Since its beginnings as a company, Diamond Brand Pet Foods have claimed to sell premium-variety pet food. Yet, many owners contest that Diamond still carries many unhealthy by-product ingredients, such as corn and other by-product meals. Previous toxins have been found in the foods and posed dangers to a number of pets.[1]

The following brands are contaminated:

• Kirkland Signature and Kirkland Nature’s Domain
• Diamond
• Diamond Naturals
• Professional
• Premium Edge
• 4Health foods
• Taste of the Wild
• Apex
• Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul
• Country Value
• Canidae

Know What’s in Your Pet Food

The contamination may have occurred due to improper cleaning of the facilities, which begs the question: As pet owners, how do we know we can trust the pet food we buy? Even some of the higher-end organic pet foods have had problems with contamination.

1. Educate yourself. It’s good to know the difference between by-product meals and all-natural ingredients.
2. Read the labels. The ingredients make a lot of difference. You don’t have to pay $100 a bag for high-quality pet food. Labels like Blue Buffalo, Natures Variety, BG, and other quality brands offer an alternative to mass commercial pet foods that use a lot of by-products.
3. Watch the news. Go to alerts.google.com and set up a pet food recall notification. Whenever there’s a pet food issue, the news will automatically hit your inbox. You won’t have to wait until your animals are sick to know what’s going on.
4. Find a Vet you can trust. It’s important to have a good relationship with the person who’s medically treating your animals. Rely on internet reviews, ask around, and talk with friends when it comes to selecting a vet. If you already have a vet you aren’t sure about, it’s totally okay to change.
5. Be a Detective. Many veterinarians out there have missed the signs of salmonella poisoning due to the improperly processed dog food. While your vet’s diagnosis is extremely important, and you should rely on his or her medical training to treat your pet, it’s also good to keep an eye on changes in your pet’s feeding habits and overall health. Get a second opinion if you need to.

Keep in mind that Diamond is still saying there have been no “known” cases of dogs poisoned with salmonella – but social media and news stories prove that many customers are coming forward with poisoned animals and even sick owners.[2]

If your dog is sick after ingesting contaminated food, don’t hesitate to get treatment asap.

Why Are Honey Bees Important?

1. They pollinate crops. Farmers can expect their yield will be increased by the pollination of bees. Crop enhancement products that are placed on plants aren’t used to increase crop yield – they’re used to maintain the quality of the product. Honeybees are directly responsible for yield due to pollination. In other words, they help spread crops and make them grow faster.[1]
2. Honey. It’s delicious. It’s antibacterial and has moisturizing properties. You know already, because we sell it in an awesome bath bar.
3. Honey bee activity in gardens keeps your flowers growing and keeps them pretty. There’s no arguing that.[2]

Don’t get us wrong – the bees aren’t going to die at once. There are a few problems, but one of them is called CCD, otherwise known as Colony Collapse Disorder.

More About CCD

For a while, scientists thought CCD might be linked to one pathogen.[3] It turns out that several factors can contribute to CCD, including bug diseases that honeybees catch, parasite activity within hives, beekeeper migration techniques – and wait for it – pesticide.

Wikipedia tells us, that pesticide  “neonicotinoids such as clothianidin and imidacloprid”[4] are toxic culprits that cause problems for honey bees. Other factors may include radiation from cell phones and mobile devices, as well as genetically modified crops that use pesticides. There’s a shocker.

You can’t expect that one person will single-handedly stop the disappearance of honey bees, but you can do two things to help. The first is educate yourself on issues like CCD, and keep up with the latest scientific news that explains why it’s happening.

The second thing you can do is begin using toxic-free, harm-free pesticides in your home and garden. Some suggestions from our stock include Exodust Organic Cedar Shavings for outdoor beds and garden.  The Ecotreat Line will keep away fleas, ticks, mites, and more in your lawn or garden.

Just one simple decision can change a habit, and if enough people change a bad habit, maybe we can say goodbye to toxic pesticides!

If you have questions about how to make your lawn and garden pesticide free, we’d love to hear!

Yeah, seriously. It’s gross and scary, but Wondercide can help you avoid it like the plague.

Bed bugs are spreading so widely that folks even come home from five star hotels with infestations. They’ll make their way through every apartment in an apartment complex if you let them. They clothing-hop, bedding-hop, and can be a very unwelcome surprise if you stay at a hotel for a few days.

So, how do you deal with bedbugs?

Look for bed bugs

They’re not easy to find – these little guys are teensy tiny, and their excrement, their skin shells and pieces from their eggs are the easiest signs. You can look for these discarded signs of bed bug life by lifting up a hotel mattress and checking around crevices and cracks. Because bed bugs can hide in furniture, you might also want to take a look under peeled wallpaper, picture frames, and under cushions in hotel room chairs and sofas.

One telltale sign of bedbugs are the small, pin-sized bites they leave behind. They look like a little raised rash on your skin, and are commonly found on the arms, legs, or in some cases the torso.

Fight bed bugs

This is the part that stinks. Many experts recommend a light odor pesticide home spray – but since you’re here, you probably know how dangerous that can be to your family and pets.

To fight bed bugs naturally, try sealing your mattress in an airtight plastic cover for a little while. Bugs won’t be able to breathe through or escape the plastic, so they’ll suffocate over a period of time.

Steam cleaning and temperature can also help you. Exposing furniture to freezing temperatures for a prolonged period of time (2-3 weeks) can help kill an infestation. This could work if you have an outdoor garage and are willing to live without your furniture for a while. Steam cleaning all surfaces in your home and thoroughly vacuuming with a pro vacuum can help get rid of eggs and the bugs themselves.

