Tag Archives: Europe

New formula

Posted on July 2, 2025 | Leave a comment

In my post Reading Labels, I shared the notification label from our bag of Purina Pro Plan Gastrointestinal dog food. The food we have relied on for over two years is changing!

The reply from Purina says: “Ensuring the safety and quality of our pet food remains our top priority. While the product is now manufactured in Thailand instead of Europe, the benefits of this diet remain unchanged. With a new manufacturing location, there will be new sourcing for raw ingredients and slight recipe variations. Please be assured the new formula continues to deliver the same efficacy and benefits. We recommend a gradual transition to the new formula to support digestive tolerance. If you have concerns, please consult your vet for tailored advice.“

Let’s compare ingredients…

ORIGINAL FORMULA

Rice, Corn, Pea protein, dried poultry protein, dried beet pulp, digest, soya protein, coconut oil, minerals, pork fat, monoglycerides, soya oil, fish oil; with nutritional additives Vit A, Vit D3, Vit E, Iron (II) sulphate monohydrate, calcium iodate anhydrous, copper (11) sulphate pentahydrate, manganese sulfphate monohydrate, zinc sulphate monohydrate, sodium selenite, antioxidants

NEW FORMULA

Brewers rice, whole grain corn, chicken meal, corn protein, chicken digest, minerals, vitamins, amino acids (Including calcium, phosphorus, sodium, chloride, potassium, magnesium, zinc, iron, manganese, copper, selenium, iodine, vitamin A, vitamin B1, vitamin B2, pantothenic acid, biotin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, niacin, folic acid, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin E, choline, L-lysine, L-threonine, L-tryptophan) poultry oil, botanical oil (1%) (source of MCT) fish oil, glyceryl monosterate, prebiotic fibre (0.5%) (source of inulin) colostrum

I will follow my own advice to clients and transition to this food over a minimum of 10 days (and I’m planning longer than that). As a pet parent, however, I’m holding my breath that this new formula doesn’t upset Sox’s inflammatory bowel disease. Time will tell.

Kathleen Crisley is Fear-Free certified dog massage therapist and canine fitness trainer. She has a particular passion for working with dogs and their families to ensure injury prevention and quality of life. She specialises in working with anxious and emotionally damaged dogs. Her mobile practice, The Balanced Dog, is based in Christchurch, New Zealand

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Posted in dog care, dog nutrition and labelling, Dogs

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18,000 years and counting

Posted on November 22, 2013 | 1 comment

Science magazine November issueWolves likely were domesticated by European hunter–gatherers more than 18,000 years ago and gradually evolved into dogs that became household pets, say a research team based at the University of California Los Angeles.

“We found that instead of recent wolves being closest to domestic dogs, ancient European wolves were directly related to them,” said Robert Wayne, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in UCLA’s College of Letters and Science and senior author of the research. “Europe is where the oldest dogs are found.”

The team’s genetic analysis is published 15 November issue of the journal Science.

The researchers studied 10 ancient “wolf-like” animals and eight “dog-like” animals, mostly from Europe. These animals were all more than 1,000 years old, most were thousands of years old, and two were more than 30,000 years old.

The biologists studied the mitochondrial DNA of the animals, which is abundant in ancient remains. By comparing this ancient mitochondrial DNA with the modern mitochondrial genomes of 77 domestic dogs, 49 wolves and four coyotes, the researchers determined that the domestic dogs were genetically grouped with ancient wolves or dogs from Europe — not with wolves found anywhere else in the world or even with modern European wolves. Dogs, they concluded, derived from ancient wolves that inhabited Europe and are now extinct.

Wayne said that that the domestication of predatory wolves likely occurred among ancient hunter–gatherer groups rather than as part of humans’ development of sedentary, agricultural-based communities.

 “The wolf is the first domesticated species and the only large carnivore humans ever domesticated,” Wayne said. “This always seemed odd to me. Other wild species were domesticated in association with the development of agriculture and then needed to exist in close proximity to humans. This would be a difficult position for a large, aggressive predator. But if domestication occurred in association with hunter–gatherers, one can imagine wolves first taking advantage of the carcasses that humans left behind — a natural role for any large carnivore — and then over time moving more closely into the human niche through a co-evolutionary process.”
There is a scientific debate over when dogs were domesticated and whether it was linked with the development of agriculture fewer than 10,000 years ago, or whether it occurred much earlier. In the new Science research, Wayne and his colleagues estimate that dogs were domesticated between 18,000 and 32,000 years ago.

The research was federally funded by the National Science Foundation.

You can read more about the team’s research in this UCLA media release.

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