Oak Ridge Feed

10/23/2025

10/22/2025

Need some cool cat toys or doggie bandanas? Kristy's Kitties has got you covered!

10/18/2025

TODAY!

🎃 Come enjoy this beautiful Saturday with us at our Trunk or Treat! Bring your pets in costume for some spooky fun. We will have treats for everyone (two-legged and four-legged alike)! 👻🐾

10/01/2025

09/19/2025

Apoquel update: Using reports from NC State, the Veterinary Information Network News Service says toxicologists and emergency care practitioners are trying to spread the word about Apoquel Chewable's strong allure to pets to ensure that the people giving the medication make a concerted effort to safeguard it.

"In the U.S., the FDA received 195 reports of accidental overdoses of Apoquel Chewable in dogs and 70 reports in cats from June 1, 2023, to Sept. 1, 2025."

Learn more:

https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=12856341&f5=1

Our previous story: https://news.cvm.ncsu.edu/alert-nc-state-seeing-cats-severely-ill-from-ingesting-chewable-allergy-medicine-for-dogs/

09/17/2025

Update - Adopted!!!

Today we need everyone to share for Eleanor! She is currently at the Anderson County Animal Shelter. Eleanor is a sweet fluffy princess that wants to be your one and only baby. She doesn't get along with other cats, but loves people. Eleanor deserves the chance to shine, but shelter life is not for her. She is currently in the back room to keep her calm, but the chances of her being seen and adopted there are quite slim. This is a tiny shelter that is filled to the brim with kittens, so a black cat needing a single pet home, in a back room cage isn't going to be seen unless we share her far and wide.

If you are interested in adopting please go directly to the shelter during business hours. Ask the awesome staff to see her as she is not immediately obvious as she is in the room behind the regular cat room with the door to the dog runs. Anderson County Shelter is located at 1480 Blockhouse Valley Rd, Clinton. According to Google their hours are
Wednesday Closed
Thursday 9 AM–12 PM
1–4 PM
Friday 9 AM–12 PM
1–4 PM
Saturday 10 AM–1 PM
Sunday Closed
Monday 9 AM–12 PM
1–4 PM
Tuesday 9 AM–12 PM
1–4 PM

06/23/2025

Don't forget our feathered friends during this heatwave! Offer a fresh, delicious seed cylinder from Mr. Bird, along with a dish of cool water, and watch them flock to it!

06/14/2025

If you love your cats, please keep them inside and on a reliable product to control ticks!

Bobcat Fever: Confirmed case of the deadly feline disease in the Tennessee Valley | https://tinyurl.com/3a6xrnfu

06/13/2025

06/04/2025

So many of you who are struggling with your dogs are shooting yourselves in the foot by what you’re doing more so than what you’re not doing. You want a calm, relaxed, well behaved dog, but you’re doing countless things which work directly against your goals.

So here’s a quick “Stop” list of the most common mistakes I see owners doing that they need to stop in order to make room for the good to start.

Let the outrage begin! 🤣

1/ Stop using food to train. Food creates arousal and excitement, and if a calm and relaxed dog is your training goal, that’s not the way.

2/ Stop the incessant use of “loaded”releases. This has become wildly common as sport dog work has creeped into pet dog training. The constant use of releases, like “Break!”, “Free!”, “Yes!” from commands to rewards to the next command create predictive sequences that imbue the entire sequence (from command to release) with anticipatory arousal.

3/ Stop using excitement when your goal is calmness. This should be an obvious one to avoid, but it’s one of the most common and undermining mistakes owners make. Excited owners who want their dogs to be “happy” drown their dogs in arousal-inducing excitement via verbal tone and body language. This will never create a calm and relaxed dog.

4/ Stop prioritizing constant motion and doing. So many owners assume that for dog training to occur, the dog must be active, doing, performing — when in reality the greatest and most challenging skill most dogs could acquire is the ability to be still, calm, relaxed, and doing absolutely nothing.

5/ Stop constantly talking to your dog. Constant verbal input will keep your dog constantly stimulated and aroused. Instead, talk far less and watch your dog finally relax.

6/ Stop constantly petting your dog. Constant touch is usually riding shotgun to the constant talker, and creates the same outcome. Stop the constant touching and watch your dog finally relax.

7/ Stop constantly trying to occupy your dog with games, toys, activities. This has become quite the unhealthy fad. Under the guise of “enrichment” (and selfish pleasure) we find owners drowning their dogs in puzzles, toys, and activities to mentally “stimulate” and “fulfill” them. This constant game of “Let’s stimulate our dogs” does just that, and never teaches your dog how to actually be calm and relaxed.

8/ Stop avoiding corrections that are necessary because they feel bad. I get it. We all hate having to discipline our dogs, but when they’re being pushy, impolite, demanding, overly-aroused, or just plain jerks, withholding negative consequences which will stop the unwanted behavior not only robs your dog of vital information about how to properly behave, it also ensures your dog never has access to a calm, relaxed, peace-filled mindset where they can be their best selves.

9/ (Bonus) Stop trying to out-exercise your hyper, manic, bouncing of the walls dog who actually needs to learn how to be still, relaxed, calm, well-behaved, and have an “Off-Switch”. This all too common approach simply creates an athlete who requires more and more exercise in order to temporarily be calm and relaxed — but teaches none of the actual calming skills or manners dogs need.

PS, Yes, all of the above are terribly typical mistakes owners make. Yes, I’ve made this black and white to make a point. Yes, there’s nuance and exceptions, yes there’s a smart and healthy balance that can be applied, and yes there’s a time and place for most if not all of the above — depending on context and goals. The point of this post is precisely the lack of nuance and smart, strategic application of all of the above. Pet owners almost always want a more calm, relaxed, well-behaved dog — not the opposite — and so if they were to stop doing all of the above, they’d be far closer to achieving their goals.

