit-like dogs. . . including a girl who looks a bit chihuahua like that was seized in a raid on a dogfighting ring . . . http://gainesville.craigslist.org/pet/4383249123.html

Have you talked to the owners or left them a note? I would do that before trying to contact the authorities (who are not interested anyway). There's a chance that it's just a passing thing . . . moving house, dog disoriented, people running between locations . . the situation may settle down.

my error . . . some silly drag and drop glitch put Cavalier in the middle, not the front. Have fixed in the OP. The website is pretentious in the extreme, claiming links to royalty.

Yep, this ^. Only small dogs are allowed in retirement villages. NOT NECESSARILY!!!!! Don't self-censor! Do put pressure for broader tolerance. If you believe it's true, you make it true! There are several thousand 55+ residential developments in Australia. They are not all the same. For example, I'd expect many retirement villages have had experiences with assistance dogs, and have developed tolerance of Labradors and perhaps also goldies. If a dog is proposed as a companion/service animal, eg., to provide emotional support through the transition to retirement, and the pup is sourced from a kennel that specializes in assistance dogs, I would guess many places would set aside prejudices against medium to large dogs. I too am looking at buying a self contained unit in a retirement village. My comment regarding small dogs comes as a result of my many enquiries to those who advertise units as being pet friendly. Though I have a history of spinal problems and indeed current issues with said spinal problems it is not my intention to imply my two CKCS are assistance dogs. That would be dishonest of me. I believe the lady in question is in search a companion dog. No mention is made of her needing an assistance dog/emotional support dog. It has indeed been said that the lady is fit and healthy. A large breed puppy would take time to train and pups are rambuctious until they're obedience trained. This is from personal experience with my former large breed dogs (Rottweilers). I wouldn't take the risk of body corporate or unit management informing me that I must get rid of my dog because it does not meet their pet friendly requirements. It is much safer both for dog owner/unit owner to comply with the conditions set out by the body corporate right from the start so there is no question of the dog being too large and rambunctious for a retirement village. It would be devastating for the dog owner to have to part with their dog. It would also be unfair to the dog. Why risk it? I would not give up on finding a body corporate that permits large to medium dogs. As previously noted, my mother was able to find a very nice assisted living facility that would allow her to have her Labrador, and get another dog when the Lab passed away. The place was private, not a chain, and Quaker run. The residents were encouraged to play an active role in governance and many did. The second dog Mom got while in assisted living, btw, was a rescue, and didn't work out well. He wasn't friendly to other residents, he was DA, and he was terrified of walking on linoleum (many of the common spaces in the place had lino floors). He eventually went back to the rescue (Mom adopted on the condition that the dog could be returned if he didn't work out). Molly (the Labrador) was not an assistance dog, and I do not advocate trying to fake any dog as an assistance dog. I merely stated that a place that has had experience with Labradors as assistance dogs may be more open to them as pets, especially if they come from a kennel that specializes in assistance dogs. Anyone who knows anything about aging can tell you that many many dogs provide emotional support and comfort to people in their later years. Rotties are, so to speak, XL rather than L, and have a very different reputation than Labbies. Finding a place that would allow a Rotti would be difficult -- even though many Rotties are sweet, lovely dogs.

There are far worse things happening in the exotic animal trade. According to http://terriermandot...ike-adults.html Zoos routinely over-breed animals because tiger cubs and baby zebras boost attendance and generate profits. Cute baby animals quickly grow up, however, and that's a problem. It turns out that the world has more caged lions, tigers and zebras than it knows what to do with. What to do? Answer: canned shooting preserves in Texas. It's not an accident that at one point nine board members of the San Antonio Zoo owned hunt preserves. Not all exotic animals used in canned hunts come from large zoos. Many come from small zoos and private breeders of large exotic animals. If you have a checkbook in this country, you can buy anything from a lion to a bear, and from a bobcat to a gemsbok. And if you have ever bought a wildlife magazine with amazing shots of baby cougars, lynx, red fox, black bear, and wolf, you are a small part of the problem. Most of those pictures were taken in private "photography zoos," and at least some of those baby animals were later sold, as adults, to canned hunts.