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We’ve all heard about chocolate being bad for dogs. But what else should be on the no-no list? Here’s a list from the Cold Nose News.

Thank you Fisher at the Wacky Weim Group on Dogster.com for bringing this info to my attention.

Why are grapes harmful?
As far as grapes and raisins go, no one is sure why they’re harmful. It’s been confirmed that even grapes grown without fertilizers or pesticides can be toxic to dogs. But not to every dog, and not every time. It’s also not known whether small amounts eaten over a long time period could have a cumulative effect.What we do know is that the end result in nearly all reported cases of grape or raisin toxicity is acute kidney failure. (The term “acute” means that the condition is severe and comes on quickly.)

The dog ultimately can’t produce urine, which means they can’t filter toxins out of their systems — a process essential to life.During the twelve-month period in which the effects of grapes were studied, the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center handled 140 cases involving one or more dogs. Over a third of the dogs developed symptoms ranging from vomiting to kidney failure, and seven dogs died.

The ASPCA based their study on reported cases, so naturally there may be cases where a dogs health is entirely unaffected by eating grapes. But until they know all the facts, the Society advises against feeding pets grapes or raisins in any amount. An ounce of prevention…

So, your dog just scored himself a big box of raisins or some Valentines chocolates. What’s a pet owner to do?The first line of defense, if the grapes or raisins were eaten recently, is to induce vomiting and administer activated charcoal (it absorbs toxins in the GI tract). Vomiting is also the first sign that your dog is in trouble, so skip right to the activated charcoal if vomiting has already occurred. (In a pinch you can make your own activated charcoal by burning a piece of toast until it’s charred and crumbles easily.) Then call your vet right away.The vet will keep your dog on intravenous fluids for at least 48 hours and monitor blood chemistry daily. Normal blood work after 3 days usually means your dog is in the clear.Keeping a watchful eye out, of course, is the best way to keep your pet out of trouble. Like children, dogs (and other pets) have a knack for getting into mischief when we’re not looking.

It’s Not Just the Grapes…There are other foods your dog should be kept away from, and some of them may surprise you:
Chocolate
Who can resist chocolate? Like it your not, your dog.Chocolate is made with cocoa beans and cocoa beans contain a chemical called Theobromine, which is toxic to dogs. So on Valentine’s Day, you’re actually being kind to your best buddy if you eat all the chocolates yourself!Read my special report on chocolate to learn more, and see how different types of chocolate have varying effects on dogs health.

Cocoa Mulch
Mulch isn’t food, but there’s one type tempting enough for dogs to eat. Cocoa bean shells are a by-product of chocolate production (which is how mulch made it into the “foods” category) and are popular as mulch for landscaping. Homeowners like the attractive color and scent, and the fact that the mulch breaks down into an organic fertilizer. The coca bean shells can contain from 0.2% to 3% theobromine (the toxin ) as compaired to 1-4% in unprocessed beans.

Fatty foods
Fatty foods are hard for a dog to digest and can can overtax the pancreas, leading to pancreatitis. This can threaten your dogs health and is potentially fatal.NutsMacadamia nuts should be avoided. In fact most nuts are not good for the dogs health since their high phosporus content is said to lead to bladder stones.

Onions
Onions, and especially raw onions, have been shown to trigger hemolytic anemia in dogs. (Stephen J Ettinger, D.V.M and Edward C. Fieldman, D.V.M. ’s book: Textbook of Veterinary Internal Medicine vol. 2 pg 1884.) Stay away from onion powder too.

Potatoes
Potato poisonings among people and dogs are rare but have occurred. The toxin, solanine, is poorly absorbed and is only found in green sprouts (these occur in tubers exposed to sunlight) and green potato skins. This explains why incidents seldom occur. Note that cooked, mashed potatoes are fine for a dogs health, actually quite nutritious and digestible.

Artificial Sweeteners
iXylitol is used as a sweetener in many products, especially sugarless gum and candies. Ingesting large amounts of products sweetened with xylitol may cause a sudden drop in blood sugar in dogs, resulting depression, loss of coordination, and seizures. According to Dr. Eric K. Dunayer, a consulting veterinarian in clinical toxicology for the poison control center, “These signs can develop quite rapidly, at times less than 30 minutes after ingestion of the product” states Dr. Dunayer, “…therefore, it is important that pet owners seek veterinary treatment immediately.”

Turkey
Turkey skin is currently thought to cause acute pancreatis in dogs, partly due to it’s high fat content.

Here are the rest of the foods listed by the ASPCA as harmful:
Alcoholic beverages Avocado (the only “fatty” member of the vegetable family)
Coffee (all forms of coffee)
Moldy or spoiled foods
Salt
Yeast
dough
Garlic

The Bottom LineThanks to a more educated public, fewer fatalities from foods like chocolate are being reported these days. But it’s important to keep up with what’s currently known about foods and their effects on dogs health. Grapes and cocoa mulch, for example, were only discovered very recently to have harmful effects.

