The Next Big Thing

Think about the cool new products that have taken the retail market by storm. Most of them have one thing in common: They were started by consumers just like you and me who saw a need and stepped in to develop a product to meet that need. They took a risk, they worked diligently on a solution, they tirelessly marketed the final product, and soon, momentum increased.

Just ask Marie Moody, founder of Stella & Chewy’s, or Pasha Cook, founder of All-Natural Pet Delivery, or Tabitha Washington, inventor of the Treatstik. These people and others have taken a rock-star idea and made it happen. And with today’s technology, it’s easier than ever before.

Websites like indiegogo.com allow people with great ideas to get funding for them. Sean Kelly, founder of Redogulous Labs, has a very cool idea for a dog collar that uses wireless technology (and a bunch of other cutting edge tech) to let your dog communicate with you during the day via your smartphone. You can track how long your dog sleeps (or barks at the window) while you’re at work, how much he chases the cat, how many calories he burns on his daily walks with you, and much more.

Love the idea? Contribute your feedback and — more important — your dollars here. Even $5 can help a great idea get off the ground.

Got a great idea of your own? Get started today, and remember, necessity is the mother of invention (and financing is the father)! If you like, tell us an idea that you think would make a great  product for dogs.

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Yogurt, lasagne, meatloaf: If it’s not one thing, it’s another

(Cross-posted from my personal blog at GoodFaithRanch.com)

A few weeks ago my 14-year-old Sheltie, Drew, started to increase his drinking and decrease his eating. Shortly after, my veterinarians confirmed my sad suspicion: My dog’s kidneys were shutting down.

As deaths go, kidney failure isn’t a bad one. A couple years ago my father faced the choice of dying of kidney failure or liver cancer, and after being completely informed about them both, he chose the former and refused dialysis. He passed peacefully at home a few days later, and I’m still in awe of his brave decision to choose the time, place and manner of his demise.

Of course, that’s what many of us do with our companion animals, and I’ve seen enough people bungle the decision to know how difficult it is. Over the years I’ve made the decision for all of my own animals and a few belonging to friends and family. I’ve come to believe that I won’t personally make a Hail Mary pass for myself or anyone else, animals included, and that I would rather help an animal to the other side a week early than a minute too late.

That said, I truly believe in hospice. For people and for pets.

I recently wrote for Vetstreet about the hospice movement in veterinary medicine, focusing on Nancy Hurley, a woman who had cared for her own 14-year-old Sheltie for months after a diagnosis of cancer in the dog. She and her husband had to have Savannah euthanized on the day Drew entered a state of hospice, a situation which I found incredibly powerful, as if Savannah’s fight had moved across the country to my own dog.

Hospice is often about managing pain, and I’m glad that I’m not having to do that with Drew. I went through it with my retriever Heather a couple years ago, and it wasn’t easy for either of us. Like Savannah, Heather had cancer, and like Savannah, I had to let Heather go when we couldn’t control the pain any more.

For Drew, hospice is considerably less stressful. Every morning he gets 500 ml of IV fluids, delivered from a bag hung from my dining-room chandelier through a needle to a spot under the skin and over his shoulder blades (top picture, but you have to squint a little to see the clear IV bag). Drew usually falls asleep on a towel on the table while getting his fluids, a process which, thanks to a nifty product called a pressure infuser, takes just a few minutes. A couple weeks after starting with daily fluids, Drew’s kidney values are normal. It won’t last, I’m told, but it was very good news indeed to get last week.

While Drewbie doesn’t mind the fluids at all, we are having one hospice difficulty: Getting him to eat. Pets (and people, for that matter) with end-stage kidney disease typically don’t have an appetite, and not eating can hasten their deaths — rather quickly, I’m told.

Drew is on a prescription appetite stimulant, but it doesn’t seem to help much. He is also getting a little medicinal marijuana (legal here in California), which appears to help with nausea but not with appetite, at least for Drew.

Typically, he’ll eat a little of something really yummy for a couple of days, then stop. Rare roast beef, deli turkey, yogurt with peach slices, beef lasagne, pasta with beef balls, cheese, baby food, apple slices with peanut butter … I’ve been rotating through them all. I’m afraid the other dogs and I will put on some weight snarfing down the leftovers when Drew walks away from something he ate happily the day before.

Friday night, my housemate (Ed Murrieta, who’s a writer and a trained chef) made him a special meatloaf, after Drew showed enthusiasm for store-bought meatloaf from the Whole Foods takeaway counter. That’s a picture of it. It’s made from ground turkey, Honest Kitchen‘s Embark dehydrated raw food and Nuzzles treats, eggs, and my friend Jill Gibbs’ JillCookies, chopped fresh tomatoes, grated apple, and cheese.

Today, Ed’s experimenting with some sort of baked liver puree.

So far, so good …

View the original article here

Yogurt, lasagne, meatloaf: If it’s not one thing, it’s another

(Cross-posted from my personal blog at GoodFaithRanch.com)

A few weeks ago my 14-year-old Sheltie, Drew, started to increase his drinking and decrease his eating. Shortly after, my veterinarians confirmed my sad suspicion: My dog’s kidneys were shutting down.

