The Dog Bowl Pet Supply and BARF Raw Food Blog

By DAVID COLMAN
Published: July 27, 2006

YES, it’s July. The sun’s shining. People are heading to the beach or just out, to catch some UV, drink some Mountain Dew and indulge in some good clean summer fun.

But what is that little black cloud drifting across the sun? Will it ruin our picnic, like ants or a motorcycle gang? Heaven protect us ... a skull? Not one, but a sea of them! Ah, but ere it comes near, it is clear: it will barely cast a pall.

If it was not clear a year or two ago, when the skull motif cropped up on battered Herman-Melville-meets-Edgar-Allan-Poe T-shirts made by Rogues Gallery, on costly cashmere sweaters by Lucien Pellat-Finet, on the perforated uppers of the wingtips made by the men’s wear line Barker Black, it is now. What only recently seemed clever and stylish — I’m wearing a skull! I’m baaaaad! — has shifted into overdrive, if not overkill.

Beyond the sea of skull wear — belts, T-shirts, ties — there are dog collars & dog leashes, umbrellas, sneakers, swimsuits, packing tape, party lights, even a skull-branded line of hand tools. One company has made a skull toilet brush and caddy (with a molded-plastic femur bone for a handle). This summer Damien Hirst announced that he will make a life-size skull, cast in platinum and adorned with 8,000 diamonds.

If it seems harmless, well, there you have it. With the full force of the American consumer marketing establishment behind it, the skull has lost virtually all of its fearsome outsider meaning. It has become the Happy Face of the 2000’s. When the mid-1980’s proto-Goth group the Ministry sang “Every Day Is Halloween,” this was not quite what they had in mind.
“This is such a huge gripe of mine,” said Voltaire, a musician in New York and the author of “What is Goth?” (Weiser Books, 2004), a kind of “Preppy Handbook” for the living dead. “Throughout hundreds of years of history, what the skull has communicated is, ‘I am dangerous.’ That’s where the irony is. You can buy dangerous for $11.99 at Kmart.”

For years Voltaire was the happy owner of several skull-motif sweaters hand-knit by an eccentric Englishwoman. He recounted that a woman stopped him the other day on an East Village street to admire the one he was wearing. “She said: ‘I love your sweater. Is it Ralph Lauren?’ Then I found out that Ralph Lauren has a whole store that sells skull stuff.”

Well, not for long he doesn’t. At Rugby, the chain of collegiate-style stores Mr. Lauren rolled out only last year, the shirts are embroidered not with a polo player but a skull. However, the logo is already being scaled back (though not dropped entirely), a spokesman said.

“It’s a pity it’s so commercial now,” Mr. Pellat-Finet said. For more than five years, he has splashed oversize skull graphics — sporting, say, Mickey Mouse ears — on his sweaters. “Maybe Wal-Mart will replace their smiley-face with a tête de mort,” he added, using the French term for skull. “It’s lost its meaning.”

Well, it still has one meaning for Mr. Pellat-Finet, whose latest skull sweaters are embellished with Afros and top hats, among other images. Asked if he will stop using the motif, he responded with a chuckle: “No, no, no. It’s my best seller!”

Other designers appear to have similarly mixed feelings: on one hand, they are confronted with skull saturation; on the other, skulls are ringing the dinner bell louder than ever. Alexander McQueen’s fall men’s wear show did not play up skull imagery on the runway — surely the critics would be bored — but there are plenty back in the showroom, on sports coats, polo shirts and trousers. His $210 skull-print silk scarf is one of the best-selling items on the men’s designer floor at Barneys New York.

“We’ve sold 400 since May,” said Timothy Elliott, a Barneys spokesman. “We sell them as fast as they come in.”

Many people point to the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise as fuel for skullmania. But the skull’s ascent to the logo throne has more to it and behind it than a Disney marketing campaign. Reminiscent of the vogue for angels a decade or more ago — remember how the little winged creatures were everywhere? — the skull neatly encapsulates a cultural moment in terms both precise and vague.

It is also the product of potent economic forces. The proliferation of skulls has paralleled the rise of the Hot Topic clothing chain. Begun 17 years ago in Southern California, Hot Topic is a 680-stores-in-50-states phenomenon based on the simple idea of selling music-related clothing and accessories — punk studded wristbands, heavy-metal T-shirts and lately, lots and lots of skulls — to suburban teenagers who would otherwise have to visit an urban clothing boutique for such goodies.

“Have we brought skulls to the mall?” said Cindy Levitt, the vice president for marketing at Hot Topic. “Absolutely. But skulls are a rock icon. We’ve always had them. We see this as more of a fashion trend.”

Still, Ms. Levitt agreed that the skull is not what it used to be. “It’s no longer threatening,” she said. “Anyone will wear a skull now.”

