Over the years I have had many requests from pet owners and
several veterinarians for information on keeping their four-legged
patients and loved ones in good health.
Most pets are overfed and constipated, causing reabsorption of toxins
into the blood stream, thickened blood and poor circulation. This
makes the heart work harder and often results in congestive heart
failure. One symptom of this condition in dogs is coughing, indicating a
lack of oxygen getting to the heart.
SRC Hawthorn Berry Syrup for Pets - A dropperful of
non-alcoholic SRC Hawthorn Berry Syrup twice a day for small dogs
(larger dogs require double that and horses would need an ounce or two)
dilates the arteries, improves circulation, bringing more blood and
oxygen to the heart, actually allowing the heart to function with less
oxygen. For your convenience, a dropper is supplied with SRC Hawthorn
Berry Syrup. An added plus: no side effects and no danger of
over-dosing. Read pet testimonials.
Distilled Water is a must! It is the best blood thinner and hydrates the bowel for better elimination.
Prune Juice - A dropperful or two of prune juice is a good potassium source and is well known for keeping the bowel moving.
Vegetables added to your pet's food are beneficial:
asparagus and parsley are especially good raw materials for the heart.
Cabbage is good for the colon. Feed horses fresh hawthorn berries when
in season.
Digestive aids - Mix some of these in with your pet's food:
Cayenne pepper activates the system, thins the blood, and helps the colon and heart. Start out slow, obviously!
Digestive Enzymes - Pancreatic enzymes and mixtures are
available from any health food store and some pet stores. Older pets may
require their food to be blended in a blender or food processor to aid
digestion, due to loss of teeth to chew their food, another good reason
for using digestive enzymes.
Yogurt supplies needed intestinal bacteria and calcium.
Garlic is a blood thinner, natural antibiotic and
infection fighter. It's nickname is "Russian Penicillin." Add it raw
to pet's food (again, start slowly!). Added benefit: no fleas!
Non-toxic cleaners need to be used on your floors and to bathe your pets. We recommend Botanic Gold
Exercise - Just like people, pets need exercise to get
their circulation going. Take time to go for a walk with your
four-legged loved one and smell the roses!
Oral care is important for your dog’s overall health and longevity.
Apart from tooth problems, periodontal disease can also affect general
health. Dogs have a vast network of blood vessels in their gums, and
therefore bacteria are released into the bloodstream and effect major
organs. Start dental care early to prevent disease and get your dog used
to the toothbrush!
Brushing your dog’s teeth should be a fun activity for the both of
you. If you take things slowly at the beginning and give lots of praise,
you and your dog will start looking forward to your brushing sessions.
As I already mentioned, the first thing to remember is to have fun.
Be upbeat and take things slowly. Do not overly restrain your dog. Keep
sessions short and positive. Be sure to praise your dog throughout the
process.
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1. Vet check!
Have a veterinarian check your dog’s teeth before you start a
tooth-brushing program. If your pet has gum disease or damaged teeth,
the process will be painful and he will associate pain with tooth
brushing. He may even bite you.
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2. Get him used to…
Get your dog used to you looking into his mouth. After each time you do so, reward him with a treat or praise.
🐕
3. Buy a pet dental kit.
Including toothpaste and a toothbrush, at a pet store or from your
vet. Follow the kit’s instructions for use. Research alternatives, such
as a finger toothbrush, if your dog refuses to let you brush his teeth
with a toothbrush. Ask your veterinarian for suggestions.
🐕
4. Make him comfortable.
Place your dog on a comfortable surface while brushing his teeth.
🐕
5. Keep him in place.
In general, try to use minimal restraint on your dog while brushing,
especially if it’s a puppy. However, it may be easier to handle an
especially reluctant pet by wrapping him in a towel to keep him from
scratching or trying to escape.
🐕
6. Be gentle.
Brush your dog’s teeth with a gentle, massaging motion.
🐕
7. Reward!
Talk to your dog in a happy voice during the process and praise your
dog at the end. Again, by making it appear to be a game, you both will
have fun doing it.
