Oak Ridge Feed

06/23/2025

Don't forget our feathered friends during this heatwave! Offer a fresh, delicious seed cylinder from Mr. Bird, along with a dish of cool water, and watch them flock to it!

06/14/2025

If you love your cats, please keep them inside and on a reliable product to control ticks!

Bobcat Fever: Confirmed case of the deadly feline disease in the Tennessee Valley | https://tinyurl.com/3a6xrnfu

06/13/2025

06/04/2025

So many of you who are struggling with your dogs are shooting yourselves in the foot by what you’re doing more so than what you’re not doing. You want a calm, relaxed, well behaved dog, but you’re doing countless things which work directly against your goals.

So here’s a quick “Stop” list of the most common mistakes I see owners doing that they need to stop in order to make room for the good to start.

Let the outrage begin! 🤣

1/ Stop using food to train. Food creates arousal and excitement, and if a calm and relaxed dog is your training goal, that’s not the way.

2/ Stop the incessant use of “loaded”releases. This has become wildly common as sport dog work has creeped into pet dog training. The constant use of releases, like “Break!”, “Free!”, “Yes!” from commands to rewards to the next command create predictive sequences that imbue the entire sequence (from command to release) with anticipatory arousal.

3/ Stop using excitement when your goal is calmness. This should be an obvious one to avoid, but it’s one of the most common and undermining mistakes owners make. Excited owners who want their dogs to be “happy” drown their dogs in arousal-inducing excitement via verbal tone and body language. This will never create a calm and relaxed dog.

4/ Stop prioritizing constant motion and doing. So many owners assume that for dog training to occur, the dog must be active, doing, performing — when in reality the greatest and most challenging skill most dogs could acquire is the ability to be still, calm, relaxed, and doing absolutely nothing.

5/ Stop constantly talking to your dog. Constant verbal input will keep your dog constantly stimulated and aroused. Instead, talk far less and watch your dog finally relax.

6/ Stop constantly petting your dog. Constant touch is usually riding shotgun to the constant talker, and creates the same outcome. Stop the constant touching and watch your dog finally relax.

7/ Stop constantly trying to occupy your dog with games, toys, activities. This has become quite the unhealthy fad. Under the guise of “enrichment” (and selfish pleasure) we find owners drowning their dogs in puzzles, toys, and activities to mentally “stimulate” and “fulfill” them. This constant game of “Let’s stimulate our dogs” does just that, and never teaches your dog how to actually be calm and relaxed.

8/ Stop avoiding corrections that are necessary because they feel bad. I get it. We all hate having to discipline our dogs, but when they’re being pushy, impolite, demanding, overly-aroused, or just plain jerks, withholding negative consequences which will stop the unwanted behavior not only robs your dog of vital information about how to properly behave, it also ensures your dog never has access to a calm, relaxed, peace-filled mindset where they can be their best selves.

9/ (Bonus) Stop trying to out-exercise your hyper, manic, bouncing of the walls dog who actually needs to learn how to be still, relaxed, calm, well-behaved, and have an “Off-Switch”. This all too common approach simply creates an athlete who requires more and more exercise in order to temporarily be calm and relaxed — but teaches none of the actual calming skills or manners dogs need.

PS, Yes, all of the above are terribly typical mistakes owners make. Yes, I’ve made this black and white to make a point. Yes, there’s nuance and exceptions, yes there’s a smart and healthy balance that can be applied, and yes there’s a time and place for most if not all of the above — depending on context and goals. The point of this post is precisely the lack of nuance and smart, strategic application of all of the above. Pet owners almost always want a more calm, relaxed, well-behaved dog — not the opposite — and so if they were to stop doing all of the above, they’d be far closer to achieving their goals.

05/22/2025

No, it does NOT.

LOUDER👏 FOR 👏 THE 👏 PUPPERS 👏 IN 👏 THE 👏 BACK

"In the words of Dr Richard Patton, who has a PhD in Animal Nutrition & 40 years of experience formulating canine diets, 'there is no credible scientific evidence for [grain-free foods causing DCM], let alone proof. If there is a link between diet and DCM in dogs, it is far more likely to be a matter of protein quality, amount, and specific amino acid amount.'"

"Why are you still rating grain-free dog food? It causes Dilated Cardiomyopathy!" ...or does it? 🤔❓

First up, here’s how this controversy started...

