Misc Resources | ASCHAE's DogBlog

CANIDAE Pet Foods Helps The Pongo Fund Launch Largest Pet Food Bank in the United States

Posted November 20, 2009 By aschae and has 2 comments.

Source: PRWeb, Nov 19, 2009

Pet food company donates truckloads of premium pet food to The Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank in Portland, Oregon enabling them to distribute high quality dog food and cat food to the animals of anyone in need, helping to keep families together in challenging economic times.

San Luis Obispo, CA (PRWEB) November 19, 2009 — CANIDAE Pet Foods, a manufacturer of all natural dog and cat food, has donated $125,000 USD worth of premium pet food to The Pongo Fund, allowing Larry Chusid, Founder and Executive Director, to open the nation’s largest pet food bank.

The Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank opened Sunday, November 8, 2009, operating out of a warehouse in Portland, directly across from the Oregon Convention Center. Over 30 enthusiastic volunteers were on hand to help ensure that everyone with a genuine need would receive a two week supply of premium pet food for each of their dogs or cats. In addition to receiving free pet food, recipients were given nutritional information and tips for safely transitioning their dogs to an all natural, premium diet. All recipients were all invited to return every two weeks to receive more food for their companion animals, so long as they had a need.

“Our first day was exceptional, a perfectly joyful opportunity to help the community,” explained The Pongo Fund Founder Larry Chusid. “We were able to effortlessly guide each person through the facility, providing them with food and nutritional advice, in only a matter of minutes. Providing a respectful and efficient experience will be critical as we expect to help more and more people as news of the pet food bank spreads. Our goal is to be able to provide eight tons of free premium pet food every month.”

In addition to the homeless, many of the people who arrived on opening day had a place to live, but were unemployed and so were unable to feed their companion animals. “Pets mean so much to people, they’d do anything for them. If people can’t afford to feed their pet, they have to give them up. The Pongo Fund fills a unique need… they help keep families together by feeding the pets,” said Lael Concordia, Director of Social Services at William Temple House, another Portland organization that helps individuals and families in crisis.

The Mayor of Portland, Sam Adams, was so impressed with Chusid’s vision and the unprecedented donation from CANIDAE, that he declared Sunday, November 8, 2009 to be “CANIDAE All Natural Pet Foods Day” in the city.

“A lot of these folks were surprised to find that they needed less CANIDAE than the pet foods from grocery stores they were used to feeding,” said CANIDAE Sales Manager Jon Tingle. “We explained that because CANIDAE doesn’t contain the corn, wheat and fillers that some other brands do, there is a lot more nutrition in each pound. We asked everyone to fill out a Pet Profile so the next time they come we can quickly give them the right amount of food for their dog or cat.”

Chusid spotted one man leaving the pet food bank with only a 4 pound bag of FELIDAE cat food. He was concerned the man did not take enough to last two weeks and caught up with him outside the warehouse. When asked, the man said he only had one very small cat and four pounds was, “all he needed.” When offered an additional bag of Felidae, the man graciously declined. “I don’t want to take more than I need; I want to make sure there’s enough for everyone else.”

Among the volunteers were representatives from all three Healthy Pets Northwest stores including Laura Amiton from the Alberta District store, Julie Cantonwine from the Hawthorne District store, and Mike Carroll and Barb Cantonwine from the Multnomah Village store. They offered their years of expertise in pet nutrition to the needy dog and cat owners and were among those that helped to calculate the right amount of food to last each pet for two weeks.

After opening, an anonymous individual was so impressed with The Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank that he called Chusid to donate $3,000 for purchase of even more CANIDAE. “We are thrilled that the community has responded so well. Sometimes it’s simply a bowl of kibble that can keep a family together and save the lives of the animals they love,” said Chusid.

The Pongo Fund Pet Food Bank is open the second and fourth Sunday of every month. Details at www.thepongofund.org.

About The Pongo Fund

Founded in 2007 by Larry Chusid, The Pongo Fund has provided over 100,000 quality meals to the dogs and cats of the needy and homeless in and around the Portland, Oregon area, helping to protect these animals from being abandoned or surrendered simply because their families cannot afford to feed them. The Pongo Fund is an all volunteer charity and the only program specifically designed to consistently provide quality dog and cat food to the animals of anyone in need. Their address is PO Box 8244, Portland, Oregon, 97207. The Pongo Fund is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit public charity. www.thepongofund.org

