Losing a companion animal is devastating.  And yet, many pet parents don’t receive the kind of emotional support they might expect if they had lost a human family member.  Failing to show such a depth of compassion is common for those who have never shared a special bond with a companion animal.  These people might say to themselves, “What’s the big deal … it was just a pet.”  What they don’t understand is a very simple truth … losing a companion animal is losing a member of your family.

Anytime we suffer a dramatic loss, it is appropriate to grieve.  Your first priority should be to come to grips with the fact that it is perfectly acceptable to grieve the passing of your companion animal.  Accepting the magnitude of your loss can facilitate the process of grieving.  The more you fight to suppress your feelings, the worse your grief can become.  Hiding the heartache will do you no good.

Grief takes many forms, whether it’s denial, anger, bargaining, depression and ultimately, acceptance.  While many tout the different characterizations of grief as if they were absolute stages, these steps should be interpreted more as a continuum of emotion.  That is, some may not experience them and others may experience many simultaneously.

Some find the process of grief frustrating, as it is a process of reaction.  We may ask ourselves, “What can I do to feel better?”  Those who have experienced a recent loss should take some comfort in knowing that there are outlets for this impulse.  There are several organizations that allow you to contribute funds in the memory of your companion animal.  Many of these groups will publish an announcement of your gift along with a special message of tribute.  In this way, you can create a legacy for your companion animal.

Additionally, you should be certain to actively take care of yourself physically.  Because grief takes a toll on us physically, you should allow yourself extra time to sleep, be sure to exercise and eat well.

Don’t arbitrarily assign time limits to your grief.  The bottom line is – as with most emotional processes – it takes as long as it takes.

Above all, know that you are not alone in your experience.  Be sure to talk to other pet parents about your loss, but be sure to spend time sharing memories about the best times you spent with your companion animal, too.

Save face with a pet project

Anne Fawcett
January 7, 2008

Online services have turned the idea of vanity publishing on its head, even letting you make a few bucks on the side, writes Anne Fawcett.

If you’re as obsessed with your pets as I am, you probably eye pictures of animals on pet food labels with envy. Why, you ask, was that particularly plain-looking canine, feline or guinea pig model chosen as the face of the product and not your own furry companion? Odds are you have the most beautiful pet in the world – it’s just that the world doesn’t know it yet.

Thanks to advances in electronic publishing technology, that’s easily remedied and promoting your pet is not as expensive as you might think. You can even make a bit of cash on the side.

Say I want to produce a glossy calendar displaying my plus-size domestic short-hair cat, Michael. In the not-so-distant past I’d have had to pay a publishing company to format, design and print the calendar. Even if I wanted a single calendar for myself, I’d have had to order a minimum of several hundred for the company to make a return on their production costs, incurring a bill that could easily run into thousands of dollars.

Exceptional feline beauty that Michael is, I doubt I could sell more than a handful of calendars. Likely I would end up with enough leftover calendars to wallpaper my house 10 times over, and a significant financial loss. It’s a predicament long associated with publishing through the so-called vanity press, publishing houses that profit by publishing at the expense of the author.

That’s changed with the advent of print-on-demand services such as US-based Lulu (www.lulu.com). Calendars, books and other documents published electronically on Lulu’s website are printed only when they are purchased.

“There is not only no minimum order required, there is no upfront cost at all,” says Lulu’s Director of public relations, Gail Jordan.

So, to create my feline calendar, I simply log on and use the formatting tools provided to create my design. Choose the style of calendar, decide how many months I’d like the calendar to run and when it will start, then upload an image for each month. Granted, the design options are limited but it’s extremely user-friendly. Anyone capable of using a digital camera and downloading their pictures onto a computer can do it.

It’s best to save your picture files as either JPEG or Portable Network Graphics (PNG) files before you upload them. Images saved in Photoshop Document (PSD), Tag Image File Format (TIFF) or MS Windows Bitmap Format (BMP) are not recommended as they have prolonged uploading times. The ideal file size is between one and two megabytes. Anything about seven megabytes or more risks the site timing out, meaning you need to start again. For the best result, save files at 300 dots per inch -most picture editing software will allow you to select the DPI when you save your file.

Once all your images are uploaded, you can download and review a PDF draft. The entire process takes about 30 minutes.

My calendar is now ready to buy. If I order one copy, one copy is printed and shipped to me but there is no obligation to order.