The inventory at Hot Topic, which caters to music fans of all stripes, points up another facet of the skull’s allure, its vagueness. Cherished as an icon by several rock genres, it communicates many potential meanings without specifying any single one: the skull as style hedge.

“The skull is all-purpose,” said Sasha Frere-Jones, a music critic at The New Yorker. “It simultaneously refers to horror movies, to the Misfits and, by extension, all punk rock, and to a generalized culture of blackness and spookiness and the larger, mall-Goth culture.” So, he said, “if you’re really at heart a Goth, but you have friends who are into metal and punk, you can rock the skulls and be friends with all of them.”

Or in fashionspeak: skulls — fun, flexible, easy, breezy!

It is a different way of thinking of one of history’s most formidable images, seen in thousands of years of art and a symbol integral to Mexican culture. Robert Rosenblum, a professor of fine arts at New York University, explained that the skull is central to the vanitas, a genre of still-life painting in which temporal pleasures are juxtaposed with a skull. “The vanitas includes the skull as a reminder that death is everywhere,” he said, “as a cutting edge to too much contentment with the here and now.”

Perhaps the Manhattan hostess who bought a $4,140 set of 12 sterling-silver skull place-card holders by the jeweler Douglas Little wanted to convey that message to her guests. (Supercute touch: the place cards are clenched between the hinged jaws.) Or maybe not; she declined to be interviewed.

The skull as memento mori is important to Philip Crangi, a fashionable jeweler in Manhattan known for a pared-down modernized take on 19th-century morbidity. “I use it in a Victorian or Latin sense,” he said, “where it meant that life is short and death is the great equalizer, so stop your whining and get on with it.”

In his view skulls are not less threatening because a chic jeweler is casting them in precious metal but because, in an age when slasher films are top grossers, death itself has become less threatening. “In the 19th century, when people died, they were laid out in the living room,” he said. “I think we’ve lost that connection to death.”

For others, the skull is about youth, not death, losing its sting. Banks Violette, an artist whose fascination with heavy metal imagery won him a show at the Whitney Museum last summer, is never happy to see cherished symbols of teen angst treated blithely.

“It’s always an inward flinch,” he said. “People create this little world where they try to negotiate their own sense of alienation, then it gets pulled apart.” He added that because such symbols are associated with youth culture, they are often viewed as superficial and treated cynically by companies that market to young people.

Yet as consumers young and old tire of being marketed to, the skull appears to offer a kind of antidote: the ultimate unbrand, one that belongs to no one. Curiously, then, what began as an outlaw anti-logo may as well be viewed as the death rattle of an underground aesthetic.
“The skull was one of the last frontiers,” said Rick Owens, the designer known for his glamorized Goth style. “There’s no way to make yourself edgy anymore.”

Even so, he is planning on selling skulls — real ones — in “natural and black” in his new Paris boutique. “Skulls are kind of timeless,” he said, deadpan as it gets.

Ah, well. Eat, drink and be trendy. Tomorrow we die.

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 26, 2006

Children who get obesity-related diabetes face a much higher risk of kidney failure and death by middle age than people who develop diabetes as adults, a study suggests. The research, in The Journal of the American Medical Association, lends support to warnings obesity-related ills are on the verge of shortening the average life span in the United States. The study involved Pima Indians in Arizona. Of the 1,865 participants with Type 2 diabetes, 96 developed it in childhood. During at least 15 years of follow-up, 15 of them, or 16 percent, developed end-stage kidney failure or died from diabetic kidney disease by age 55. That compared with 133, or 8 percent, of those who developed diabetes after age 20.

In order to take care of your canine or feline, you need to take care of his canines…

An important aspect of your dog’s health that is commonly overlooked is in the realm of dog dental care. Beyond any shadow of doubt, dog dental care is something every responsible dog owner needs to understand and participate in. Dog dental care at home and at the vet is essential for all dogs, especially for smaller dogs. In smaller dogs, the bone that holds the teeth is thinner, which increases the risk of gum disease.

Dog dental care is something that should be done on a regular basis; most veterinarians and breeder say that dog dental care should be done daily. If it isn’t, your dog faces many problems.
Common symptoms of dental problems in dogs include:

• Red, swollen gums
• Bleeding gums
• Drooling
• Bloody saliva
• Tartar buildup at the gum line
• Broken teeth
• Bad breath
• Loss of appetite

The key to proper dog dental care is prevention. The first thing you want to prevent is plaque. If you can prevent plaque from forming, or remove it while still soft, you can prevent most dental problems. Food, bacteria, and saliva can accumulate and stick to the tooth surface, forming a soft plaque. If this soft plaque buildup continues, solutions of chalk-like material will form a hardened calculus on the surface of the tooth. If left unchecked, plaque and calculus buildup can eventually cause gingivitis – inflammation the gums –and periodontitis – inflammation of the lining of the tooth socket. Without proper treatment, the teeth will become infected and may fall out. The infection resulting from these conditions may spread to other parts of the body, such as the kidneys or valves of the heart.