🐕
Always aim for daily dental care for your dog, just as you aim for
daily dental care for yourself. The hardest thing about home dental care
for dogs is just getting started. Once you have done it for a while, it
just becomes part of your daily routine. If you cannot brush daily,
brushing every other day will remove the plaque before it has time to
mineralize. This will still have a positive effect on your dog’s oral
health.
I have developed a habit of brushing my dog’s teeth after I am done
brushing mine. I talk to my dog, through the procedure, praise him when
we are done, and then give him a treat to chew on. Now when he hears me
brushing my teeth, he comes into the bathroom wagging, and waits for his
turn.
There is always a good possibility you will spot a dog ear infection early on because dogs will physically display extreme symptoms of discomfort and pain. The two most common visible actions a dog does to communicate their suffering are repeatedly scratching at the ear area and shaking their heads vigorously. Other obvious indications of an ear infection is present is excessive discharge from the ear canal, a really bad smelling odor coming from the ear, redness and inflammation around the infected area.
Causes of dog ear problems can be linked to a number of things. Bacteria or yeast build up and parasites called ear mites are usually the prime suspects in causing an infection, but there are other lesser-known contributors to be aware of. Not drying a dogs ears thoroughly after they have been given a bath, allowing earwax to build up, the use of cotton tips, allergic reactions to a food or medicine, and inner ear growths can also be causes of the problem.
Once you have indentified your dog is most likely suffering from an infection in the ear you should make an appointment with your local veterinarian. Letting the condition go untreated can lead to far worse medical problems for your dog that may require surgery to the ear. There is no reason that a pet should have to deal with pain and suffering when wide ranges of treatments are readily available.
Besides following the treatment plan provided by your veterinarian there are home remedies you can safely use along with the medication prescribed to your dog. Using vinegar or acetic acid as a gentle cleaning solution is proven to reduce yeast build up. Applying a few drops of regular olive oil to the ear canal can help prevent the return of ear mites, or an organic herbal mixture including mineral oil prevents bacteria from developing and spreading within the ear cavity.
Treating a dog ear infection as soon as possible makes it easier to cure and makes for a happy and healthier pet. Finding a vet in your area to seek treatment is as simple as going online. Maintaining the health of your pet is the duty of every responsible dog owner.
A
highly stressed dog can be dangerous to approach or work with. It also
creates a difficult situation for your dog. Here are a few tips to calm
and de-stress your pooch. Taking a short walk with your dog where it can
act naturally and stop and sniff around. Dogs enjoy using their senses
to search and explore. Being together with other dogs to get acquainted,
or to take a walk, can also be relaxing for your pup.
Additionally mental stimulation is very important for your dog, in
addition to challenging your dog with training, you can also provide it
with a variety of chew toys, bones, and “food puzzles” — toys that they
have to move around to make food come out — such as the Kong Toy — can
be entertaining and relaxing for your dog.
Furthermore, stroking a dog’s ear is not just sensual for the dog,
but also has a calming effect. Take the whole flap of the ear between
your thumb and forefinger where it attaches to the head and stroke
gently down. Your pooch is sure to love it!
The Giving Pledge is a campaign to encourage the wealthiest people in the world to make a commitment to give most of their wealth to philanthropic causes. The campaign specifically focuses on billionaires and was made public in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. The Huffington Post reported in April 2012 that "81 billionaires committed to giving at least half of their fortunes to charity".
As of July 2013, 113 billionaireindividuals, couples and one family group have signed the pledge
The Giving Pledge is a commitment by the world's wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy.
The philanthropy's impact, already immense, will be magnified by Buffett's billions. By Carol J. Loomis, FORTUNE Magazine June 2006
The foundation works heavily through partners (nongovernmental organizations, usually) and has focused on big causes. Its original giving was directed at providing U.S. libraries free online access - and today more than 99% are hooked up.