About CANIDAE All Natural Pet Foods

Founded out of love for pets and animals, CANIDAE Pet Food, Inc. manufactures and distributes a complete line of healthy meat-based, holistic, all natural dog food, cat food, and gourmet pet treats sold worldwide through independent pet food retailers including over 7,000 locations throughout the United States and Canada. For the most recent information about CANIDAE and its line of healthy pet products, visit http://www.canidae.com/canidae-news-updates.html. About Responsible Pet Ownership In accordance with its philosophy of promoting Responsible Pet Ownership through proper nutrition and care, CANIDAE All Natural Pet Foods is the title sponsor of the Responsible Pet Ownership blog which provides helpful tips and advice for caring pet owners. This daily RPO blog exists as a free service to all pet owners, offering articles from a range of professional pet authors on topics such as natural nutrition, training and exercise, veterinarian care, planned breeding, spaying and neutering, and supporting reputable breeders and rescue groups. Pet owners can subscribe to these informative daily articles at http://canidaepetfood.blogspot.com.

Categories: Feeding, Health, Heros, Misc Resources, Natural/Healthy Pet Foods, Products Worth Sharing, Recent News

Tags: canidae, Felidae, food bank, healthy pets, pet food, pet nutrition, Pongo fund

Free Puppy Training Lesson from FetchDog!

By aschae and has no comments yet.

Get your Free Puppy Training lesson from the dog experts at FetchDog.com!

This week’s Puppy Training Lesson #1: SIT.

Categories: General Training, Misc Resources

Tags: lesson, puppy, sit, train, training

Upstate NY group tests composting of pooch poop

Posted September 22, 2009 By aschae and has no comments yet.

Source: Associated Press, September 18, 2009

A group of upstate New York dog owners thinks it has a can-do plan to profitably compost the tons of dog doo left behind by the roughly 50,000 canines that use the city’s pooch park each year.

If their pilot project is successful, the Tompkins County Dog Owners Group and Cayuga Compost hope to market usable compost within the next two or three years.

More importantly, finding a use for the billions of pounds of pooch poop produced yearly in the United States could also lead to a significant reduction in the amount of waste material sent to landfills, said Leon Kochian, a spokesman for TC DOG, the not-for-profit volunteer group involved in funding the project.

“There was a large Dumpster at the park, and it was just always overflowing with plastic bags of dog poop. The amount was unbelievable,” said Kochian, a Cornell University biology professor who owns a yellow Labrador retriever.

“Ithaca has a reputation as a green community. … It made sense to us to find a way to compost and spare the landfill from all the plastic bags,” Kochian said.

Dog and cat waste contain parasites and pathogens that make them unsuitable as compost for vegetable gardens and topsoil and can run off into local waterways and diminish water quality, said Cary Oshins, an assistant program director for the U.S. Composting Council. Composted pet waste can be used for deep-fill or other purposes.

There are any number of small-scale backyard pet waste composters and converters available on the market, but Oshins said he had not heard of any place in the U.S. trying to compost pet waste on such a grand scale.

“It actually makes sense to do it on a larger scale. The larger the facility, the more control,” he said. “Anything that gets waste out of a landfill is a good thing.”

There are between 3,000 and 4,000 dog-dedicated parks in the United States.

Moreover, there are an estimated 73 million pet dogs in the United States. The average dog produces about 274 pounds of waste a year, which means total dog waste in the U.S. is more than 20 billion pounds.

A handful of dog parks in the U.S. provide onsite composting receptacles but none have tried moving it offsite to a large-scale composting facility in a commercial venture, according to DogParkUSA.com, a national dog park Web site.

But large-scale composting has worked at the Parc Notre Dame de Grace in Montreal, Canada, where municipal officials have been composting dog waste since 2004 and annually divert about a ton of dog waste and 7,000 plastic bags from the local landfill.

Kochian estimated Cayuga Compost has been collecting about 1,000 pounds of poop monthly from the nearly 5-acre Ithaca Dog Park.

It’s not surprising that Ithaca would try to find an eco-friendly solution to its excess dog doo problem. The city has a long history of being a city on the cutting edge.

The city library operates on solar power; a task force is examining how Ithaca can build a rail system of high speed podcars to transport people; and the Green Springs Natural Cemetery was among the first in the nation to allow only biodegradable coffins and no tombstones, just markers of flat fieldstones, trees or shrubs.

___

U.S. Composting Council: http://www.compostingcouncil.org

DogParkUSA: http://www.DogParkUSA.com

Categories: Misc Resources, Recent News

Tags: compost, dog, dog park, dogpark, ithaca, poop, recycle, waste

DNA testing in Salina saves pet, KS

Posted September 14, 2009 By aschae and has no comments yet.

Source: Salina Journal, September 13, 2009

Animal-control officers knew the dog they saw looked like a pit bull.

