Best Friends Animal Society has taken over an empty L.A. City shelter in Mission Hills on Brand Blvd. They will have a minimum of 100 animals (dogs and cats) available for adoption. The pets will be pulled from the L.A. City shelters too be put up for adoption at the Best Friends facility. Best Friends has volunteers on staff who will be working with the dogs teaching basic manners to make them more adoptable. The goal is to have each animal be in the center for 2 weeks or less, and to do 3000 adoptions in the first year. Opening day is January 28th so please come see the facility, meet the dogs and cats and hopefully take one home. Please spread the word!

There will also be a low cost spay/neuter clinic which is opening mid-February.

TRUE LIFE: I HAVE AN OUT OF CONTROL PET
Is your pet ruling your life? Is it hard to tell who’s at what end of the leash anymore? Have you tried anything and everything to control their behavior but nothing seems to work? Has your pet been a nut right from the start? Or have you spoiled him and are now seeing the repercussions?
Is your pet causing problems with your relationships with friends and loved ones? Are you considering giving him away for the sake of your sanity? Or is that thought unbearable to you?
If you appear to be between the ages of 15-28 and have answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, MTV wants to hear your story.
Please email us at pet@mtvn.com and include your name, number, location, a photo, and a brief explanation how your pet is controlling your life.

So here’s a new one. Nestle has come up with a commercial aimed at getting your dog’s attention using squeaks, pings and high pitched noises. Now I know that some dogs bark when they hear a doorbell on the t.v., and yes, some dogs may come running to the television or into the room when they hear a squeaky toy. But does that mean we are going to buy the food just because the commercial makes our dog do cute things? I sincerely hope the dog owning public is smarter than that.

The food you feed your dog should be decided on the ingredient list, and I mean the actual ingredients, not the real, whole vegetables and meat they show flowing down the screen during the commercial, because that is not what’s in that dog food. Just looking at one of the ingredient lists tells us that it is not as healthful as the pretty picture suggests. Three of the first 4 ingredients are corn and wheat. The only meat-type ingredient is a by-product. Corn is totally useless to dogs. It has a high sugar content and is cheap, so it’s used as a filler. It is also the cause of many allergies in our pets. Wheat also falls into that category. Since ingredients in pet food are listed by weight, it means you are feeding a non-meat based food to an animal that is mainly a carnivore.
Then sugar comes in higher on the list than any of the vegetables. Sugar is just as bad for our pets as it is for us. Then they add all those artificial colors to make it look good, to us, not our dogs. Yellow is not a color you should see in your pet’s food unless it is a fresh piece of squash you put in there yourself.
I know I’m being a bit cliche here, but you really are what you eat, and so is your pet. With the ingredients in most pet foods today it’s no wonder there is such a need for veterinary oncologists and dermatologists. We are slowly destroying our pet’s immune systems, cutting their lives short and adding to our veterinary costs. A three year old dog should get lymphoma, yet it happens all too often.
If you want to find out more about what actually goes into most pet foods read this article. It will change the way you see your pet’s food and hopefully make you a bit skeptical about what the food company says and what’s actually in the food.

Five pet store chains in 6 states have taken the Humane Society of the United States puppy friendly pledge not to sell puppies. As we know, most puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills. If you aren’t sure what a puppy mill is, or why they are bad, have a look at the article I wrote about them here on my blog.

One of the stores taking this pledge is right here in Los Angeles. It is Centinela Feed. They have numerous stores throughout the Los Angeles area. Centinela Feed carries just about everything you can imagine for your pets. They have a club you can join where you receive discounts on things you buy, as well as getting their emails announcing extra savings.

Please support the pet supply stores that take this pledge. It is so important for the puppies coming from puppy mills, and the adults dogs being bred under such horrendous conditions.