The foundation then broadened its efforts to global health, on which it now spends around 60% of its funds. Much of that is beamed at what Bill Gates calls "the Big Three diseases": malaria, HIV/AIDS, and tuberculosis. The foundation is both pushing to discover a preventive AIDS vaccine and to deliver antiretrovirals to people already afflicted with the disease.
In other areas, spending is focused on making medical "leaps" - the discovery, say, of a chemical that would block malaria-transmitting mosquitoes from smelling humans.
The national drive, meanwhile, is riveted on improving high schools, which Bill Gates has called "obsolete."
The foundation and its partners have started 900 new schools and "redesigned" 700 others.
Remember the Buffett challenge to get billionaires to give away half of their wealth? The investment genius from Omaha along with that computer-oriented piker from Seattle, Bill Gates, now have 40 billionaires who have signed onto this campaign, with letters expressing their charitable intent posted at givingpledge.org.
Buffett and Gates started buttonholing their rich and famous (or not so famous) peers from the Forbes 400 and ended up calling 70 to get 40, though they don’t plan to stop. The list, however, seems heavily weighted to billionaires who have already established big foundations and seemed well on their way to pledging billions to philanthropic institutions that they controlled. Some of the names on the list are well known in foundation circles, though billionaire philanthropy need not end up buried in foundation endowments.
More than three dozen billionaires, including well-known philanthropists like David Rockefeller and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
of New York and less familiar big donors like Lorry I. Lokey, founder
of Business Wire, have promised at least half of their fortunes to
charity, joining a program that Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started in June to encourage other wealthy people to give.
Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world through her successful shapewear line. Now, she is also the first female to join Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge.
Ms Blakely, 42, worth $1billion according to Forbes, has committed to giving at least of half of her wealth to charity.
Ms Blakely, who owns 100per cent of her privately held company and recently topped a list of America's 50 Most Powerful Mothers, recalled to Forbes how after she appeared on the magazine's cover, she was invited to dine with Bill and Melinda Gates in Miami.
The duo proposed the Giving Pledge to her (current pledgers include Richard Branson, the founder of Virgin, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, and New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg), and she spent a few months mulling it over.
Deciding to join The Giving Pledge, she told CNN Money that she told her three-year-old son, Lazer, she was going to give away at least half of her money - and that she hoped one day he think she had done the right thing. 'Okay, Mommy,' he said, 'can we do a puzzle now?'
Warren E. Buffett distributed 17.5 million Class B
shares of Berkshire Hathaway on Monday to the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation, a gift valued at about $2 billion, based on Friday’s closing
price.
Huffington Post
|
By Kevin Short
Posted: 11/19/2013
It's not just the bulk toilet paper and $1.50 hot dog combos.
There's more going on here.
1. The company pays a living wage.
Costco's CEO and president, Craig Jelinek, has publicly endorsed
raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and he takes that
to heart. The company's starting pay is $11.50 per hour, and the
average employee wage is $21 per hour, not including overtime. Most
other big box retailers start their employees at minimum wage.
2. Workers get benefits.
About 88 percent of Costco
employees have company-sponsored health insurance, according to David
Sherwood, Costco's Director of Financial Planning and Investor
Relations. "I just think people need to make a living wage with health
benefits,” Jelinek told Bloomberg. “It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It’s really that simple.”
3. The CEO makes a reasonable salary.
Costco's CEO makes far less than most executives, with a total compensation package
of about $4.83 million in 2012. In contrast, Walmart CEO Mike Duke made
roughly $19.3 million during the same year. Walmart's CEO earns as much
as 796 average employees, according to CNN Money, compared to Costco's CEO making 48 times more than the company's median wage.
4. Costco helped its employees weather the recession.
When the economic crisis hit and other retailers laid off workers, Costco's CEO approved a $1.50-an-hour wage increase for many hourly employees, spread out over three years.
5. Costco doesn't kill Thanksgiving.
While many of its competitors are forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving Day, Costco will buck the trend and stay closed.
6. It also doesn’t waste money on expensive advertising.
The company doesn't advertise nor does it hire a public relations staff. Meanwhile, Walmart dropped $1.89 billion on ads in 2011.