The price is determined by the minimum cost of production, plus a mark-up if you choose to make a profit. The author collects 80 per cent of the profit on every sale.

By opting for the calendar to be “general access”, anyone in the world can buy the calendar. Lulu’s figures show the Lulu marketplace attracts more than 900,000 visitors every week. There’s every possibility that a billionaire like Richard Branson will stumble across my calendar, take a liking to it and order 10,000 copies. Then again, there’s every chance he won’t.

So, is my moggy a moneymaker? Not exactly. I email the link to my family and friends and wait for my sales to skyrocket. After a dozen replies saying the recipient will buy my calendar immediately only one of my friends puts her money where her mouth is.

The reason the others don’t becomes quickly obvious: they make their own Lulu pet calendars.

“Loved the cat calendar,” emails my best friend Erin. “I made one of my dog. Here’s the link.”

My own father produces a calendar displaying my mother’s garden. He’ll buy mine only if I buy his. But we’ve each bought our own calendar already. Who needs more than one calendar a year? The calendar dollar, I learn, is limited. But the merchandising dollar isn’t subject to the same annual limitations.

Websites such as http://www.cafepress.com allow you to publish your pet’s image on a track suit, tote bag, apron, G-string, bumper sticker, wall clock or dog T-shirt. As with Lulu, there is no minimum order. Simply log in, choose the product you want to create, upload your pet’s image and order as many as you like.

Budding entrepreneurs can take it a step further and create an online shopfront for no additional cost, allowing shoppers from around the world to buy your products. When you open a shop, Cafepress allocates a page that you can link to your own website. You may choose to sell a line of clothing with your pet’s distinctive face on it. You choose the products you want to sell and upload your images. You can then decide how much you will mark up the price. Commissions are paid monthly.

The downside is that these websites – and their production facilities – are based in the US. That means products are billed in US dollars and the price is increased by international shipping fees. The upside is that if products featuring your pet are bestsellers, you’re paid in US dollars.

But if you’re not out to make a profit and you’d prefer to save on postage, there are Australian-based printing services that allow you to buy items adorned with photographs of your beloved pet or significant other. For example, sites such as http://www.fujicolour.com.au and http://www.photomax.com.au allow you to create and buy personalised stubby holders, T-shirts, fridge magnets, jigsaw puzzles, mouse pads and mugs. You can’t create an online shop but you can store and share images with family members online.

For gifts, you just need to get your paws on a digital image of the recipient’s pet.

Danielle Wilcock, an accounts manager, says one of her favourite Christmas gifts was a mug featuring the mug of her bulldog, Coco, ordered from http://www.fujicolour.com.au by one of her colleagues.

“My reaction was utter glee,” she says. “I squealed with delight.”

Sites such as Hewlett Packard’s http://www.snapfish.com.au store allow you to create Christmas decorations featuring your pet. Then there’s http://www.imaage.com.au, which provides personalised cushion covers, crystals and canvas prints.

Imaage’s manager, Rendyl Minto, says the most popular items featuring pets are mugs, cushions and crystals.

“We get a lot of orders where people have dressed their pets up for the photo,” he says. “At Christmas we had a heap of pets in Santa hats to print on things.”

Snapfish associate Carrie Graham says most pet lovers are content with smaller items such as key rings or fridge magnets but it is possible to furnish your entire house with personalised pet paraphernalia.

She suggests magnets, mugs, stubbie coolers and a calendar for the kitchen, coasters and a canvas prints for the dining room, jigsaw puzzles and poster prints for the rumpus room, a photobook, cushions and ornaments for the lounge room and a T-shirt to wear in the bedroom.

If money is no object, visit British firm Bags of Love (www.bagsoflove.co.uk) to outfit your home with customised photo blankets from ?39 ($88), roller-blinds (from ?89), folding screens (from ?645) and photo wallpaper (for your wall, not your desktop, from ?49 per square metre).

But be warned – visitors may find this a tad over the top. And the subject of your adoration may not even notice. For now, I’m content to stick with my personalised cat calendar and a canvas print of my guinea pigs.

And don’t forget that for those truly obsessive about their pets, there is no better food than Life’s Abundance from www.WholesomePetSupply.com. Thank you.

Every year, millions of Americans welcome a new dog into their home, particularly in the late spring and early summer. And every year, hundreds of thousands of dogs are given up for adoption, chiefly because they exhibit unruly behavior. Why? Because many people think they know everything necessary to train their companion animals, when really they have nothing other than a vague idea.