Check frequently with sources like the ASPCA, or sign up for the “Cold Noses News” to have information like this delivered to your inbox. (You’ll also get a bunch of cool dog stuff along with your free registration).

This just in from one of the best and most knowledgeable voices on global warming…

Climate change: on the edgeby Jim Hansen, director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York

A satellite study of the Greenland ice cap shows that it is melting far faster than scientists had feared - twice as much ice is going into the sea as it was five years ago. The implications for rising sea levels - and climate change - could be dramatic.

Yet, a few weeks ago, when I - a NASA climate scientist - tried to talk to the media about these issues following a lecture I had given calling for prompt reductions in the emission of greenhouse gases, the NASA public affairs team - staffed by political appointees from the Bush administration - tried to stop me doing so. I was not happy with that, and I ignored the restrictions.

The first line of NASA ’s mission is to understand and protect the planet.This new satellite data is a remarkable advance. We are seeing for the first time the detailed behavior of the ice streams that are draining the Greenland ice sheet. They show that Greenland seems to be losing at least 200 cubic kilometers of ice a year. It is different from even two years ago, when people still said the ice sheet was in balance. Hundreds of cubic kilometers sounds like a lot of ice.

But this is just the beginning. Once a sheet startsto disintegrate, it can reach a tipping point beyond which break-up is explosively rapid. The issue is how close we are getting to that tipping point. The summer of 2005 broke all records for melting in Greenland. So we may be on the edge.Our understanding of what is going on is very new. Today’s forecasts of sea-level rise use climate models of the ice sheets that say they can only disintegrate over a thousand years or more. But we can now see that the models are almost worthless. They treat the ice sheets like a single block of ice that will slowly melt.

But what is happening is much more dynamic.Once the ice starts to melt at the surface, it forms lakes that empty down crevasses to the bottom of the ice. You get rivers of water underneath the ice. And the ice slides towards the ocean.Our NASA scientists have measured this in Greenland. And once these ice streams start moving, their influence stretches right to the interior of the ice sheet. Building an ice sheet takes a long time, because it is limited by snowfall. But destroying it can be explosively rapid.

How fast can this go? Right now, I think our best measure is what happened in the past. We know that, for instance, 14,000 years ago sea levels rose by 20m in 400 years - that is five meters in a century. This was towards the end of the last ice age, so there was more ice around. But, on the other hand, temperatures were not warming as fast as today.

How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today - which is what we expect later this century - sea levels were 25m higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don’t act soon. None of the current climate and ice models predict this. But I prefer the evidence from the Earth’s history and my own eyes. I think sea-level rise is going to be the big issue soon, more even than warming itself.It’s hard to say what the world will be like if this happens. It would be another planet. You could imagine great armadas of icebergs breaking off Greenland and melting as they float south. And, of course, huge areas being flooded.

How long have we got? We have to stabilize emissions of carbon dioxide within a decade, or temperatures will warm by more than one degree. That will be warmer than it has been for half a million years, and many things could become unstoppable. If we are to stop that, we cannot wait for new technologies like capturing emissions from burning coal. We have to act with what we have. This decade, that means focusing on energy efficiency and renewable sources of energy that do not burn carbon. We don’t have much time left.

Jim Hansen, the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, is President George Bush’s top climate modeller………………………………………………………………………………………….

Yesterday Tigger, beloved cat-familar and friend of Cara the HaintOps passed into eternity. Tigger had developed liver failure. She will be greatly missed by her co-cat Boo, her dog-brothers Darwin and Zeus, and of course her humans, Cara and Ryan and their children Dane and Lily (also known as the HaintGirl for those of you who’ve come to local booksignings).

My deepest sympathy for your loss and my highest praise for how you and your family are handling this very necessary part of life, death.

Cara, the HaintOps and mother of Lily the HaintGirl, has experienced a loss in her family. Tigger, her 13-year-old cat, had to be passed into eternity yesterday due to apparent liver failure. My deepest sympathy for her loss.

From Common Dreams comes this definitely uncheery report that there is no way to reverse the climactic changes we’re seeing now due to global warming. Seems that about 120 scientists from 11 countries have been working on a study for 20 years investigating the changes and the findings are not pretty. According to their findings, we can’t stop our bad behaviours fast enough.

Here’s a short quote from the article first printed in the Canadian Press:

One of the most surprising for David Barber, a sea ice specialist at the University of Manitoba, was the fact polar ice is melting at a rate of about 74,000 square kilometres each year - an area about the size of Lake Superior - and has been for the last 30 years.

“This is a very significant result, and it’s not some sort of trend that’s going to shift back the other way,” Barber said Tuesday.

