Questions- edible nylabone-PetCo staff GH

[Gina Heitz <brier@oregonsbest.com>]

At 12:18 PM 8/4/01 -0400, you wrote:
>Should I print this out and take with me to the store?  Ha, ha.  I did take
>my list of Gina's suggestions with me to Petsmart yesterday and one of the
>store staff was completely amazed I had a list.  She told me most people
>have no clue what they are buying and rely on Petsmart staff.  I did go
>wrong with the edible nylabone but we never covered that one.  Can always
>return stuff.

Karin,

I would not worry about returning the nylabone, Milka will enjoy it and it 
won't harm her, but they are not healthy snacks as they clam to be. She 
probably won't destroy it too quickly.  I may not have been to clear on 
this.  What I meant was that eating a full one of these in like 5 minutes 
as some dogs can and do I have found can cause GI upset, [the shits]...  I 
bought a bunch of those before I started feeding the raw diet thinking I 
was giving the dogs a healthy treat only to have like 9 dogs with the shits.

Also someone who had a dog from us was constantly complaining to me that 
their dog was having intermittent problems.  We banged our heads on the 
wall trying to figure out what the problem was with this dog.   I even went 
as far as to suggest to the owner that perhaps the dog had IBD, irritable 
bowl disease, and we were both worried sick about this, as IBD is sometimes 
suspect as a precursor to cancer and well this breed is predisposed to 
cancer as we all know...  Once the edible nylabone were removed from the 
dogs diet everything was fine and poops improved.  Carrots were substituted 
as the "healthy treat".  I was not told the dog was being given these 
edible nylabone...

On the staff at most pet stores:  No offence intended here but they are 
usually not very knowledgeable and they are not trained, except to market 
products...   Here is my NO NO list on treats: Karin fill in the blanks if 
you will from our conversation....

Rawhide, Pigs ears, Cow hoofs, edible nylabone or other brands of such.

My best recommendations: carrots, cookies in moderation, home baked liver 
bars, ice cubes, apples, just about any fruit or veggie in moderation...

G :-)