melissa

By Kong Company Staff

While holiday celebrations will likely be scaled down this year, chances are your clients will still be planning to have special meals with the ones they love—including their pets. Share these tips for ensuring that everyone at—or under—the table safely enjoys their time together.

 Prevent Begging at the Table or in the Kitchen

Think about how the mouthwatering aromas of holiday foods can draw you straight to the kitchen. Now imagine your sense of smell was 10,000 to 100,000 times stronger—like a dog’s is. The temptation to beg in the kitchen (image right) or at the table during the holidays can be especially strong, especially when a dog’s favorite people are gathered together to eat them. Clients can help prevent begging with a bit of preparation—and a treat-stuffed toy. For example, filling Kong Classics with dogs’ favorite treats provides mental and physical stimulation that can help them work off excess energy. The toys not only offer dogs tasty nibbles but also satisfy their natural chewing and foraging instincts—and are fun, too.

Kong has been helping dogs better enjoy the holidays—and the rest of the year—for more than 4 decades. The Kong Classic is available in a variety of sizes and rubber formulas to meet the needs of dogs of all sizes and ages, from teething, zooming puppies to grey muzzled seniors.

Favorite Holiday Flavors for Everyone

Giving a dog a frozen, stuffed Kong before sitting down for a holiday meal—or while preparing one, lets him celebrate the season safely. There are a myriad delicious (and safe) ingredients that can go into the toy, including many holiday favorites. This enables clients to share holiday flavors—and leftovers—with their canine companions. The Kong website has a variety of recipes you can share with your clients. For example:

Pup-Permint
1 cup plain yogurt
1/4 cup chopped mint
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/2 cup diced apples
KONG Classic
KONG Peanut Butter Spread
Mix all ingredients together in a bowl. Split mixture between Kong toys and freeze for a greater challenge.

Whichever the combination of foods chosen, make sure your clients know to stuff a Kong according to their dog’s ability level. Presenting a dog who is unfamiliar with a toy tightly packed with frozen food can be frustrating, not fun. For Kong rookies, owners should loosely stuff the toy with high-value food in pieces small enough to easily fall out as the dog plays with it. You can refer clients to Kong’s stuffing guide for a visual explanation.

Dog owners can make the task more challenging—and time consuming—by stuffing the toy with a mixture of wet and dry food. The variety of textures keeps things interesting, and ite helps to alternate wet and dry in layers. As suggested above, freezing a stuffed Kong for a few hours creates a more challenging—and longer-lasting—food puzzle.

While there are plenty of holiday foods that can be safely stuffed into a toy, other seasonal favorites can be tempting but toxic to dogs. Chocolate, turkey bones, onions, eggnog (and any alcohol), nutmeg and raisin-stuffed fruit cake are all dangerous to dogs. Remind clients to keep these foods far away from curious snouts and to tell guests not to share their food with dogs. Make sure children especially understand how important this is. Clients could invite visiting children to make a big deal about presenting a special stuffed Kong to the dog instead, making this a fun—and safe—holiday tradition for everyone.

By Petco Marketing Staff

Everyone at Petco is committed to improving the health and wellbeing, both physical and mental, of every pet that comes into our stores. To help achieve this, we have an outstanding Pet Services Department that includes grooming, dog training and veterinary services. This enables us to help pet owners meet the complete needs of each of their furred. feathered, scaled and finned family members. We pride ourselves on protecting the safety of every pet we encounter. All Petco partners stand behind our vision of Putting Pets First and strive to always be the trusted partner of choice for all pet owners.

As you well know, grooming is an important part of a dog’s health care. Our grooming services range from simple walk-in nail trims to full-service baths with complete haircuts. Pet owners can add luxury shampoos, extra brushing, shed-less packages, seasonal scents and other fun offerings with our customized packages.

Petco’s grooming salons are open 7 days a week with evening appointments available. This gives our salon partners flexible work schedules, whether they work full-time or part-time. We supply our salon partners with all the equipment they need, including brushes, combs, clippers, blades, shears, and nail clippers, just to name a few. We also give our clients the ability to schedule grooming appointments online. This allows our salon team to focus on what they love—grooming—and spend less time on the phone booking appointments.

Keeping pets safe in and out of our salon is our top priority. Our professional stylists receive detailed training in Petco’s well-researched and proven policies to guarantee everyone’s safety and comfort. Our salon partners earn competitive wages plus incentive, along with great benefits for those opting for full-time employment.