Barber added there is increasing concern in the scientific community that there are factors actually speeding up the melt, but he cautions it’s too late to reverse the trend.
“The time to act actually was a few decades ago,” he said.

“We’re not going to be able to shift the economies of the planet to get off this fossil fuel addiction in a week, a year or a decade. But we have to start the process now to have some stability for future generations.”

So much for the Bush administration’s assertions that global warming can be dealt with by new technologies. File this one under the, “we should have noticed when the armadillos started moving north” category. Too bad. It was such a nice planet…

If you haven’t heard about it, HBO’s new documentary Dealing Dogs throws much needed light on the very ugly side of the dog business, puppy mills. If you’ve ever wondered if the puppy mills are really THAT bad, check out this film. I haven’t seen it but living in Missouri I’ve seen and heard of the evil incarnate that are those who cruelly breed dogs just to make money.

As I look at my “furkids,” I cannot even imagine how completely rotted away at the core those breeders featured in this film must be to treat dogs with such hatred and cruelty.

I hate to think what sort of lives await these “people.”

The world must halt greenhouse gas emissions and reverse them within two decades or watch the planet spiralling towards destruction, scientists said on Monday.

We’re down to it according to leading scientists. No more wishy-washy “maybes” according to the guys who know. For more information check out this article from Reuters on Truthout.

Synchronicity is all around us, isn’t it? Just this week I got an email from a reader on the East Coast who said that while she was reading Haint, the weather was much warmer than normal and the wind blew incessantly. She said it really set the tone for her reading of Haint. For those of you who’ve read it, you’ll recognize why.

In many ways our cultural evolution is really devolution. What does this say about where Haint’s world will be in a century or so?

Look at commerce for example. We’ve gone from cheering for the Jean Val Jeans (Les Miserables’ hero who redeems his life on part by proudly providing good jobs and lives working people in a French village) to cheering for corporate tycoons so far removed emotionally from the lives and welll-being of their employees that they might as well be living in different countries. You’re right, they ARE often living in different countries so let’s say different universes.

And really they ARE in different universes, aren’t they? The Ken Lays and Donald Trumps and Carly Fiorinos have no more feeling for the lives of everyday people making, oh say 34K as they do for Martians with three eyes and indescribable mouths. The language may be ostensibly the same but they sure can’t converse. Of course, the Trumps and Lays can send messages down to the Martians below but the Martians don’t seem to be able to send messages back up the chain, do they?

But back to evolution or devolution. When Victor Hugo’s hero redeems his life and character by spending it making better lives for the villagers, we all felt uplifted. When he was chased for an old “crime” we all felt betrayed by the supposed system of law. Why? Because we realized that Val Jean’s greater good moves him past the relatively puny crime.

Now, we cheer unbelievable egotistic posturing in business leaders who would just as soon throw their workers against each other in dog pit fights to the death as look at them. As long as their is an endless supply of workers to feed their egos and pockets and egos again, these “leaders” don’t care what happens. How so different than the fictional hero of a time that we suppose to be less ethical, less advanced than our own.

What does this say about us and our society that we applaud the cruel and grasping, instead of the caring and giving? Perhaps it says that we are not moving forward as we would think or hope. Perhaps it says that we should rethink the way we want the future to look. Hugo did, and saw a world where leadership was a trust, not an entitlement.

Perhaps in Haint’s world, we should see if that is true as well.

We’ve been awful gloomy here lately so here’s a bit of levity.

Thanks to Jeannette W. and Laurie Butler for passing these on.

New Dog Cross Breeds:

Collie + Lhasa Apso = Collapso, a dog that folds up for easy transport

Pointer + Setter = Poinsetter, a traditional Christmas pet

Great Pyrenees + Dachshund = Pyradachs, a puzzling breed

Pekingnese + Lhasa Apso = Peekasso, an abstract dog

Irish Water Spaniel + English Springer Spaniel = Irish Springer, a dog fresh and clean as a whistle

Labrador Retriever + Curly Coated Retriever = Lab Coat Retriever, the choice of research scientists

Newfoundland + Basset Hound = Newfound Asset Hound, a dog for financial advisors

Terrier + Bulldog = Terribull, a dog that makes awful mistakes

Bloodhound + Labrador = Blabador, a dog that barks incessantly

Malamute + Pointer = Moot Point, owned by… oh, well, it doesn`t matter anyway

Collie + Malamute = Commute, a dog that travels to work

Deerhound + Terrier = Derrier, a dog that`s true to the end

Bull Terrier + Shitzu = Oh, never mind …

If you like a lot of humor while considering the plight of future generations of humans and dogs (and all those other species too) check out the new animated clip from Defenders of Wildlife. Its funny and it has a good beat too. In our version of American Bandstand I think I’d give it a 5 out of 5. And you can dance to it too!