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Happy Spring!
Don't Miss The Secret Sale!
We’re all so happy to have some bright sunny days right now, giving us a break from our inevitable spring rains. It’s been great seeing people really taking advantage of it with lots of hikes and playtime in the parks! Good news - raincoats are back from Beaverton’s Doodlebug Duds after an extended outage, so when those rains return, we’ll have their reasonably priced, well-made raincoats back on the racks and more in the pipeline.
Speaking of coats, thanks so much to all of you who donated winter clothes for pets and people in our 2nd annual coat drive. It was understandably a smaller drive this year due to sunny weather in January (unlike the 11” of snow we had last year at the same time), but a big carload of stuff was donated by generous customers - We still have nights in the 30s right now, and that feels plenty cold when you have to spend them outdoors. A special thanks to Gold Paw company for donating about 60 fleecy sweaters, which were distributed by The Pongo Fund and The Paw Team. Pongo Fund also distributed the winter coats donated by customers. The distribution of human clothes was managed by the Northeast Emergency Food Program, which also offers free clothing to people in need.
We’re also glad to tell you that our Holiday Dog Food Drive donation was delivered last week to The Pongo Fund warehouse - it added up to 2,838lbs of pet food! That's a lot of meals for pets in food challenged families! Thank you so much to everyone who donated food in December. Your donation helps to keep pets out of shelters and with the people they love.
We’re trying to put together another Fun Run for dogs and people in cooperation with Foot Traffic this spring, perhaps in April. Last year was a hit, and we raised some good money to support the Dove Lewis Emergency Stray and Wildlife Care Fund.This year the event will benefit Fences for Fido, an amazing program run entirely by volunteers. Stay tuned for more details!
We’d like to offer you a Secret Sale!
Please join us Saturday the 17th from 10-6 for a store-wide Secret Sale. IF you mention it at the register (it’s a Secret after all, available only to our newsletter list as a way to say thank you to our regular customers) you can take 15% off of everything but food. This means all regularly priced toys, chews, treats, leashes, collars, supplements, cat furniture, cat litter, beds, etc will all be 15% off! So give us a wink and a nod at the register, or just mention that you get our newsletter, and we’ll hook you up with the discount. It’s a great time to stock up on things you know you’ll be using (CBD tinctures, bully sticks, training treats, etc)! Your friends are free to join in on the sale if they sign up for the newsletter when they come in. See you there!
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Is Your Dog Itchy?
One of our favorite holistic vets,Dr. Keith Weingardt,
gave us a neat tip. Dried Nettles (otherwise known as stinging nettles
when they’re fresh) have a natural antihistamine quality that helps to
control the itching and inflammation of seasonal allergies in dogs and
cats, like an herbal Benadryl). We sometimes see seen an increase in the number of
itchy dogs in spring, which might make sense as pollens from all the new growth and molds after rains become more common. Many humans who don’t usually have allergies may suffer from allergy symptoms in spring, including swollen glands, sore throats, and runny noses. For dogs, they might have symptoms like itchy or runny eyes, but more
often, environmental irritants seem to result in itching and
inflammation of the skin. Sprinkling dried nettles on their food is a safe and easy way
of helping them out with their discomfort while you work to support their body to make them less susceptible to allergic responses. They have nutritive
benefits as well! Nettles are actually a common ingredient in human allergy relief formulas.
We have small bags of organic dried nettles for $.99,
and we can sell you greater quantities if you find that it's helpful to
your pets. Sprinkle a little on their food each time they eat, working
up to about a tsp per 20# of pet. We’ve seen amazing results! (Nettles
can lower blood sugar, so if you have a diabetic animal, you might want
to test more often, or consult with your holistic vet about its use).
Other useful products to help the symptoms and often the causes of allergies:
- Skin-supporting supplements like fish oil can help curb inflammation and help to heal and protect the skin from the inside.
- Answers’ Fermented Goat’s Milk helps to support the immune system
by providing a rich source of of probiotics and is
rich in fatty acids like C.L.A. which help to heal the gut lining (where most of the immune system lives) and the skin.
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| | Lamb Horns!
Like deer and elk antlers, lamb horns for dogs have a serious fun factor – dogs love chewing them! Plus, they’re a good source of protein, iron, zinc, and other nutrients. But unlike antlers and even Buffalo horns, lamb horns are fully digestible making them ideal for safe chewing. They’re also an optimal dental chew as they're safer for teeth than harder chews, while still being a long lasting chew. Iceland Plus sources their lamb horns from small and family-owned farms that raise Icelandic lambs for human consumption. Icelandic lambs enjoy a free-range life, roaming pastures, feeding on wild grass and moss and drinking Iceland’s mineral-rich water that is renowned for being the cleanest water in the world.
