Pets Magazine January 2016

January, 2016

DO YOU SLEEP WITH YOUR DOG?

NUTRIMENT’S SUZANNE BROCK & HER PETS

DUTCH ANIMAL ARTIST PAULA COLLEWIJN

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My Pets: Nutriment’s Suzanne Brock

Suzanne Brock runs Nutriment, which makes premium raw food for dogs and cats. Nutriment’s meals are packed full of goodies such as human-grade Gressingham duck, fresh salmon from Grimsby, high quality vegetables and ingredients like coconut and salmon oil. Here, we meet Suzanne and her beloved pet dogs George and Buffy.

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Suzanne and husband Peter with George and Buffy

Single mother Suzanne Brock founded Nutriment in June 2013 (www.nutriment.co).

Suzanne’s eclectic career pre-Nutriment included stints as an army officer, a highflying city operative and a project manager for her brother’s earlier venture into pet food.

Nutriment began life with 10,000 square feet of factory space, ten high-spirited staff and a disturbing mound of personal debt.

Today, Nutriment produces in excess of 190 tonnes a month, has three diverse yet joined up ranges (Just, Dinner for Dogs & Nutriment is a pioneer within BARF feeding, Nutriment) accommodating the distinct (biologically appropriate raw food) an ahead- dietary needs of every imaginable dog breed. of-its time pet food provider that recognises three undeniable truths: Employing only human-grade meat, veg and metabolism-friendly ‘super foods’: coconut & salmon oil, kelp, kale, flax seeds and • Dogs were hunting and scavenging long before words like kibble and pellets existed in spirulina. the Oxford Dictionary.

Nutriment is a fledging UK business making a name for itself both at home and abroad.

• Over-processed, cooked foods lose a lot of their original nutritional integrity.

Here we meet Suzanne and her beloved dogs George and Buffy...

• Too many pet foods use poor grade meat and inappropriate cheap fillers.

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WHAT BREEDS ARE GEORGE & BUFFY? George is a very large Chihuahua and Buffy is a Dachshund

HOW LONG HAVE YOU HAD YOUR DOGS? I have had them both since they were puppies.

Buffy is seven and George is four.

HAVE YOU HAD DOGS BEFORE? Yes, I had cats and dogs growing up but my first dog was a gorgeous yellow Lab who I rescued when he was about five or six. I had him for seven years and still feel his loss today.

every day!

WHAT DIFFERENCE DO GEORGE AND BUFFY MAKE TO YOUR LIFE? They make us feel very loved and it would not feel like a

family without them.

WHO LOOKS AFTER THEM WHEN YOU GO ON HOLIDAY? I have always been lucky enough to have a friend to house sit so I do not worry about the dogs when we go away.

WHAT ARE GEORGE & BUFFY’S FAVOURITE THINGS IN THE WORLD? George’s favourite thing is Buffy. Buffy’s is me!

WHAT MAKES DOGS’ SPECIAL & WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THEM AS PETS? I do not feel that my home is complete without a dog. The problem is not to be tempted to DO EITHER GEORGE OR get more as in my job I see so BUFFY HAVE ANY SPECIAL many I want to take home TRICKS OR CHARACTER TRAITS?

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George is incredibly loving and excited about life. He is not very bright and so it always feels that life is full of surprises for him. Buffy is very nonchalant and casual about everything but she is absolutely the boss of us all!

IS THERE ANYTHING YOU FEEL STRONGLY ABOUT REGARDING PET WELFARE? Obviously good nutrition is very important to me and my pets but I also feel that there should be more education about vaccinations, neutering and alternatives to worming and flea treatments.

Dog owners should do as much research as possible into how to raise a healthy pet before making that commitment.

For more information about Nutriment and to order, please visit: http:// www.nutriment.co.

We’re also delighted to announce that Nutriment will be sponsoring our new column starting next month by The Daily Telegraph’s very own vet Pete Wedderburn.

3D Pet Sculptures

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Let Sleeping Dogs Lie!

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Sophie snoozing in the office...

By MARIE CARTER Let's be honest, do you let your pet sleep on, or even in, your bed with you? On average 25% of people in the UK have allowed their pet to share their bed at one time or another, while one-in-six said they would always allow it, figures from an ICM poll suggest. I have a confession to make: I do, and have done for the past several years since Sophie, my calm and wonderful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, was seven months old.

