General Pet is your source for advice and information for a happy and healthy pet.
Author: Wendy Steele Article source: http://www.articlealley.com/. Used with author's permission.
For many of us, we consider our pets to be true family members. We take them on vacations, they eat with us and they sleep with us. They provide solace in our fast paced lives and they are forever loyal. We love them and they love us!
Unwittingly we maybe killing them slowly because of the products we use on them!
With the best of intentions, we buy our pets toys, we give them baths in finest people shampoos, we condition their skin with the best bath products and we wash their bedding in a detergent that claims to be all-natural. We think nothing of buying an exotic pet shampoo that smells wonderful to us, yet we don't read the label to find out what's in it! We wrongly assume that what is good for us is good for our pets. Worse, we assume that the regulations that guide consumer products apply to our pet products. They do not!
Here is our story and what we have learned after an experience with our dog. It is the story of how he survived a day and night of suffering after being groomed and bathed. His trial and distress lead to the creation of our pet care products. Said, this is not an article about our products but an advocacy to potentially save all of our pet's lives through knowledge and awareness.
So, here is our story. We have a 12-year old Bichon named Disney (aka Diz) who joyfully acts more like a 6-year old. He is full of energy and life. We attribute this youthfulness to what he eats, regular exercise, his adventures traveling America with us on our motor coach and his 2- year old companion, Isabel the rescued cat!
We were in Florida last winter test marketing our people products in Key West. On the way back, we stopped to visit friends on the east coast of mid-state Florida. We were staying in a beautiful motor coach resort where Diz got many walks around the complex and opportunities to interact with other people and dogs. It was warm, he was a bit shaggy and we planned to stay for a while, so we took him to a local groomer that he has visited on previous trips. When we picked him up, he looked great. He was as white as we ever saw him and he smelled like the perfume counter at Nordstrom.
After his walk and dinner, we settled in for a quiet evening listening to music. It was then we noticed him chewing and literally pulling out his fur. In a matter of moments, his skin was red and bleeding. He scratched uncontrollably. We did not know what was causing all of this, but we were alarmed and knew he was in extreme discomfort. We took fresh water compresses and rubbed him through the night. Neither Disney, nor any of us got sleep that night.
The next morning, poor Diz was no better and it was time for the call to the Vet. When you travel like us, finding a Veterinarian that will see you quickly is difficult at best. Often Vets don't like to see pets that are seeing other Vet's. Even if they are 900 miles away.
We knew exactly what we had to do, because we have experienced this sort of thing with Diz before. Even when we lived in Southern California, we had to take Diz in for skin issues and resultant cortisone shots. It was not a frequent event, but we never recognized the pattern of what was happening to him.
Fortunately, we found a Vet very near where we were staying and best of all were seen right away. The Vet examined our dog and turned to ask us a few questions. They were actually strange questions that we had not experienced from a Vet before. Usually, we go in, they look at his skin, he gets a cortisone shot and that is it. This time, the Vet wanted to know what we fed him, his daily routine and a lot of really good questions about the grooming that Disney had just experienced. This time the Vet gave us two prescriptions! The first was, yet another, cortisone shot for Diz and the second was a little surprising.
It turned out that this particular Vet was a holistic practitioner. He only believed in giving cortisone shots in extreme cases of distress. To get to the bottom of this, he sent us back to the groomer to find out what had been used on our dog.
We got Diz back to the coach and the poor little guy was so tired that he slept the rest of the day and throughout the night. While he was cool and quiet, we hauled to the groomer and politely asked what they used on him in his grooming experience. First they used a commercial pet shampoo that we knew about and had used regularly on him. It was one of those basic dog shampoos. They next applied a "Bluing" shampoo that whitens Bichon fur. Lastly, was a pet fragrance to make him smell good to us. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until we began our research.
What we learned was that the pet shampoo, whitening agent and even the fragrance was full of a chemical known as Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLS). They were also chock full of parabens, petrolatums and phthalates. Interestingly, our research carried us, not to the pet industry but to the National Institutes of Health. There we were shocked to learn that we had almost killed Disney. Worse, we finally connected the dots that there was a pattern to the cortisone shots. It was grooming and his baths.