05/22/2025

No, it does NOT.

LOUDER👏 FOR 👏 THE 👏 PUPPERS 👏 IN 👏 THE 👏 BACK

"In the words of Dr Richard Patton, who has a PhD in Animal Nutrition & 40 years of experience formulating canine diets, 'there is no credible scientific evidence for [grain-free foods causing DCM], let alone proof. If there is a link between diet and DCM in dogs, it is far more likely to be a matter of protein quality, amount, and specific amino acid amount.'"

"Why are you still rating grain-free dog food? It causes Dilated Cardiomyopathy!" ...or does it? 🤔❓

First up, here’s how this controversy started...

In 2018, the FDA started receiving a spike in reports of dogs with Dilated Cardiomyopathy (aka DCM). This is a disease that causes weakened heart muscle contractions, and it can lead to heart failure and early death. Of course, none of us want our dogs to get DCM! 💔

So, when the FDA announced that 90% of reported cases were in dogs eating a grain-free diet, and that 93% of them were eating legume-rich dog food, containing large amounts of lentils & peas, a lot of worried pet parents switched away from these foods. 😳

This is where a lot of people - even vets - have stayed to this day.

The problem is that, when the FDA investigated whether there was a causal link between grain-free diets and DCM, or legume-rich dog foods and DCM, it couldn’t find one. This is why, in 2022, it announced that, after 4 years of study, it had "found no firm link between diet and dilated cardiomyopathy." ❌

But what about those high numbers of dogs eating grain-free foods with DCM? Shouldn’t that be enough to keep you from feeding grain-free foods to your pets? 👀

There are three things to say about this.

First, the reported correlation between DCM and grain-free diets may be misrepresenting the facts. This is because vets were encouraged to report only cases of DCM in dogs eating grain-free diets. 🩺

This is a bit like trying to find out whether watching cartoons causes low IQ by asking teachers to report only cases of kids with low IQ who watch cartoons. 🧠

You see the problem… 🔎 by asking teachers to report in this way, you miss both: kids with low IQs who don’t watch cartoons, and; kids with high IQs who do watch cartoons.

In the same way, vets may have missed cases of DCM in dogs fed grain-inclusive diets (which is easy to do as it can be hard to diagnose). And of course, they won’t have reported the many dogs on grain-free diets in their care who never developed DCM.

In other words, the correlation may be an illusion.

Second, even if the correlation between certain diets and DCM is not an illusion, correlation is not the same as causation. 📈❌

To see this, suppose we found that all and only kids who watch cartoons have low IQs. That’s a correlation. But it’s not the same as the cartoons causing low IQ. It may be that the cartoon-watching kids all eat unhealthy snacks while watching their cartoons, and that it’s the unhealthy snacks that cause low IQ.

This is important because, if you just ban cartoons, you won’t prevent low IQ! 😅

In the same way, if grain-free foods are not the cause of DCM in dogs, avoiding them won’t stop DCM.

Third, some people speak as if it’s easy for pet parents to forego grain-free foods “just in case”. However, not only does this rule out some extremely high quality dog foods, but some dogs do better on grain-free diets, especially those with sensitive stomachs. So why rule grain-free out if there’s no good reason to do so? 🤔

Ok, so what’s the upshot?👀

Our position at Dog Food Advisor is that, since there is no proven causal link between DCM and grain-free diets, we do not downgrade any dog food recipes purely for being grain-free. We believe that taking any other approach, given the lack of evidence of a problem, would be simply unfair. In the same way as it would be unfair to ban cartoons without a proven link to low childhood IQ.

In the words of Dr Richard Patton, who has a PhD in Animal Nutrition & 40 years of experience formulating canine diets, “there is no credible scientific evidence for [grain-free foods causing DCM], let alone proof. If there is a link between diet and DCM in dogs, it is far more likely to be a matter of protein quality, amount, and specific amino acid amount.” 🥩🥼

If after all this, you still feel that avoiding grain-free foods is right for your dog, that is, of course, 100% up to you. We’re here to support pet parents in making informed choices about what they feed to their pets, we’re not here to make those choices for you. 😀

There are actually many more things that can be said about this issue. If you’re interested, you can find lots more information on our website. Start here: 🔗 https://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/canine-nutrition/truth-grain-free-dog-food/

04/06/2025

It’s fascinating that one simple — and when thought about, wildly obvious — tweak in your strategic approach to addressing your dog’s behavior issues could have such a profound impact on your success.

Whether it’s trash diving, p**p eating, getting into the cat box, door rushing, jumping on people, counter surfing, attacking the vacuum, fence fighting, and even reactivity — most owners allow themselves to be stuck in perpetual reaction mode, rather than set-up mode.

And reaction mode means you’ll almost always be late to the party. You’ll either catch the in-process or tail-end of the behavior and be scrambling, fumbling, stressing to address it — and due to all these factors will be anything but effective — or you’ll miss the behavior altogether and only find the evidence of the crime.

But if instead we decide we’re going to set-up the problem behavior, we’ll be the ones who are ahead of the curve. We’ll be relaxed, ready, have the tools/strategies we need to address the issue ready to roll, and we’ll be ready to strike at the perfect moment.

This is what smart trainers do all day long. They set things up so that they can succeed, and thus so can the dog. The isn’t to be mean or unfair, it’s simple: if you want to resolve behavior issues, the worst way is to be caught off-guard trying to react, the best way is to be the one who sets it all up and thus is able to properly address issues.

Go through the list above, or use your own list, and then simply think about how you could set these situations up, and how you could best address them. The right tools and training make this far, far easier, but you can get your McGyver on and find some creative solutions as well.