This is how people have to do it WITHOUT Wondercide. WITH Wondercide, none of this is necessary. This is what you simply do instead:

Bedbug Treatments: Spray and remove all bedding materials (including sheets, pillows, blankets, and comforters). Wash in hot water and dry on high heat. Treat mattresses and box springs; especially around tufts, folds, seams and edges. Treat the top mattress, remove to floor and treat the underside. Treat box springs, remove to floor and treat the inside. Treat cracks, joints, interior and underside of bed framework. Treat furniture (including cushions and cushion well), baseboards, moldings, floors, and all cracks and crevices in the room. Let spray dry before putting bedding materials back on. Repeat treatment as necessary in all areas of the home.

Application Rates: 1 gallon per 1500 square feet

Preventative measures

It’s also helpful to fight bed bugs before they even make it into your home, or fight future infestations. Caulk loose areas and crevices in your home where bugs might enter – particularly if you live in an apartment home where infestations are a known issue.

Wondercide Biodefense is an outstanding bed bug treatment that can be used anywhere in the home.  We also offer Biter Fighter, a travel size personal insect repellent that you can take with you to hotel rooms for spraying cracks and crevices, beds, and even yourself!. You can protect your luggage before, during, or after your trip with either BioDefense or Bighter Fighter. Both bed bug products are safe, effective, toxin-free, and non-staining.

When a big scary word like “Chlorpyrifos” is in the news, we often look the other way before we even read the rest of the headline – even though we know that the government allows us to put substances on our food and pets that aren’t exactly always safe. Whether the motivation is financial, or that the benefits to the public outweigh the risks, doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that pesticides like these are all over the stuff we use.

The EPA restricted Chlorpyrifos to agricultural use only, as the chemical was found to be ‘unfit’ for residential use.[1] Wikipedia tells us that Chlorpyrifos is most commonly found on, “cotton, corn, almonds, and fruit trees including oranges and apples.”[2]

Overseas in places like Taiwain, Chlorpyrifos is still used to bomb houses for flea and bed bug infestations. The EPA claims that trace amounts of Chlorpyrifos found in drinking water or on produce isn’t harmful, and that direct respiratory or topical exposure of the pesticide will cause respiratory or neurological problems.[3]

Regardless, there are a few steps you can follow to ensure that pesticides in any form don’t affect you.

1. Be careful on the golf course.

Though Chlorpyrifos is no longer legal for residential use, it may still be sprayed at places like golf courses where humans commonly hang out. If you spend some time on the course, make sure to wash your clothes and take a shower when you get home. Most folks do this anyway after a long day on the course, but the sooner you do it when you get home, the better.

You might also throw golf clothes into the hamper that rub up against other clothes. If you or your family members have a tendency to grab half-dirty clothes out of the hamper, make sure to separate your golf clothes from other clothes in your hamper.

1. Use a water filter

It’s easy to forego the water filter when it’s empty, and you just want a quick drink – but don’t! Aside from trace amounts of Chlorpyrifos, there’s all kinds of other stuff in the water that could be harmful, especially as it collects in your body over time.

1. Wash products you buy

Whether it’s rinsing off the fruit with a fruit wash or soap and water, or laundering new clothing, make sure to rinse off anything new you buy before using it.

Organic produce and hand-made clothing aren’t a possibility for everyone due to cost and availability – but fruit you buy at a larger supermarket or discount store can be rinsed off to get rid of some of the irritants and pesticides in our food and clothing.

Biodefense is a great way to safely eliminate pests from your home and property without pesticides. A little soap and water and biodefense can go a long way!

Dr. Will Falconer,Certified Veterinary Homeopath, Alternatives for Animal Health in Austin, TX responds:

A great question, Jolene. To understand the answer, we have to consider what happens in the female dog’s body at the time of spay. The uterus and both ovaries are removed, under general anesthesia. What that does, in effect, is to plunge the bitch into “instant menopause.” Estrogen, progesterone, prolactin, and growth hormone are all produced in the ovaries, and hormones, by definition, are chemicals produced in a gland that affect the entire animal (or person). So, these innate chemicals affect lots of physiological processes, not the least of which is growth.

Shop Natural Pet Supplies Safe for Puppies
So, when to spay? I like the bitches in my practice to wait until 3 months after they’ve gone through their first heat. That gives the young females a chance to grow with all their hormones intact, and get to full maturity before we “delete” their hormone factories, the ovaries. The timing of the first heat varies, but in general, the smaller breeds will come into estrus (heat) sooner, and the big breeds later, in terms of months of age. You could see a toy breed come into first estrus as early as 6-7 months, and a giant breed as late as 14-16 months.

But here’s the very big caveat in what I’ve just said about when to spay. You have to be responsible to prevent pregnancy in this first heat! The world is full of pups without homes, and thousands face euthanasia on a monthly, if not daily basis. Heat lasts for 3 weeks, during which there will be some bleeding and your young female will be “calling” all the intact males in the vicinity to her with her pheromones. So, prevention means, at a minimum, leashing whenever outside, no roaming allowed, and hygiene may require some doggy diapers, if the flow is profuse.

If you can’t say with surety that you can prevent pregnancy during that first heat, you’d want to spay beforehand, but try to get as much growth finished as possible before you head to the vet. And it’s a very bad idea to spay while in estrus or heat, though it happens a lot. Imagine the huge surge of hormones that comes with estrus, and THEN you suddenly remove the hormone factory — it’s much more of a shock than if it’s done in anestrus, the period before or between estrus times. That’s part of the reason I like to wait 3 months after that first heat, too. We let the hormones come back to quiet, the uterus to fully settle back into a non-engorged state, and then do the surgery. The next heat will be coming in 6 months, so you’ve got some leeway.

To learn more about holistic vet care and homeopathic vet care, please visit http://alt4animals.com