Our NIH research noted whitepaper after paper talking about how SLS was a known skin irritant. How it was used in 98+% of all liquid shampoos, bath gels, pet shampoos and even in engine degreasers. One paper noted that an exposure of 17% or more of SLS could prove lethal to pets. The Internet is a wonderful thing and in this case proved to be a very quick lesson. At that point, it was enough and we believed we now knew what Diz's problem had been. Now that we knew the cause, we could work on the solution.
The next day we re-bathed Diz in our Island Rx bath soap. It was the soap that I developed for Wendy after her post-Melanoma skin disorders. We knew all the ingredients, it is chemical-free and therapeutic. He responded immediately and we continued on our trip without any more skin events.
Before I tell you what we learned, I want to give you some more background on Diz and his skin experiences.
Since he was a puppy growing up in San Diego, he has always had skin problems. Flea bites, itching, hot spots, rashes and the cyclical fur pulling. Over the years, he has been groomed by the finest groomers, he had been prescribed special shampoos from the Vet and on occasion he was treated by a pet dermatologist. His diet consisted of high Omega-3's and Omega-6's. We used prescribed conditioners and products to no avail. When we moved east, nothing changed for him. We were not smart enough to recognize the pattern that tied incident to bath.
Upon return home, I dove into research about what was in pet products and why they affected Disney. Remember the magical 17% SLS content that NIH said could prove fatal to pets? What I found shocked me first and then I grew very angry. The shampoo the groomer used was 30% SLS. The whitening coat shampoo was 38% SLS! It seemed that we have been killing him with kindness. What we thought were good products were potentially lethal. Further, the personal care products we used on occasion were better, but in some cases they exceeded the magic 17% SLS.
During our test of the Keys Soap product line, we gave away hundreds of bottles to people asking for their feedback. We wanted to know how our products worked and what effect it had on people's skin. To our surprise, as we started to receive feedback, a great number of reports were of how people had used Island Rx on their pets.
So we had Disney's story. We had the story of Velvet a black lab who had seizures after her baths that stopped when her owner used Island Rx. The story of the two greyhound rescue dogs whose hot spots, scabs and rashes disappeared after using Island Rx caused us to pause and think. The many other stories just reinforced what we had learned ourselves--that the chemicals in pet products were not good and maybe causing the problem!
What was good for Disney, Velvet the Lab and the greyhounds inspired us to continue our research and focus on developing our products for animal pet care.
As our research continued, we quickly learned that Island Rx was a good product for pets, but it was still not right for two very important reasons. First, a dog's skin has a higher alkalinity than people. Second, the therapeutic ingredients in Island Rx were great for pet skin and there were natural anti-fungal, antiseptic and soothing ingredients that would have a remarkable affect on pet skin.
So Muttineer was developed from Island Rx. All of the same ingredients with the addition of Neem oil and made with a higher ph level to match the pets' skin.
Ironically, our Muttineer Pet Shampoo is sold by high end holistic pet stores and by people dermatologists. It seems that we also ask our dermatologists about our pets' skin conditions, because we care.
So, here is what we know. According to Pet Age magazine, the number #2 reason we take our dogs to a Vet is skin disorders. The number #1 reason for Vet visits is ear problems.
Here is what we think! We believe that over 50% of all pet skin disorders are caused by chemicals in the products we use on them. Over 50%! We also believe that a high percentage of ear problems (#1) are also caused be chemicals in products used on our pets. We also believe that both of these conditions are dosed daily onto our pets by their bedding which we wash in "all-natural" hypoallergenic detergents that just happen to contain 30+% of SLS or one of its cousins Sodium Lauryl Sulfate or Ammonium Lauryl Sulfate.
We also know this! Disney has not had one more skin issue since we stopped using any SLS on him. That has now been well over a year!
What can you do about it? Go chemical-free for your pets! While you are at it, you may want to read those labels for products you use on yourself. It could shock you!
Want a further dose of reality, checkout your products to see how good or bad they are at the Environmental Working Group (EWG). Their Skin Deep report rates many of the everyday products we use on ourselves for their toxicity. It is shocking that many of the baby products that we use, with the best of intentions, on our pets are also the worst offenders. You can go to EWG's website at http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep2/
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