As deaths go, kidney failure isn’t a bad one. A couple years ago my father faced the choice of dying of kidney failure or liver cancer, and after being completely informed about them both, he chose the former and refused dialysis. He passed peacefully at home a few days later, and I’m still in awe of his brave decision to choose the time, place and manner of his demise.

Of course, that’s what many of us do with our companion animals, and I’ve seen enough people bungle the decision to know how difficult it is. Over the years I’ve made the decision for all of my own animals and a few belonging to friends and family. I’ve come to believe that I won’t personally make a Hail Mary pass for myself or anyone else, animals included, and that I would rather help an animal to the other side a week early than a minute too late.

That said, I truly believe in hospice. For people and for pets.

I recently wrote for Vetstreet about the hospice movement in veterinary medicine, focusing on Nancy Hurley, a woman who had cared for her own 14-year-old Sheltie for months after a diagnosis of cancer in the dog. She and her husband had to have Savannah euthanized on the day Drew entered a state of hospice, a situation which I found incredibly powerful, as if Savannah’s fight had moved across the country to my own dog.

Hospice is often about managing pain, and I’m glad that I’m not having to do that with Drew. I went through it with my retriever Heather a couple years ago, and it wasn’t easy for either of us. Like Savannah, Heather had cancer, and like Savannah, I had to let Heather go when we couldn’t control the pain any more.

For Drew, hospice is considerably less stressful. Every morning he gets 500 ml of IV fluids, delivered from a bag hung from my dining-room chandelier through a needle to a spot under the skin and over his shoulder blades (top picture, but you have to squint a little to see the clear IV bag). Drew usually falls asleep on a towel on the table while getting his fluids, a process which, thanks to a nifty product called a pressure infuser, takes just a few minutes. A couple weeks after starting with daily fluids, Drew’s kidney values are normal. It won’t last, I’m told, but it was very good news indeed to get last week.

While Drewbie doesn’t mind the fluids at all, we are having one hospice difficulty: Getting him to eat. Pets (and people, for that matter) with end-stage kidney disease typically don’t have an appetite, and not eating can hasten their deaths — rather quickly, I’m told.

Drew is on a prescription appetite stimulant, but it doesn’t seem to help much. He is also getting a little medicinal marijuana (legal here in California), which appears to help with nausea but not with appetite, at least for Drew.

Typically, he’ll eat a little of something really yummy for a couple of days, then stop. Rare roast beef, deli turkey, yogurt with peach slices, beef lasagne, pasta with beef balls, cheese, baby food, apple slices with peanut butter … I’ve been rotating through them all. I’m afraid the other dogs and I will put on some weight snarfing down the leftovers when Drew walks away from something he ate happily the day before.

Friday night, my housemate (Ed Murrieta, who’s a writer and a trained chef) made him a special meatloaf, after Drew showed enthusiasm for store-bought meatloaf from the Whole Foods takeaway counter. That’s a picture of it. It’s made from ground turkey, Honest Kitchen‘s Embark dehydrated raw food and Nuzzles treats, eggs, and my friend Jill Gibbs’ JillCookies, chopped fresh tomatoes, grated apple, and cheese.

Today, Ed’s experimenting with some sort of baked liver puree.

So far, so good …

View the original article here

Rocco’s special, and that’s a good thing

We have two dogs in our household — Rocco and Nyse.  Nyse is a 13 year-old pit bull, and not the main subject of this entry. She was somehow named after the New York Stock Exchange in the cloudy and long-forgotten past. She was my wife’s dog long before we were together and every time I ask my wife about the origin of her name, I just hear a series of low bleeps and bloops with the words ‘brother’, ‘hoodlum’ and ‘New York Stock Exchange’ mixed in, sort of like how the adults used to talk in the Peanuts holiday TV specials.

This regularly made my heart rate double. Oh, old TV, how do I love thee!

She is the smart one of the pair and makes sure that the household is in order and the trains run on time.  Her dreams consist of tax forms, stopwatches and orderly rows of alphabetized files.

Rocco is a 5-year-old Lab/Rott mix with the intellectual capabilities of a brick of Velveeta and a heart of purest gold. He is minus a leg from a disagreement with a Buick, but gets around well enough to knock every thing in the house over at least once daily.

The flowers may have a slight edge, intellectually.

When he dreams, I am sure it is of lame and slow rabbits happily cavorting about in an Alpo landscape as unicorns frolic in avalanches of marshmallow fluff and bacon clouds drift slowly by.

We are very similar in that respect.

He recently completed the certification process for Therapy Dogs International, and is now a card-carrying and tag-wearing certified therapy dog. He can now go spread his particular brand of sloppy, dumb-happy love to sick and infirm two- (or less) legged people.  One of the first things we plan on having him do is have kids read to him.

He thought it might be edible at first.

There are lots of kids who freeze up when they have to read something to their peers or an adult – seems they have an episode of the panics, and are afraid of being judged. A dog, particularly one who is as agreeable as Rocco, presents less of a threat, so their nascent reading skills can blossom like a Bloomin’ Onion (only slightly less delicious).

Hospitals and retirement homes will probably round out the itinerary after he masters the art of listening to kids read. We are really looking forward to spreading his gift of (slightly dimwitted) love with those in need.

Who knows — maybe he will learn to read.

If any of you have experiences with therapy dogs, either on the giving end or the receiving end, please feel free to share them here.

View the original article here