7. Its prices aren't horrendously high.
Costco never marks up products by more than 15 percent, while most retailers commonly mark products up by more than 25 percent.
More than 70 percent of its warehouse managers began their careers working the register or the floor.
10. Costco's employees are loyal.
For employees that
have worked at the company for more than one year, the annual turnover
rate is below six percent, according to Sherwood. For executives, the
turnover rate is less than one percent.
According The Wall Street Journal, what you see is really what you get. Volvo says Van Damme does have one foot on each truck as the two vehicles slowly back up and get farther apart.
But Van Damme, known to fans as the "muscles from Brussels," wasn't in any real danger. The Journal writes that:
"Van Damme's feet [weren't] secured to the mirrors, video director Andreas Nilsson said, "but we had him rigged [with a wire] so that if he would fall off he wouldn't die, obviously."
The ad is designed to show off the trucks' Volvo Dynamic Steering.
The trucks go backwards, Volvo public relations manager Anders Vilhelmsson tells the Journal, because "we all know that going in reverse is a bit more difficult than going forward. ... We felt that would be the ultimate test."
The Internet is buzzing about a new online commercial that shows actor Jean-Claude Van Damme appearing to perform a split between two moving Volvo FM trucks. Volvo says the stunt really happened.
“The stunt is real and is performed in just one take,” said Anders
Vilhelmsson, public relations manager for the Volvo Trucks brand. “It’s a
daring stunt but we had full control. There was never any real danger
involved.”
Van Damme, 53, was hooked to safety lines that aren’t visible in the
film, and each foot is on a small platform that was built on the trucks’
side mirrors.
Van Damme’s feet aren’t secured to the mirrors, video director Andreas Nilsson
said, “but we had him rigged so that if he would fall off he wouldn’t
die obviously. We didn’t want to be responsible for killing the Muscles
from Brussels.”
The stunt, meant to advertise Volvo Trucks’ new dynamic steering
system, has drawn more than eight million views on YouTube since the
video was posted on Nov. 13.
It was filmed by Nilsson on a closed-off airstrip in Spain called
Ciudad Real, located just south of Madrid. Prior to filming, the
production team rehearsed the stunt for three days. The final version
had to be completed within just 15 minutes – from 8:05 a.m. to 8:20 a.m.
– when the sunlight was just right.
“The film you see is the first take. But obviously we had tons of
rehearsals,” Nilsson said. “The tension was really high. I saw a tough
stunt coordinator swell up after we nailed it. That might actually be
the nicest memory from the shoot.”
Nilsson said the drivers of the trucks played key roles. “What they
did is fantastic. I don’t know if you have tried to drive backwards with
a truck but it’s not the easiest thing,” he said. “And then [to] keep
it in total control when spreading apart is very, very hard.”
The trucks go backward in the video because “we all know that going
in reverse is a bit more difficult than going forward,” Vilhelmsson
said. “We felt that would be the ultimate test, to have the trucks go in
reverse with someone standing on the side mirrors performing a side
split. And we knew that if anyone would be able to do that, it would
have to be Jean-Claude Van Damme.”
Nilsson called the video an honest homage to Van Damme, “a pop
cultural icon that I have had in my life since I was a kid. The spots he
has been in before have looked down on him, in my opinion. I was
looking up, in celebration.”
The new dynamic steering system combines conventional hydraulic powered steering with an electric motor that is fitted to the truck’s steering gear. The electric motor receives 2000 signals per second from the truck’s on-board sensors, allowing for more precise steering, according to Vilhelmsson. He said the steering system offers a more relaxed and ergonomically designed experience for truck drivers.
The “Epic Split” video is part of a series produced by Volvo Trucks that features daring stunts meant to illustrate innovations in its vehicles. A previous video dubbed “The Ballerina Stunt” filmed two trucks speeding toward a tunnel, with a woman crossing a slack line between them before they hit the tunnel. That video also went viral, getting more than 7 million views.