At Petco, we believe that the most important thing we can do is to foster a safe, healthy, and positive relationship between the pet owner and their dog. And our Positive Dog Training program is a great way to do just that. All dog-training offerings are taught using only positive-reinforcement methods from evolving curricula that is carefully developed and researched with the help and input of our trainers. Petco Positive Dog Training services are based on the most current research findings in canine cognition and development, as well as learning and behavioral sciences. Class offerings include everything from basic Puppy Manners to AKC Canine Good Citizen classes (and testing) to Clicker. We offer 6-week group classes, 1-hour private lessons, 1-hour workshops, and free seminars. All Petco Positive Dog Trainers also become AKC Canine Good Citizen Evaluators through a unique partnership with the American Kennel Club as part of their training process.

Classes are offered weekdays, weeknights and weekends, allowing for great scheduling flexibility for our pet owners and trainers. Our trainers earn an hourly wage plus incentive from every class sale, and full-time trainers receive excellent benefits, including medical, dental, vision, and paid time off.

We work in an exciting, fast-paced environment truly focused upon doing what is best for the animal before us. Because of this, Petco not only encourages but requires dog trainers to evaluate each dog and offer other alternatives if our setting isn’t appropriate for that dog due to fear, anxiety, or stress (potentially leading to aggressive behaviors). Training areas are disinfected between every class, and class sizes are kept small to keep the experience intimate and fun.

As a health and wellness company, we’re on a mission to improve the lives of people and their pets. At the heart of this approach is a world-class veterinary network of full-service hospitals and vaccination clinics providing pet families with quality, affordable care they can count on, seven days a week.

In the past year alone, vaccination clinics, full-service hospitals, and telehealth have served more than 1 million pets, a number that will double to more than 2 million in 2020. And over the next few years, we will aggressively expand our vet-services footprint to make them accessible for more pets and pet owners nationwide.

Our Vetco vaccination clinics offer affordable, low-cost vaccination services and preventative veterinary care during convenient evening and weekend hours. Our state-licensed veterinarians administer high-quality vaccines with no appointments and no exam fees. Our vet hospitals have four exam rooms that offer comprehensive nose-to-tail exams, vaccinations, microchipping, heartworm, flea-and-tick prevention, X-rays, blood work, dermatology and more. We also have anesthetic dental cleanings and procedures, along with spay/neuter surgeries, mass removals and other minor outpatient surgical procedures. Our treatment rooms have microscopes and a blood-analysis machine, so guests can get bloodwork results the same day.

As we continue down this path, veterinary support is vital to our success. By educating and encouraging our customers to take advantage of our services, our veterinary staff help foster a community of pet owners that seek a healthy, longer and richer life for their pets.

As an ABC graduate, you are considered one of our preferred candidates to help us continue our vision of improving the lives of people and their pets. You can apply for any of these exciting career opportunities at www.careers.petco.com.

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• ABC’s Newest CTP, DOP, GIP and VAP Graduates

By Tiki Cat Staff

“How can I get my finicky cat to eat?” Pet-care professionals routinely hear this question and it usually comes after a client has tried countless different foods and flavors, only to have their cat turn up her whiskers, or at best, nibble at the new offering, then refuse to eat it outright the next time.   

This has given rise to the popular belief that felines need endless variety in their diet. But if the flavor is the only variable a cat owner is looking at, chances are she’s meowing up the wrong tree. Feline dietary experts agree that the way a food tastes, by itself, is significantly less important to cats than it is to people and dogs. This isn’t surprising, considering that cats have a mere 500 taste buds when compared to a human’s 9,000. Even dogs, with 1,700 taste buds, have more than triple that amount.   

Since taste isn’t the only driving factor, what other criteria do cats use in determining whether a particular food appeals to them? The way a food smells, its mouth-feel or texture and—perhaps most surprisingly—its nutritional content have all been shown to be important contributors to feline food choices. Pet professionals should advise clients to look at all of these factors, in addition to flavor, to get to the root of their cat’s finickiness.

Smell and Mouth-Feel

That cats rely heavily on their sense of smell in picking food makes perfect sense. When it comes to scenting skills, felines and humans occupy the exact reverse positions than they do with tasting ability. With 65 million olfactory receptors, cats have a super sniffing capacity that far exceeds our own, given our paltry 15 million receptors. Different food brands may offer a “chicken” variety, but various versions of the same flavor may present totally different aromas because of cats’ highly honed sense of smell. Therefore, owners should not assume that just because their cat has rejected one manufacturer’s chicken, he doesn’t like any chicken.    

This reliance on the sense of smell might also explain why temperature sometimes seems to play a role in cats’ mealtime fussiness, since food just out of the refrigerator may have a very different scent than it does when served at room temperature. Another factor that influences felines’ meal choices is mouth-feel, which is how the food’s texture feels in their mouth and the ease with which they can pick it up, chew and swallow it.      

Here again, different cats have different preferences, not only in crunchy dry food versus softer wet food. But even within the wet food category, a cat might have a clear favorite, whether it’s shredded meat or firmer morsels in gravy. Some similar textures can have different mouth-feels, affecting the food’s palatability; for example, some cats prefer a soft paté to a smoother mousse or vice versa.