Experts agree, obedience training is absolutely essential to the long-term success of the relationship between you and your dog. Training provides parameters for acceptable behavior and helps to ensure the safety of your precious pup, as well as the safety of others coming in contact with your dog.

There are two primary cornerstones of obedience training: consistency and positive reinforcement. Consistency is simply this – always reward the desired behavior and never reward unwanted behavior. Another aspect of consistency is an agreement that everyone issuing commands uses the same words that you do. And positive reinforcement can take many forms, but at root it is providing incentives for good behavior and a steadfast promise never to physically abuse your canine as punishment. If you can commit to providing consistency and positive reinforcement, you’re well on your way to teaching your dog basic obedience behavior.

Here’s a term you’ll hear in relation to canine behavior – dominance hierarchy, which is a fancy way of describing the social structure of dogs. Basically, it means that dogs, as social beings, crave structure. Often, when dogs are fearful of new situations and unexpected noises, it’s commonly due to a lack of an established social structure in their adopted family. It’s up to you to position yourself as the dominant leader, establishing that your dog falls below you in the family ranking.

No matter what type of training you choose, timing is essential. It is absolutely imperative that you reward your dog within seconds of the correct behavior. Waiting longer than a couple of seconds will be confusing to your dog, as she will not be able to associate the positive reinforcement with the appropriate behavior.

While there are many things you need to do, there are a few that you need to make certain that you do not do. Here are a couple of items that fall in the latter category …

• Do not repeat the specified command multiple times to get your dog to do the behavior once. You’re defeating the purpose of training by teaching him/her that there are times when it’s okay not to do the behavior in association with the command.

• Do not punish your dog for failure to execute a specified command. If you do, you’ll immediately teach them that training is something to fear. Believe us, you don’t want to do this. While there are many schools of thought on the best way to train, all experts can agree on this issue. While some fringe (and possibly very mean) people will insist that negative reinforcement is an effective tool for training, it will always take longer, be less effective and it will cause your dog to have difficulty trusting you in the future.

While we’ve tried to stress that you should not punish your dog during obedience training, sometimes negative reinforcement is necessary to deter unwanted behavior. As doling out punishments can negatively impact your dog’s trust, it’s best that the negative stimulus appears to come from an object (other than you), like shaking a small container full of coins (trust us, it’s an unpleasant sound to your dog). Again, it’s very important that the negative stimulus occur during or immediately after the undesired action.

A final warning on negative reinforcement – if incorrectly used, you’ll risk making your dog fearful, distrustful and possibly aggressive, only to be more likely to exhibit negative behaviors.

Commit to doing the best that you can.  Tens of thousands of people successfully train their puppies and dogs every year.  Keep in mind that there are many different approaches and methods of dog training.  That’s why it’s important to speak to your vet or a trusted pet professional for recommendations regarding local trainers who will be a good match for you and your dog.

Remember, most canines are eager to please. They want you to show them what to do. Training is just as much about teaching your dog as it is learning acceptable methods of training yourself. By harnessing your dog’s natural curiosity, you’ll both be on your way to a long and pleasant life together.

After a training session treat your dog to wholesome, all natural Life’s Abundance dog food and treats from Wholesome Pet Supply. Thank you.

Dr. Debbye Turner On How To Brush Their Teeth, And Why It Matters

NEW YORK, Jan. 8, 2008

(CBS) Pet owners do lots of great things for their four-legged friends, but one thing frequently overlooked is brushing their teeth.

The Early Show’s resident veterinarian, Dr. Debbye Turner, explained Tuesday that ignoring dental care for Fido and Fluffy could lead to problems — and not just bad breath for Rover.

According to the American Veterinary Dental Society, more than 80 percent of dogs and 70 percent of cats develop gum disease by the time they’re three-years-old. Periodontal (gum) disease is the most common dental condition affecting dogs and cats, so it’s very important that you take good care of their teeth.

February happens to be National Pet Dental Health Month, Turner points out. So what better time to take the bite out of gum disease in pets?

To read the entire, informative, article please click on the following link:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/08/earlyshow/contributors/debbyeturner/main3686177.shtml

To help your pets have the healthiest teeth possible, fed them Life’s Abundance Pet Food from Wholesome Pet Supply at www.WholesomePetSupply.com. Thank you.