In 2018, the FDA started receiving a spike in reports of dogs with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (aka DCM). This is a disease that causes weakened heart muscle contractions, and it can lead to heart failure and early death. Of course, none of us want our dogs to get DCM! 💔

So, when the FDA announced that 90% of reported cases were in dogs eating a grain-free diet, and that 93% of them were eating legume-rich dog food, containing large amounts of lentils & peas, a lot of worried pet parents switched away from these foods. 😳

This is where a lot of people - even vets - have stayed to this day.

The problem is that, when the FDA investigated whether there was a causal link between grain-free diets and DCM, or legume-rich dog foods and DCM, it couldn’t find one. This is why, in 2022, it announced that, after 4 years of study, it had "found no firm link between diet and dilated cardiomyopathy." ❌

But what about those high numbers of dogs eating grain-free foods with DCM? Shouldn’t that be enough to keep you from feeding grain-free foods to your pets? 👀

There are three things to say about this.

First, the reported correlation between DCM and grain-free diets may be misrepresenting the facts. This is because vets were encouraged to report only cases of DCM in dogs eating grain-free diets. 🩺

This is a bit like trying to find out whether watching cartoons causes low IQ by asking teachers to report only cases of kids with low IQ who watch cartoons. 🧠

You see the problem… 🔎 by asking teachers to report in this way, you miss both: kids with low IQs who don’t watch cartoons, and; kids with high IQs who do watch cartoons.

In the same way, vets may have missed cases of DCM in dogs fed grain-inclusive diets (which is easy to do as it can be hard to diagnose). And of course, they won’t have reported the many dogs on grain-free diets in their care who never developed DCM.

In other words, the correlation may be an illusion.

Second, even if the correlation between certain diets and DCM is not an illusion, correlation is not the same as causation. 📈❌

To see this, suppose we found that all and only kids who watch cartoons have low IQs. That’s a correlation. But it’s not the same as the cartoons causing low IQ. It may be that the cartoon-watching kids all eat unhealthy snacks while watching their cartoons, and that it’s the unhealthy snacks that cause low IQ.

This is important because, if you just ban cartoons, you won’t prevent low IQ! 😅

In the same way, if grain-free foods are not the cause of DCM in dogs, avoiding them won’t stop DCM.

Third, some people speak as if it’s easy for pet parents to forego grain-free foods “just in case”. However, not only does this rule out some extremely high quality dog foods, but some dogs do better on grain-free diets, especially those with sensitive stomachs. So why rule grain-free out if there’s no good reason to do so? 🤔

Ok, so what’s the upshot?👀

Our position at Dog Food Advisor is that, since there is no proven causal link between DCM and grain-free diets, we do not downgrade any dog food recipes purely for being grain-free. We believe that taking any other approach, given the lack of evidence of a problem, would be simply unfair. In the same way as it would be unfair to ban cartoons without a proven link to low childhood IQ.

In the words of Dr Richard Patton, who has a PhD in Animal Nutrition & 40 years of experience formulating canine diets, “there is no credible scientific evidence for [grain-free foods causing DCM], let alone proof. If there is a link between diet and DCM in dogs, it is far more likely to be a matter of protein quality, amount, and specific amino acid amount.” 🥩🥼

If after all this, you still feel that avoiding grain-free foods is right for your dog, that is, of course, 100% up to you. We’re here to support pet parents in making informed choices about what they feed to their pets, we’re not here to make those choices for you. 😀

There are actually many more things that can be said about this issue. If you’re interested, you can find lots more information on our website. Start here: 🔗 https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/canine-nutrition/truth-grain-free-dog-food/

04/06/2025

It’s fascinating that one simple — and when thought about, wildly obvious — tweak in your strategic approach to addressing your dog’s behavior issues could have such a profound impact on your success.

Whether it’s trash diving, p**p eating, getting into the cat box, door rushing, jumping on people, counter surfing, attacking the vacuum, fence fighting, and even reactivity — most owners allow themselves to be stuck in perpetual reaction mode, rather than set-up mode.

And reaction mode means you’ll almost always be late to the party. You’ll either catch the in-process or tail-end of the behavior and be scrambling, fumbling, stressing to address it — and due to all these factors will be anything but effective — or you’ll miss the behavior altogether and only find the evidence of the crime.

But if instead we decide we’re going to set-up the problem behavior, we’ll be the ones who are ahead of the curve. We’ll be relaxed, ready, have the tools/strategies we need to address the issue ready to roll, and we’ll be ready to strike at the perfect moment.

This is what smart trainers do all day long. They set things up so that they can succeed, and thus so can the dog. The isn’t to be mean or unfair, it’s simple: if you want to resolve behavior issues, the worst way is to be caught off-guard trying to react, the best way is to be the one who sets it all up and thus is able to properly address issues.