It didn’t matter that the dog in question, Angie Cartwright’s family pet Lucey, had never bitten anyone. Nor had she ever acted aggressively.

Lucey’s troubles began when Cartwright was pet-sitting her brother’s dog, which got loose. Someone called animal-control officers, who picked up the brother’s dog and collared Lucey in the process.

The officers explained that they were taking Lucey to a veterinarian for a breed check — a professional opinion to determine Lucey’s breed. Since 2005, Salina has had a ban on owning unregistered pit bulls and mixed breeds that are predominantly pit bull.

Today, Lucey is home, and Cartwright credits a genetic test kit that helps pet owners identify the heritage of their mixed-breed dogs.

The test found that a minor amount of Lucey’s DNA came from Staffordshire bull terrier genes — a little more than 12 percent, not close to a predominant percentage.

“Maybe this can save someone’s animal, hopefully,” Cartwright said.

Without the test results, Cartwright and her family would have been faced with finding Lucey a home outside Salina, or leaving her at the animal shelter where she might be have to be destroyed.

At least three retail genetic tests are on the market for dogs. One is the Wisdom Panel MX mixed breed analysis, which is offered by a Salina clinic, Town & Country Animal Hospital.

Wisdom Panel is the only one that uses a blood test; two others use cheek swabs for DNA samples.

Cartwright asked the animal control officers who were taking Lucey away if she could check with her own vet, Karen Hale Young, owner of Town & Country, for a second opinion. Cartwright didn’t know then that the clinic had the genetic test available.

Town & Country charges $168 for the service.

“I was actually pretty desperate and I watch a lot of medical shows,” Cartwright said. “I said, ‘Do you guys do DNA testing on dogs?’ It was actually just a grasp (at a solution). We didn’t want her to go, we didn’t want her to be put to sleep. I was angry and upset, and I was just trying to find a different solution.”

The family had acquired Lucey as a puppy just a couple of months earlier from a family in Hutchinson that couldn’t care for her anymore.

Young said she thought that, given the shape of Lucey’s head and ears, particularly, Lucey was predominantly pit bull.

“She said, ‘Prove me wrong — please prove me wrong.’ ” Cartwright said. “I said, ‘I hope I do.’ ”

The test showed that Lucey had no more than 12.5 percent each of bull terrier DNA, boxer, and Staffordshire bull terrier. The largest percentage of DNA, 25 percent, was Bernese mountain dog.

“Berners” are a Swiss breed originally bred as farm dogs and companion animals, used for driving cattle.

The American Kennel Club defines pit bulls as American pit bull terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers, American Staffordshire terriers or any mix of those breeds.

All of the genetic testing companies, in their literature, urge that their products not be used to enforce breed bans. None have reached the point of being challenged in court.

Still, Rose Base, director of the Salina Animal Shelter, accepts the test results.

“It’s provided through a veterinary clinic. And if they’re that strongly supporting something like that, we feel it must be a quality product,” Base said.

Salina veterinarian David Atherton offers the Wisdom Panel test to his customers curious about their dog’s characteristics. He said he thinks the test has validity.

“If I was going to have a beloved dog taken away, I would demand it,” he said.

Categories: Misc Resources, Pit Bulls/Dog Fighting, Products Worth Sharing, Recent News

Tags: akc, animal, bull terrier, DNA, dog, pit bull, salina

A paw up to find jobs for dog owners

Posted June 17, 2009 By aschae and has no comments yet.

Source: BaltimoreSun.com

If you don’t have a job but you do have a dog, the website Dog News Daily wants to help.

The company is announcing today the launch of its Help Find A Dog Owner A Job program.

The goal is to help unemployed people find jobs in the pet industry.

The website is donating $1 million worth of advertising space to allow unemployed dog owners to either post a one-page resume on the site for free or review and respond — also for free — to job openings that have been posted there by companies in the pet industry.

To have their resume published, all a dog owner has to do is go to BlogDogNewsDaily.com,, click on the “Post a Resume” tab, and follow the instructions.

Once a job seeker’s resume is approved, it will immediately be made available to prospective employers.

“There are an estimated 4 million unemployed dog owners in the US many of whom visit Dog News Daily,” says Alan Siskind, publisher of the site. “Unfortunately, a growing number of them are finding it increasingly more difficult to care for their pets. If our program finds even one dog owner a job so that they don’t have to give up their pet, we will consider this program to be a huge success.”

Dog News Daily says it will neither accept nor post job listings from breeders, puppy mills, or retail stores that sell dogs.

Categories: Misc Resources, Recent News

Tags: dog news daily, find a job, job, og owner