Flavor and Texture Variety

At Tiki Cat®, we are committed to offering wet food in an extensive assortment of textures—mousse, paté, shreds, flakes, chunks and whole foods—in addition to our Born Carnivore™ high-protein, low-carb dry kibble. That’s why we recently introduced a paté format to our After Dark™ line, which is available in several varieties. All of which are sourced in New Zealand and loaded with nutrient-rich organ meat in a smooth texture. The line is also available in a whole-cut format that features shredded chicken and other meats such as lamb and beef, blended with organ meat, in broth.   

Another of our popular wet food textures is our Velvet™ line. These super silky mousses are made with tender chicken or fish and is available in adult, kitten and senior formulas. Our wide variety of textures and recipes is reflected in our other Tiki Cat offerings, including: Aloha Friends™, flaked chicken or fish with small chunks of pumpkin in broth; Grill, real fish recipes garnished with whole shellfish in a consommé; Raw, complete, balanced meals with raw, uncooked ground poultry or red meat and bone broth; and Luau™, shredded chicken mixed with flaked fish, like wild salmon or ahi tuna.

Cats Require Carnivorous Diet

With all of its recipes, our overriding mission is to replicate the high-protein meat-based diet that cats would eat in nature. Cats are obligate carnivores, meaning they rely on animal protein for all of their nutrients, including essentials like taurine and arachidonic acid and cannot efficiently digest and process plants. They lack the enzyme necessary to convert carotene from plants to vitamin A, so they must obtain it from animal meat. Having evolved in a desert climate, cats also have a low thirst drive and consume some of their required moisture through the food they eat.    

Tiki Cat’s meat-based meals are inspired by cats’ natural prey diets, extremely high in animal protein with natural ingredients, no grains and low or no carbohydrates. This is true even of our dry kibble, which has an average 44 percent protein content. Our wet foods are high in moisture to give cats the supplemental water they need.

Felines Might “Sense” Foods’ Nutritional Content

This brings up the third—and most surprising—criterion that influences cats’ dietary choices: nutritional content. A study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal found that cats appear to have the ability to identify foods that meet their nutritional requirements. In this study, the selected foods based on their protein content relative to fat content, even over ones that had a more desirable taste.     

First, the study cats were given foods with the same protein and fat content in three different flavors (rabbit, fish and orange) to see which they preferred. Based on taste alone, the clear favorite was fish, followed by rabbit and then orange. Next, the food’s protein and fat contents were modified so that each flavor was offered in three different ratios: very low protein-to-fat (10:90); slightly lower protein than fat (40:60); and higher protein than fat (70:30). At first, the cats continued to choose food based on flavor; however, over time they came to overwhelmingly prefer the food with the higher protein content, regardless of its flavor, leading researchers to conclude, “Our results suggest that macronutrient balancing rather than hedonistic rewards…is a primary driver of longer-term food selection and intake in domestic cats.”

By Steve Appelbaum, ABC President & CEO 

Hello everyone. I hope you are all healthy and safe. Here is what is happening at ABC. First, I am delighted to report that our entire ABC team remains healthy and safe. I am not aware of a single one of our team members who has contracted COVID-19, which is excellent news. We will continue to operate remotely except for a few people who come to our physical location in Santa Clarita for a variety of reasons. Our lease on this building is up at the end of 2021, so this time next year, we will be looking to rent a much smaller space. How much smaller? Currently, we have a 22,000-sq.-ft building. I suspect we will look for something around 4,000 to 5,000 sq. ft.

It’s strange to consider a smaller space when business is growing, but this coronavirus pandemic has changed how we work and our needs changed with that. I am very thankful that we were in the kind of business that could withstand something this, and my heart goes out to all who have been affected either physically or financially by this. The only other thing I can say about this pandemic is a simple belief: It will eventually diminish. Our lives have been changed by it, but things will go back to normal—even if that is a new normal.

Zookeeper Assistant Program Launch

After an amazing amount of work, our Zookeeper Assistant Program (ZAP) launched on October 1st. Special thanks to our writers, editors, graphic designers, marketers, and admissions personnel who worked hard to make this happen. As of the third week in October, ZAP had the most successful launch of our programs.

New Things on the Horizon

• International program offerings: ABC is international, as we offer our programs in Canada and the United States. In 2021, we will be building the foundation for a launch in Europe and perhaps Japan in 2022. I love this kind of project and am very eager to see where our research leads us.
• A service dog program: We are looking to create a program for service dog trainers in North America in 2021.
• New short-Term programs: Research regarding new short-term programs will also be conducted next year.
• On our radar: New advanced grooming programs, a treating aggression in dogs course, and much more.

I will keep everyone posted as this year and the next unfolds. Until next time, be safe.