There are two ways to prevent this from happening and provide proper dog dental care:
Tooth Brushing

Tooth brushing is the best way to provide proper dog dental care. Many dog owners brush their dogs' teeth regularly. You should be brushing your dog's teeth at least twice a week and it's not as difficult as you might think. The first thing to do is get the proper toothpaste. You can’t use the same toothpaste we use. The toothpastes we use are designed to spit out and dogs can’t spit - they will swallow it. When dogs swallow toothpaste designed for humans, it causes stomach upset. The best toothpastes for dog dental care contain enzymes that help control plaque and fluoride that help control bacteria. Try to avoid products with baking soda, detergents, or salt. The next thing to do is get an appropriate toothbrush. The ideal dog toothbrush will have a long handle, an angled head, and extra soft bristles. You might also consider using a finger toothbrush that fits over the tip of your finger. When you brush your dog’s teeth, use a gentle oval motion and try to concentrate on the outside of the upper teeth.

Dental Chews: Although brushing is the best form of dog dental care, chew toys are great alternative when regular brushing is hard to do. A good chew toy, like the kind we carry, will be enjoyable for your dog to chew on and will help remove plaque. As your dog chews on the toy, it will scrape particles from the teeth and help keep them clean.

Once again, proper dog dental care is an important part of your dog's overall health.At The Dog Bowl, nothing is more important than your pets’ health. For more information about dog dental care, call us at 713-529-0334 or toll-free at 1-877-4RAW-DOG.1-877-4RAW-DOG.

Society as a whole is becoming more health conscious over the years, and this trend is affecting pets, as well. Therefore, the market for dog health food has become vast.

There are options out there that may not be right for your pet. We love our pets and want to ensure that they are as healthy as possible, which will enable them to live a long, happy life. The raw dog food diet is a product that provides all the nutrients and minerals your pet needs to maintain his or her health.

Urinary tract diseases affect all breeds and all age groups. Cats previously treated for FLUTD are very susceptible to and are at the highest risk for recurrence. Neutered males are also very high risks due to the physiology of the male cat’s narrower urethra. Stressful situations such as weather changes, moving to a new home or introducing a new pet into the home have been linked to higher incidences of urinary tract disease.

Because FLUTD is not really a single disease, there can be a number of factors that cause the condition. Urinary tract irritation may be caused by infections, tumors, urethral plugs, uroliths (a pebble or stone), or crystals in the tract. Feline Urolithiasis refers to the formation of stones or crystals of magnesium and ammonium phosphate, called struvites, that form and accumulate in the cat’s bladder. These crystals can block the flow of urine, especially in male cats. If the flow is completely shut down, waste products usually eliminated through urine can accumulate in the body. Kidney failure, coma and death can result.

We have a product that indicates your cat may be sick: Scientific Cat Litter.

Did you know that over 90 percent of cats become sick or die because of liver or kidney issues?

Pet Ecology is changing the litter category with our globally patented SCIENTIFIC PROFESSIONAL CAT LITTER with SICKNESS INDICATOR. This revolutionary litter helps detect Feline Lower Urinary Tract Disease (FLUTD), which is responsible for millions of veterinary visits each year. It is designed to be an Early Warning System to help cat owners determine if their cat might be developing this life-threatening problem. And its super absorbency, superior clumping and flushing, low dust and tracking, and patented odor neutralizing system make it the only cat litter your customers will ever want. Totally Eco-Friendly, Scientific Professional is designed to meet the highest standards of cats and their people.
Scientific Professional’s Patented Sickness Indicator shows cat owners when their cat’s system is out of balance and may be the first sign of infection. The darker the litter clump, the more out of balance the cat’s urinary tract is. The convenient Indicator Chart on the package helps them determine how serious the imbalance is and when they may need to contact their veterinarian for consultation.
Scientific Professional™ Cat Litter has everything a cat owner wants in a litter:

• Patented Sickness Indicator—alerts owners to possible urinary tract infections
• Ultra Light Weight—70% lighter than clay, our 3 lbs. bag is the equivalent of 21 lbs. of clay litter
• Clumping—forms clumps that break up when disposed of in the commode
• Flushable—safe for all septic systems, flushes clean, doesn’t cling to the commode bowl
• Eco-Friendly—breaks down, doesn’t contribute to land fill problems
• Non-Toxic—made from components that are safe for all cats and kittens
• Germicide 10™—superior odor control neutralizes litter box odors
• Non-Scented—no perfumes to irritate cats