To our customers in Canada: Halo’s vet, Donna Spector, was on The Shopping Channel Monday, July 13th.

Check out this link to see what she was talking about.

Here’s an exciting guest blog announcement from Gary Nice, Founder and CEO of the National Canine Cancer Foundation. When Gary lost his loving companion to cancer – “my beautiful Bailey, a loving Golden Retriever” – he swore to himself that he “would dedicate the rest of my life, and resources, to finding a cure.” He immediately went from a successful, respected business leader, to an evangelist for eradicating canine cancer. We’re thrilled to be working with NCCF on this campaign.

By Gary D. Nice, Founder and CEO, National Canine Cancer Foundation

It’s an art, communicating in 140 characters. We’ve all been there, where you type out your tweet, getting the message across just right and it ends up being over the 140 character limit! Now there’s a choice to be made in the editing, stay true to proper grade school grammar or go with Twitter slang. It’s so tempting to change the “for” to 4, “to” to 2. And let’s not forget “our” to R.

Finally after a few minutes we have managed to fit the tweet into the 140 character limit and the message is complete and understood. All that work just to get a simple tweet out. Was it worth it?

Well, what if we made it worth it?

Have you ever dreamed of quitting your job via Twitter? How about popping the question within 140 characters? Just how creative have you gotten with your Tweets? What if, instead of just getting your message across you were able to Tweet for a good cause AND win a MacBook Pro?

The National Canine Cancer Foundation has made that possible! The NCCF has created a Tweet writing contest to challenge you to “Write the Perfect Tweet” while giving you a chance to win a prize. As part of our prizes, the NCCF is thrilled to have Halo, Purely for Pets as a sponsor of this contest. Halo shares our philosophy that real food with real ingredients is one of the best ways to help keep your dog healthy. There is a $250 Halo Gift Certificate, three $100 Halo Gift Certificates, and three $50 Halo Gift Certificates as part of our prizes.

The contest has several categories to challenge you to “Write the Perfect Tweet” in relationship to the subject. You pick the category you want to write and then submit it for a chance to win some great prizes and help fund canine Cancer research.

The categories are:

1. Write the Perfect Tweet for quitting your job.
2. Write the Perfect Tweet for raising money for canine Cancer.
3. Write the Perfect Tweet for a marriage proposal.
4. Write the Perfect Tweet for telling your kids there is no Santa.

You can enter as many “Perfect Tweets” as you want. The cost to enter a tweet in the contest is $5.00 for each time you submit a new tweet. The $5.00 goes to the National Canine Cancer Foundation to fund canine Cancer research. Many of the contest partners have also created a way to enter for free also!

Get creative and go to www.perfecttweet.com!

The National Canine Cancer Foundation is a nationwide, contribution funded, non-profit corporation dedicated to eliminating Cancer as a major health problem in dogs by funding grants for the scientific efforts of Cancer researchers who are working to save lives, find a cure, find better treatments, find more accurate, cost effective, diagnostic methods in dealing with Cancer, and diminishing dogs’ suffering from Cancer through research, education, advocacy, and service.

Find out more about the Foundation on www.wearethecure.org.

If you haven’t given your cat or dog a Liv-a-Little yet, maybe this short video might help convince you! (Trust us, your dog or cat won’t need convincing!!)

Anne Good’s Daily Dog Blog

The information recently released from the Environmental Working Group about the high levels of fluoride in dog food is concerning. Although there have never been “safe” levels of fluoride determined for dogs and cats, the levels in the dog food tested well exceeded the safe limit levels for humans. When you consider the combined fluoride exposure dogs are getting from their food and tap water, there may be real health concerns.

Follow these tips to avoid excess fluoride consumption in your pet:

1. Choose a natural high quality diet like Halo. Halo foods contain no bone meal or inferior by-products which were found to be the primary source of excess fluoride.

2. If your pet has food restrictions and their food cannot be changed (from one containing bone meal or inferior by-products), decrease the amount of tap water they drink. Tap water contains fluoride and eliminating this source of fluoride will be beneficial. Most forms of spring water and bottled water have less than 0.1ppm fluoride. You should call the company and ask how much fluoride is in their water to insure a low intake. Some water filters will remove fluoride and some will not—again a quick phone call to the company will give you this information. Distilled water is fluoride-free.

3. If you cook for your pet, avoid using Teflon-coated pans as they may increase the fluoride levels in the food.

4. Avoid using human toothpaste and oral rinse products that contain fluoride in pets. Dental health products designed for pets are fluoride-free to avoid dangerous levels.

Q: My cat has been pulling his fur out for the past 4 years. The first vet kept giving him cortisone shots that lasted maybe 6 weeks. I changed vets. This vet changed everything: food, litter, flea meds, everything. He also put him on Prednisolone. It worked for a couple of years but has stopped working. Last year this same thing happened and I was able to leave off the pred for a few weeks and that seemed to help.

In January of this year, he started back biting the hair off his stomach again. From January until late March he got a little worse every week. I took him into the vet and he gave him an allergy shot (cortisone). Four days later he was constipated and dehydrated. We almost lost him twice: in March and again at the first of May. I have since changed his food (from Royal Canin Duck and Green pea to Purina Naturals). When I would give him the Duck and Green Pea, he would throw it up every time. After his episode in May, I started him out slow with just canned food. I did not give him any hard food. I started his hard food last week. I wanted to get his stomach stable before graduating to hard food. He has done really well. Last week I also started putting the Halo Herbal Salve on his skin. Before I started putting the salve, he had his skin raw from licking and biting and scratching. He has bloodied his skin on his head and neck and his stomach. He looks absolutely terrible.

Last night I started putting Dream Coat in his food. I’ve started out slow with just 1/4 tsp. I will eventually work up to 1/2 tsp like it says on the bottle.

Do you think between the Dream Coat and the Herbal Salve that this will help his skin condition? He’s also still taking the Prednisolone. The cortisone shots are out of the question. It seems to me the cortisone was the reason for him becoming constipated and dehydrated twice after taking the shot. Each time there was four days in between.

The vet doesn’t know what to do except run up another bill. By the way, since March we have spent $1300 with this vet. Please help!

A: Hi Christy, thanks for your inquiry about our Dream Coat and Herbal Salve. There can be many things that cause skin irritations like what your cat is dealing with. These include flea allergies, food allergies, inhaled allergies–called atopy, and even some neurologic and behavioral problems. Given the severity of your cat’s problem and the non-responsiveness to therapies tried, I would recommend that you see a board-certified dermatologist. They can often pinpoint the problem and get you on the right regimen. You can visit www.acvd.org to locate a specialist in your area.

However, I certainly feel that your cat may benefit from both the Dream Coat and the Herbal Salve. While your cat has a rash or visibly crusty skin, the Herbal Salve will provide gentle relief and naturally help to ease the itchiness he is feeling. The Dream Coat is a blend of 6 virgin oils that provide critical fatty acids to keep skin supple, soft and non-inflamed. These fatty acids have proven beneficial in many cases of allergies in cats. Although they don’t target the underlying problem they help ease many of the symptoms. Barring any major food allergy, I also recommend the use of a natural diet (like Halo cat foods) that does not contain synthetic chemicals (such as dyes and preservatives), as many time these things can stimulate an allergic-type reaction.

Hope this helps.
Keep us posted.
Dr. Donna Spector