Dogs love them!
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Free Cheese!
Answers brand has given us some incredible coupons to share with you for one of the most amazing treats we've ever carried! Many of you know and love one of our very favorite products in the store, the Answers cultured goat's milk. And many of you might give cheese to your dogs and cats as a special reward at home. Answers has made a terrific cultured goats milk cheese in three superfood flavors: Turmeric, Spirulina, and Ginger! With over 1 billion probiotics per treat and only 19 calories, these are a healthy guilt-free way to deliver nutrients and gut support in a treat that will blow their little minds. They start with grass-fed, organically-raised, truly raw goat cheese, resulting in a uniquely delicious and healthy treat. These treats are are teeming with protein, healthy fats, and beneficial bacteria. They're so good, they’re sure to fool your four-legged best friend into thinking they got away with something. For a limited time and while supplies last, these treats, normally priced at $12.99, can be free to you to try! Honestly, they are legitimately delicious - you may have a hard time sharing them with your dog or cat. Find them in the freezer!
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| | Coming Very Soon!
Vital Essentials Raw Foods!
Many of you love the Vital Essentials crunchy freeze dried treats (What? You haven’t tried tripe treats for dogs - amazingly not stinky yet with all of the wonderful health benefits of green tripe, or rabbit bites, duck bites, etc in a great training treat size? Your kitties aren’t getting freeze dried organ meats or tiny freeze dried minnows? They’re missing out!). Some of you have discovered the amazing Raw Bar freeze dried chews for dogs (Turkey Wings! Salmon Rolls! Turkey Necks, Duck Necks, and Chicken Necks (good for cats too!), Bully sticks and more!) Their deliciousness will knock your dog's socks off, and they’re even appropriate for dogs who have had tooth problems and are missing out on the benefits of a good chew session. We’ve been wanting to bring in their raw foods for years, but we couldn’t figure out how to fit another freezer onto the floor. After some creative rearranging of furniture and products, we managed to do it.
Vital Essentials foods are fairly simple, containing muscle meat, bones, and organs in a variety of single protein formulas. Raw foods in general are supremely useful for pets with allergies, but occasionally there are some animals that, though they have some degree of relief, they simply can’t get farther. Sometimes removing all vegetable matter just does the trick! It also makes a fabulous elimination diet for people trying to figure out what their animal might be allergic to. An elimination diet is a diet pruned down to very simple ingredients, including a novel protein (one they might not have had before). If this simple diet helps to relieve the symptoms, then new ingredients can be added back one at a time to test for sensitivities. It’s difficult to do with many traditional diets, and extra ingredients can complicate the picture. These will be a very helpful tool for our customers dealing with pets with chronic food sensitivities. The palatability of these formulas for cats and picky dogs is amazing! We are also excited to be stocking their raw tripe patties, which will be a fabulous whole food addition to any dog’s diet. Look forward to an article in next month’s newsletter about the magical nutritional powers of green tripe!
These formulas are balanced due to the variety and quantity of organ meats used. In a wolf pack, the alpha wolf feeds first and instinctively seeks the vital organs – heart, liver, lungs, kidney, and tripe which are all “chock full” of vital, essential nutrients. What about vegetables? Carnivores in the wild consume herbivores, indirectly receiving all of the vitamins and nutrients of fruits and vegetables consumed by their prey, in a partially digested form, which makes it easier for them to access those nutrients. The green tripe plays a good role in providing those green nutrients, along with lots of naturally occurring digestive enzymes.
All of the proteins are USA grass fed and grass finished, and the formulas are made in their own incredible kitchens in Green Bay, WI with exacting standards for quality and safety. They are a USDA certified and inspected pet food facility (there’s a permanent USDA office right in the facility) with a comprehensive HACCP Food Safety Program developed in collaboration with Kansas State University. Their employees are HACCP and OSHA trained and certified employees receiving a “Superior Rating” from biannual FDA audits.
Our only challenge is that they have become such a popular food that they’ve been suffering from some shortages recently, so we’re hoping our new freezer looks nice and full when you see it.
The food won’t be in the store this weekend for the sale, but we hope it will be very soon. Stay tuned! |
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Please Welcome Charity and Liz!
