Cedar Dog here. We are making it happen once again at Pets Gone Green University (PGGU). This is the place to be! We teach sustainability. Do you know your pet’s impact on the earth and your impact on your pet’s health (and your own)? What are you gonna do about it, and who will you tell? We advocate action; learning and doing, practicing sustainable behaviors in your own backyard. Then telling others, your neighbors, friends and family.

On July 23 we’re holding another class; What’s in Your Pet’s Lunchbox, the Basics. It’s all about finding quality pet food and learning to read ingredient labels. I remind pet parents, “If this were easy our pets would be healthier.”

According to Banfield Pet Hospital “rates of diabetes in pets are rising faster than for humans.” (From 2006 to 2010, diabetes rates in U.S. dogs increased by over 30 percent, and by 16 percent in cats. In humans, the rate rose 10 percent over the same four year period) They rank the three top diseases in cats and dogs as diabetes, dental disease and flea infestations. All are preventable conditions.

Sorry to say, today’s pet food industry is going the way of “greed” and big biz. It is a $16-billion dollar industry. The trade is highly secretive. Simply put in Cedar Dog’s first book, Doggone Green, a Call to Action to Save Our Earth it is “an extension of the human food industry.” Pets should not be eating wastes. That is food waste from restaurants, supermarkets and slaughterhouses, throwaway product (better known as by-products) not fit for human consumption but sold to pet food manufactures.

It gets worse, “meat meal can include dead zoo animals, road kill to large for burial at the roadside and 4-D animals that include dead, diseased, dying and disabled and euthanized dogs and cats.” Author Ann Martin, an authority on commercial pet food blew the lid off the pet food industry in her book Food Pets Die For.

Cedar and brother Ernie Dog talk in their book, Doggone Clean & Green; Eco-Solutions for a Pet’s Daily Life about helping pet parents decide what is the best food for their pets. Their woof,  “We are what we eat, a high-quality diet can save hundreds of dollars on vet bills and keep us spry.” The two Chesapeake Bay retrievers explain “the pact every pet ought to have with their humans.” It is as follows:

• We depend on you to read food labels.
• You will need to know what is a quality ingredient.
• A diet of table scraps and “junk food” is out. If you won’t eat it, why should I?
  Bottom line, we are “gung-ho eaters of meat and poultry, feed us quality.”

• Eating veggies and fruit, like carrots and apples is great, remembering cat and dogs are not vegetarians. (Do watch out for poisonous plants & food, we list them in the book).
• Feed organic when possible.

Bottom line, if you feed a quality homemade diet that you prepare and trust your ingredient-source you probably don’t need this class although it would be nice for others to hear your experience.  I’ll bet you know some people who could use the course information? An infamous Cedarism, “Is it any wonder food literally adds or subtracts years, not only to the span of our lives, but to the quality of our lives.” So, while “crusin’ down the grocery aisle may be easy, it is not best for your furry ones.”

There is homework for this class July 23^rd and everyone will receive Cedar’s Paws-Up & Paws-Down food label ingredients list.

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Read about the last PGGU course in June with Distinguished Professor Kate Solisti