Hearts. Feed them love, and taurine!

The heart is both a muscle and an organ, so it’s like feeding your dog a steak with an extra punch of protein and vitamins. Both chicken and beef hearts are excellent sources of B vitamins, iron and essential fatty acids, it also contains phosphorus, which helps build and strengthen your dog’s skeletal system. The folate found in heart is important for DNA health and can help prevent anemia and IBD. Thiamine, which is also found in heart, improves carbohydrate metabolism and is necessary for nourishing the brain and other high-energy organs. Don’t forget it’s got a healthy dose of taurine! 

Compared to regular cuts of muscle meat, organ meats are more densely packed with just about every nutrient, including heavy doses of B vitamins such as: B1, B2, B6, folic acid and vitamin B12.

Organ meats are also loaded with minerals like phosphorus, iron, copper, magnesium and iodine, and provide the important fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K.

Overall, organ meats (not including heart) should make up about 15% of your dog’s total diet. Organ meats are a vital part of a complete and balanced diet for your dog. Unfortunately, they are often treated as byproducts and seldom make it onto the meat counter at the local grocery store. Every batch of homemade stew the Chibean Crew eats gets a dose of heart, liver and kidney. While it can be hard to find some organ meats, we started Chibean Crew Chews to try to make finding this vital part of your pets diet easy (and some might say, less gross).

Chibean Crew Chews

Chibean Crew Chews is 100% human grade, single ingredient dehydrated treats. We started with different types of heart treats first because hearts hit home with us. With experience in heart failure with two rescue pups feeding heart on the daily was important. In Chinese medicine, “like feeds like”, which means that if part of your body is ill then you need to feed it that organ to help it recover. Heart muscle needs taurine and the organ gives it the most bang for your buck with feeding. As the Chibean Crew Chew inventory grows we will be adding more varieties of hearts and other organ meats to help balance your pups diet. Not to mention that they make a great high value snack for training and your reward system.

Flea and Tick for Summer!

There are SO MANY options when it comes to the warmer months and protecting your pet from flea, ticks and heartworms. While I’m not a veterinarian, I’m going to tell you how the crew has been flea, tick and worm free without any harsh chemicals. Yes there are chemicals for everything these days, spray some round up and get rids of weeds, but maybe expose yourself to cancer? Sure you can protect your pet from all forms of bugs by giving them a simple pill every month, but what is that pill doing? What is that pill made of? Pills break down in your pets body and stay in the bloodstream. Topical medications absorb into the skin and mix with the fluids underneath.

When you are about to go outside in the warm months, you may put on a bug spray, put on a bracelet, but do you take a pill to stop bugs from infecting you once a month?

No.

The reason is, that pill doesn’t stop bugs from biting you, it just kills them if they do. Which means your pet’s blood has insecticide in it. Which when you think of insecticide, would you want that in your body for 30 days straight? What harm would that cause your body? Your brain? A simple search on the internet will lead you to research on flea and tick medications that can cause seizures in pets.

Dr. Judy Morgan

Dr. Karen Becker

Soresto Collar Recall

AVMA

There will always be people out there saying their pets took this medication or that and they were fine, but what if your pet has one of these adverse reactions to these insecticides? It doesn’t matter what happens to any other pet but yours (in this context). How would you feel if your dog had seizures from one of these medications for the rest of their lives? How would you feel if your dog passed away from an adverse reaction to a anti-bug collar? I can’t tell you what you should do for your pets, but I can share what I know and give you more options to choose from.

The natural flea and tick market for pets is beginning to boom, and the reason is more informed pet parents and wanting to make sure we are giving them the best care at the lowest risk. Most of the sprays that I’m including in my search are essential oils, but there is a wide variety of scents that you can choose from! Vet’s Best is a heavy clove scent, while Kin & Kind if a Cedarwood. Different scents work differently so get a couple, or rotate between products and see what works best for your crew! There are also plenty of other options online (different companies, different oils, DIY sprays, Amber collars) but this is what we use so I want to talk about those suggestions specifically.

Kin & Kind

Vets Best

Wondercide

Sprays (much like the ones we use to keep mosquitos away) work by preventing bugs from biting you (or your pet) in the first place.

Also you can treat your yard with essential oils! These yard sprays will help deter the bugs entering your area. So think of these as part of your holistic approach to keep you and your pets safe from bites. the oral medications work by going into your pets system and then killing the insects if they get bit. I think I would prefer to not get bit in the first place!

Vet’s Best Yard

Wondercide Yard

For heartworms on the other hand, I do treat the crew in the summer months. We use just plain Interceptor (not plus). On the recommendations of Dr. Judy Morgan we also dose every 45 days instead of 30. Heartworm medication does not actually protect your pet from getting heartworms. The medication you deliver to your pet actually stays in their system for only 3 days, kills the larvae stage of heartworms and then leaves your pet. By doing a monthly or bi-monthly treatment you are catching those larvae before they turn into adult worms and thus ending the life cycle. The first line of defense is always (IMO) a spray that keeps bugs away from your animal, but the second for heartworms is medication.

Read Dr. Judy Morgan’s information on heartworms here.

Interceptor is Milbemycin Oxime it is used to treat heartworms with the added benefit of covering not only hookworms, heartworm, and roundworms, but also whipworms. Milbemycin Oxime is not recommended for dogs containing MDR1 Mutations and if your dog has this mutation you should find a different source of heartworm treatment. Always have a negative heartworm test before starting a preventative treatment.

Does your pet need Dextoxification?

Pet Wellbeing Milk Thistle

Liver & Kidney Support

Build a Dog Bed!

I tried to find a decent fancy dog bed/couch for the kids for Christmas and I couldn’t find one for less than $100, so I decided to make one myself! I had a 30x30 cushion from TJ Maxx (purchased for $10) and went to a local Home Depot to get some other supplies. I had someone from the Lumber department cut a piece of plywood to a 30x30 square (the entire plywood piece was $25) and then a 1x6x10 board (also $10) that I had them cut into 2 30 inch pieces and two 28 inch pieces (you need an extra inch to account for the other board widths. So for a total of $45 and some time I could make the crew a pretty swanky dog bed. Some other options you could purchase would be small legs to add height to the bed (they also sell these at home improvement stores), I decided to use scraps of wood I already had to add a small amount of height and skip the legs. Some other handy items for this project are wood glue, screws, sand paper, stain/paint.

Check out the VLOG for how mahm built us a magical Christmas dog bed!