It’s been a big year for new staff at Green Dog, as a few of our wonderful long-time employees have moved on to new opportunities. We’re so lucky to have found such fantastic new employees who are so diligently applying their existing knowledge and skills while learning new things here at Green Dog. It takes a long time to train in this job, and not everyone can do it. Though at first glance it may look like all puppies and toys, most of what we do is nutritional consultation, helping to support animals with chronic health issues; offering behavioral tips; giving advice on things like the socialization/introduction of new animals, surgical recovery, hospice care, etc, and providing emotional support for our customers managing these issues; (all in a very busy store!) Vets send customers to us because they know we can guide them with nutritional support for what ails them, and we mean to live up to that expectation. Luckily there are lots of puppies! Both of these new employees joined us at the beginning of December, and we thank them for working so hard to learn new things in the midst of our busy holiday season!
Charity was a customer of ours before she was an employee. She was a busy and well-loved pet sitter who wanted part time hours and we were short-staffed facing a busy Christmas season, but once she joined us we quickly convinced her to become a full time employee. She was a biology major in college which comes in handy at the store, and has proven herself to be detail oriented and a very motivated learner who is completely devoted to her assistance dog in training, a pit mix called Sophia. She's fascinated with animal nutrition and you can see it in her dog - she was a pretty dog when Charity started at the store, but now Sophia is an absolute gleaming model for whole food nutrition. It's been fun to see how many of our customers already know Charity from her pet sitting business and her frequent visits to Fern Hill with the very social Sophia.
Liz comes to us with a solid background, having worked in similar holistic pet supply stores in Denver. Luckily she happened to be moving to Portland, and we snapped her up. We’ve been impressed at her already fairly comprehensive knowledge - she was able to step right in and be helpful from the start. She and her lab mix Stormy have been slowly getting to know Portland. Fun Fact: Liz recently got the lead role in the Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Clinton Street Theater. Go see her as Rocky on a Saturday night!
Both of these lovely ladies have truly been a positive addition to the store, and we hope you will welcome them and say hello if you haven’t met them already. |
| | Green Tip!
You might be glad to know that we’ve uncovered some drop off sites for recycling soft plastic in our area! (baggies, produce bags, bread bags, toilet paper wrap, etc). You might remember that China stopped accepting mixed plastics due to contamination issues, and just like that, our ability to recycle many kinds of plastic dried up overnight. (More about that here). We heard about a site that helps you find drop-off locations for soft plastics in the area, and then did some more digging to make sure it was true. We were skeptical, as we'd heard recent stories on NPR about what a backlog Portland still has of recycled material with no buyers, and that they might have to landfill a lot of the curbside plastic they've collected. Turns out, there are processing capabilities for film in the US that have always bought retailer films (and those returned by customers). The type of materials that are backlogged in Portland have always been shipped to China and that’s why there is such urgency to find a solution. Not all plastic is the same to a market or processor— much of the material that China was taking was mixed bales of several types of plastic. There are few markets for that in the US, thus the backlog. However, segregated materials like film, PET bottles and HDPE bottles/containers, because they each are a single resin and collected separately, and so are easier to market here in the US. This is great news! So, here's a link for where you can find a drop off spot in your area! (the closest one to the store is Safeway on NE Fremont St.) Don't miss the link describing examples of the type of plastic you can bring to recycle. Make sure it's clean and dry, and if you're unsure of whether you can recycle it, leave it out. We don't want to lose this recycling opportunity due to contamination.
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| | Neighborhood News!
- The space that used to be Pollo Norte on NE 42nd will soon be a Taco Pedaler! Once a mobile bicycle powered food cart, they opened a very cute brick and mortar on NE Broadway, serving delicious food made with locally sourced natural ingredients. Now we'll have one in our neighborhood! Their soft opening will be Feb 20th.
- The old Fabric Depot building at 69th(?) and Sandy will soon be another Rerun! Many of you likely know of the nifty Rerun resale shop on NE Fremont and NE 7th. This new location will give them another space to sell furniture that they don't have to move out of the building and into the parking lot every day like they have to do now. Opening soon.
- Loose Leash walking class at Doggy Business Sunday, February 25, 12:30-1:30 There’s a big difference between walking with your dog and being walked by him. If you’re experiencing the latter, and all the frustration and aching muscles that come with it, this clinic is for you. They’ll work on teaching your dog to enjoy walking by your side and teach them to tune into you when distractions like other dogs or people come into view.
- The beautiful space that used to be Ponos restaurant next to the Hollywood Theater will now be an Asian food restaurant called Saima serving Thai, Sushi, and Chinese dishes. Now open!
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Thank You so much for your support!
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| | | | Located in Beaumont Village 4327 NE Fremont Street, Portland, Oregon 97213
Telephone: 503-528-1800
© 2007 - 2015 Green Dog Pet Supply. Green Dog Pet Supply® is a Registered Trademark. |
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