When Volvo began planning the launch of five new trucks 12 months ago, the creative team adopted a strategy of producing YouTube films that would create attention, and inform and entertain audiences, Vilhelmsson said. That would pave the way for future advertising and sales campaigns in local markets.
With the Van Damme video, Volvo wanted to illustrate the new dynamic steering model in a spectacular way, and reach beyond traditional markets. “We need to target not only truck drivers, but future truck drivers. Young people who are facing a choice of a future career,” he said.
“We know the media landscape is changing,” he said. “We have different media consumption habits today than a couple years ago. So that is why we invest in this cost-efficient way of reaching out to millions of people online.”
Volvo Trucks will continue to release more stunt videos, but has no more planned with Jean-Claude Van Damme at this time.
A lot of auto ads run a disclaimer that the stunt was performed by
professionals and viewers shouldn't try this at home. You'd definitely
be wise to take that advice with regards to this ad Volvo Trucks
featuring action star Jean-Claude Van Damme.
The map you're used to
is more Western-focused and stretches out the size of continents near
the poles. AfricaandSouth Americaare actually way bigger. Here's a
more accurate representation of the world, according to the The
Gall-Peters Projection map, created in 1885.
You aren't that special! There are over 7 billion people on the
planet right now. Each and every one of them should be treated with
respect.
3. There are castles and even lighthouses that are less expensive than NYC apartments.
With New York City rent rising over an average $3,000 a month even in Brooklyn this year, it's becoming more and more appealing to perhaps move somewhere
else. If you're one of the lucky ones who has a bit of money to burn,
might as well spend it on a real-life castle or lighthouse, right?
The United States has only been around for a blip in history. Institutions like Bank of America aren't even 100 years old.
This doesn't necessarily discount their trustworthiness, but just make
sure to remember that not all pillars of authority are eternal.
5. 10 percent of the entire world population is still illiterate.
Unfortunately certain countries are also skewing the data upwards on this statistic. Nations such as Afghanistan only have a 28 percent literacy rate for the total population.
6. You thoroughly enjoy celebrating some pretty dark holidays.
Labor Day was created as a bandaid to coverup multiple massacres of American workers. Columbus Day is named after a brutal tyrant whose history is largely a fraud. Thanksgiving is a sham celebration of Pilgrims and Native Americans coming together.
7. A whole ecosystem lives in your belly button.
Scientists found 2,368 different species of bacteria living in belly buttons after swabbing the navels of just 60 people. In that study, 1,458
might have been entirely new to the scientific record. Aladdin could
have showed Jasmine a "whole new world" just by looking toward their
stomachs.
8. You can't see as many colors as a chicken. You'll also never see all the beautiful colors of a rainbow.
Everyday you are missing out on aspects of the universe simply
because our bodies cannot process their wonders. How can we be supreme
rulers of the world and have full domain over all other living beings
when chickens can see more colors than we can? We need to rethink our
place. Also rainbows are actually made up of more than 1 million colors, many of which we can't see either. We are missing out!
The Turritopsis nutricula can live forever by reverting back to its
early stage of life after becoming sexually mature. Although immortality
may not be a real possibility for humans just yet, it is good to know that the basic idea isn't just science fiction.
Almost an entire work week of just being stuck! Washingtonians have
it worst with an average of 67 hours a year, which is time they probably
wish they could have back.
11. Maybe you already know that our Sun is just one star out of 300 sextillion (3 trillion times 100 billion, or a 3 followed by 23 zeros) in our universe and you're probably like, "DON'T REMIND ME"...
...but did you know our starry home might just be the leftover debris of another universe that emerged from a four-dimensional black hole, and on top of that, there could be many more universes out there within other black holes?
In all fairness, there are obviously quite a few theories about the creation of our universe. We might even be living in a multiverse. Regardless, as renowned scientist Carl Sagan once put it, we are just living on a "Pale Blue Dot."
* West Wing - Why are we changing maps? From season 2 - episode 16
Leo sends grumbling staffers to meet with organizations who are not usually heard from at the White House. C.J.'s assignment is the Cartographers for Social Equality
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