I had barriers at first. Sophie wasn't allowed on the sofa but could be on the leather armchair and she also wasn't allowed upstairs in the bedroom. Throughout her puppyhood, she had her bed downstairs and she seemed to grow used to it. But, Sophie, being intrinsically a pack animal, wanted to sleep with her 'family'. And so, over the course of several months, once she got past her puppy stages of hyperactivity and was properly house-trained, she was allowed upstairs and on to the bed.

has a minor allergy to fur and so will not sleep with her on the bed, which means that he never stays over at my house. It would be too disruptive to boot Sophie out of the bedroom after, after all! Do I feel guilty? Well, perhaps a little. But I love her on my bed, and find sleep more difficult if she is not there.

A lot of polls, including one by Associated Professional Sleep Societies, suggest that letting dogs and cats sleep on your bed can lead to a disturbed night's sleep. Many dogs are their owners' alarm clocks and cats scratch leaving the potential for people to suffer minor injuries while they slumber. However, Sophie is bliss in that she will rise when I do and will never intentionally wake me. At any rate, this only happens when she is having a particularly animated or noisy dream.

Dogs must inhabit a similar dreamscape to us as they are sometimes active and emit a mellow bark in their sleeping state. Chasing a shadowy rabbit across a darkening landscape or finding themselves staring into the jet eyes of a cat, their dreams must vary like ours between pleasant I don't quite remember how it happened but she and nightmarish. Earplugs do help to drown out somehow persuaded me that it would be a good any dreamy barking from Sophie and she is idea. My bed has become her bed, even when much quieter than most people! partners have stayed over the years. My fiancĂŠ

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and can cause lethal damage to the liver, kidney or spleen. A nine-yearold boy from Arizona even caught the plague due to sleeping with his fleainfested cat, according to one report.

Even celebrities have been known to sleep with their pets.

BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil confesses that he and his girlfriend, Swedish IT engineer Susan Nilsson, share their bed with their two-year-old white retriever, Molly. The late Brian Sewell even wrote a book called 'Sleeping With Dogs' about the 17 canines who'd kept him company in his slumber over 80 years.

We conducted a Twitter poll asking firstly whether they slept with their pets. It found that 56% of people sleep with their pets on the bed. I also conducted a straw poll of ten people. Seven of the pet owners happily slept with their pet(s).

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However, most of us can sleep soundly in the knowledge that we're highly unlikely to catch disease from our pets. We're more likely to get woken up in the wee small hours or scratched, either accidentally or purposefully, if we choose to share our bed with a feline.

The final three were adamant that a pet's place was not on their bed. They cited nocturnal disturbance as the main reason followed by 'germs'. While it's certainly true that there have been cases of pets causing infections in people, the chances are minimal for animal lovers in the UK. Dogs, on the other hand, are usually well behaved and will A m o n g t h e m o r e s e r i o u s love to snuggle up to their medical problems animal lovers human pack member, even if risk by snuggling up to their they do get a little animated pets are 'chagas disease', which while chasing a shadowy rabbit is endemic in South and o r f o x t h r o u g h t h e i r Central America and which can dreamscapes. cause life- threatening heart and digestive system disorders.

Cat-scratch disease is another problem. It can come from being licked by infected cats, Pets Magazine

Beautiful Creatures

PAULA COLLEWIJN is an Equine Artist, born in 1978, the Chinese Year of The Horse. She specialises in painting and drawing horses, cats, dogs and wildlife and she often works in a 17th century Baroque style, which renders her subjects beautifully and majestically. We’re delighted to be able to showcase a selection of this important Dutch artist’s work.

©Paula Collewijn

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‘Tommy’ ©Paula Collewijn

Paula explains: “The main emphasis of my collection of Free Expression Artwork is to bring the best of every animal on canvas, the soul and body together, with a strong expression. I am inspired by the work of the old masters, they do fascinate me; Michelangelo, Rembrandt and Theodore Géricault.

“The title which I give to describe my work is ~ Souls of Art ~ ; in other words Animals are Art to me, with a profound soul. I give each work its own title and sometimes a poem which is inspired by the character of the animal and my emotions during the design of the painting.

“I make paintings by assignment in a 17th Century painting technique. The technique gives an authentic characteristic to the work, a portrait with history. The final result is derived by building various layer upon layer of paint which in the end becomes a " live " realistic portrait on canvas. Painted so realistically that each muscle appears to be touchable. The eyes are the mirror of the soul and here I apply intense expression.”

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©Paula Collewijn

‘We hold our breath, before us the morning mist behind us the forest and in the distance the stables...

‘At the horizon the first morning glow, a shudder passes through us and I feel his explosive power...

‘At such a moment I feel one with nature and my horse, my noble friend...

‘For me the symbol of freedom and grace.’

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©Paula Collewijn

Paula is accepting commissions in a variety of techniques including graphite, acrylic and oil paint and in her free expression style. For more information, please visit: www.paulacollewijn.nl

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