Go through the list above, or use your own list, and then simply think about how you could set these situations up, and how you could best address them. The right tools and training make this far, far easier, but you can get your McGyver on and find some creative solutions as well.

03/21/2025

👎 HALL OF SHAME 👎 Purina Dog Chow receives 1.5 stars - not recommended - from our pet nutritionists, because...

In a nutshell, the ingredients in this food do not meet a dog's nutritional needs well, its additives may be positively harmful, and the anonymity of some of its ingredients does not enable pet parents to identify & avoid food sensitivities 🥜

In more detail...

🌽 First, this food's main ingredient is corn. This inexpensive cereal grain's use in dog food is controversial. Aside from offering energy, corn is of only modest nutritional value to a dog.

🐂 Second, the next largest component is meat and bone meal from unspecified sources. It is usually slaughterhouse waste - what's leftover when the good quality cuts have been removed. It will likely have lower digestibility than most named meat meals, and scientists believe this decreased absorption may be due to its higher ash and lower essential amino acid content.

Worse still, the meat could come from any combination of animals — which makes identifying & avoiding specific food allergens impossible.

🫛 Third, while the food does contain beef fat, which is a quality ingredient, it is mostly made up of less costly plant-based products that boost the total protein reported on the label — but mask the amount of quality animal-based protein that the recipe contains.

Fourth, the additives...

Coloring - We’re always disappointed to find artificial coloring in any pet food. That’s because coloring is used to make the product more appealing to humans — not your dog. After all, do you really think your dog cares what color their food is?

Not chelated minerals - the minerals in this food do not appear to be chelated, which can make them more difficult for your dog to absorb. Chelated minerals are usually associated with higher quality dog foods.

Sodium selenite - the recipe contains a controversial form of the mineral selenium. Sodium selenite appears to be nutritionally inferior to the more natural source of selenium found in selenium yeast.

Garlic oil - although garlic contains allicin, which may benefit cardiovascular health in dogs as in people, it also contains thiosulfate, which is linked to Heinz body anemia. This is a condition in which the dog's red blood cells are damaged & cannot carry enough oxygen around their body. So, one must weigh the potential benefits of feeding garlic against its proven tendency to cause subclinical damage to the red blood cells of your dog.

Lack of probiotics - there appear to be no probiotics, i.e. friendly bacteria applied to the surface of the kibble after processing to help with digestion.

Menadione - a controversial form of vitamin K linked to liver toxicity, allergies and the abnormal break-down of red blood cells. Since vitamin K isn’t required by AAFCO in its nutrient profiles, we question the use of this item in any canine recipe.

For more dog foods to avoid, see the list of 1 star rated foods on our website: https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-reviews/1-star/

You might want to check your furry friend isn't eating one of them... 👀

03/02/2025

A very good read from a reputable source.

You want to protect your dog from heart disease. But should you avoid grain-free dog food? Or legume-rich food? Or is there no link with diet? Discover the controversy below...

Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a disease in dogs that causes weakened heart muscle contractions & poor pumping ability. This can lead to an enlarged heart and, ultimately, heart failure. It is a terrible disease that none of us want our dogs to go through.

So, when the FDA started receiving a spike in reports of dogs with DCM in 2018, we all got concerned.

Initially, the FDA announced that 90% of reported dogs were eating a grain-free diet. Indeed, 93% of them were eating legume-rich dog food, containing lentils or peas in the top 10 ingredients. They also released a list of 16 dog foods that were coming up time and again in their reports - most of them grain-free. This was unprecedented - and, unsurprisingly, resulted in a shift in the market away from these dog foods and towards grain-inclusive foods. In the words of the FDA: "Publicity surrounding the suspected link... has driven down the once-promising market for grain-free dog foods."

However, over time, it has become clear that this may have been over-zealous.

First, the spike in reports may have been caused by FDA public announcements about DCM, rather than because lots more dogs were developing DCM.

Second, it has become clear in retrospect that vets were encouraged to report cases of DCM only if dogs with the disease were eating grain-free diets. This may have created bias in the reports, such that grain-inclusive DCM cases went under-reported by comparison with grain-free ones. “When you only look for what you want to see, you only see what you look for,” said Joseph Bartges, a professor of animal medicine and nutrition from the University of Georgia’s College of Veterinary Medicine in an interview on this subject.

Third, the vets who encouraged grain-free DCM reporting had research funded by grain-inclusive pet food companies, creating a conflict of interest that may have produced bias in the evidence.

In the words of the FDA: "A tangled web of pet food industry funding and interests may have influenced the origin, data collection and course of the FDA study, according to an examination of internal FDA records and extensive reporting."

Since the initial controversy, there have been scientific studies on both sides that have purported to show both: Minor positive heart changes on a grain-inclusive diet and perfectly good heart health on a grain-free, legume-rich diet. In each case, however, the sample sizes have been vanishingly small (66 & 28 respectively). This is because it is difficult and expensive to diagnose & monitor dog's with DCM.

So too, in the study which purported to show positive heart changes, some dogs had been supplemented with taurine - a deficiency of which has long been suspected of contributing to DCM. Was it the dietary change or the taurine supplementation that led to the heart changes? Or was it just chance in a sample size this small? We don't know. Again, just because 28 dogs didn't develop any heart problems while eating a diet for 5 months, does not mean that diet is off the hook for causing heart disease over a lifetime.

It's frustrating for pet parents, but the fact is the studies leave us unable to draw any firm conclusions either way.

This is why, in 2022, the FDA announced that, after 4 years, it had "found no firm link between diet and dilated cardiomyopathy. Nor has it rejected such a link, and the research is ongoing." It does, however, note that "The American Veterinary Medical Association estimates that there are 77 million pet dogs in the United States. Most dogs in the U.S. have been eating pet food without apparently developing DCM.

It is also why we do not downgrade or exclude grain-free or legume-rich dog foods when rating their nutritional make-up on Dog Food Advisor.

For more information, on anything mentioned here, you can find links in our stories & story highlights.



100 Reporters Investigation: https://100r.org/2022/07/did-industry-funding-influence-an-fda-investigation-into-canine-heart-disease-and-grain-free-dog-food/

66 heart health study: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jvim.16397

28 husky study : https://www.petfoodprocessing.net/articles/15566-the-pulse-of-it-does-pulse-inclusive-dog-food-affect-heart-health

FDA latest: https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/outbreaks-and-advisories/fda-investigation-potential-link-between-certain-diets-and-canine-dilated-cardiomyopathy

FDA Q&A on the topic: https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/animal-health-literacy/questions-answers-fdas-work-potential-causes-non-hereditary-dcm-dogs

02/13/2025

Brushy brushy or I shavey shavey

02/09/2025

BHA is a controversial preservative found in many dog foods. But it's been linked to cancer & reproductive disorders... so is it really safe...? 🤔

US government regulations allow BHA in dog food, considering it safe in low doses. But BHA has been found to produce malignant tumors in lab animals & the State of California includes it on its “Chemicals Known… to Cause Cancer or Reproductive Toxicity” report.

So too, the EU considers BHA a ‘hormone disruptor‘… because studies have shown it can damage the s***m quality of male rats and the s*x organs of females. Indeed, BHA is banned from use in certain EU food products for this reason 👀

And dogs may be at greater risk. This is because, unlike humans, who vary their diets with each meal, dogs are typically fed the same food continuously. Day after day. For a lifetime.

It’s that cumulative exposure to a risky chemical (like BHA) that can magnify its effect on your dog's body.

So why take the risk? 🤷‍♀️

Dog food companies include BHA in recipes because it extends the shelf life of a dog food longer than natural preservatives. It does a great job of stopping fat going rancid. Which can make the food more profitable for the pet food company.

But does it make the food more dangerous for our dogs?

By contrast, many pet foods are preserved with super-safe natural preservatives like…

✔️ Ascorbic acid (vitamin C)
✔️ Mixed tocopherols (vitamin E)

Look. Here’s the point. Considering all the dangerous health issues linked to BHA, it seems logical to avoid dog foods that contain it. After all there are many quality dog foods that don't contain this controversial ingredient.

As our expert pet nutritionist, Laura Ward, says "I prefer to avoid BHA. It does a great job as an antioxidant - it certainly works to delay foods becoming rancid. But, since there are other options now, such as antioxidants which are based on vitamin E, I don't see any need to use artificial antioxidants for which studies have shown there is the potential for negative health effects."

Our best advice is to check your dog food labels. Look for the “fat” ingredient, followed by the words “preserved with BHA. And avoid where possible.

02/07/2025

Why waste your money on cheap birdseed full of fillers like milo and corn? Give the birds the foods they want, like Bugs Nuts & Fruit from Mr. Bird! No waste, less mess!

02/04/2025

The Bluebirds are already choosing their nesting sites. Help keep them happy by offering Songbird Essentials dried mealworms! Now available by the tub, in bulk, or by the pound.

Mealworm feeders are also in stock!