Unusual Pet Careers - Pet Nutritionalist

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Amid the latest pet food recalls and recent FDA investigations into pet foods distributed in the US that have been contaminated with melamine, many owners are now considering making their own pet foods instead of relying on the quality of store purchased products.

Many online articles have recommended that owners seek the advice of a pet nutritionalist before changing their pets diet as they must ensure that home prepared foods contain the full range of nutrients required to maintain their pets long term health. Healthy dogs require 38 different nutrients in their daily diet and a healthy cat requires 40.

There are only a handful of pet nutritionalists wordwide - you can find them listed at the American College of Veterinary Nutrition website. The small numer of qualified nutritionalists means that this is a pet care profession that is in high demand. As the interest amongst owners to protect their pets health grows many new pet nutritionalists will be needed to meet consumer demand.

Pet nutritionalists evaluate the pets age, breed, activity level, and exisiting medical conditions to determine the correct daily energy and nutrient intake that is required in their daily diet. They then recommend a mix of foods and supplements to meet these needs.

If you are interested in getting a nutritionalist to evaluate your pets dietary needs you can visit PetDiets.com to receive a written evaluation. They also have some great information on pet nutrition at their site.

A full overview of the requirements and duties of a pet nutritionalist are outlined in an Occupational Profile put together by Association of Graduate Careers Advisory Service in the UK.

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Choosing the Perfect Pet Care Career

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If you’ve been reading my blog and wondering how you can get involved working with pets - you will realize that you have a lot of choices. Each pet career option has different training requirements, time commitments, start-up capital expenses, and skill sets.

Before you dive in there are some questions that you need to answer to determine which pet career fits your personality and life situation.

1) Are you able to start full time or part time?

2) Do you want to be an employee or own your own pet care business?

3) Are you able to dedicate time for initial required training?

4) What skills do you currently possess that can be applied to the new career or business?

5) How much start up capital do you have to invest?

If you are great with a camera maybe pet photography is a good fit - or if you have health and nutritional training you could easily apply this to specialize in pet nutrition. These are just a couple of examples - if you have no skills that you feel you want to apply to a pet business many pet career skills can be picked up easily with on the job training. Many pet care careers are also very flexible and can be started part time and worked around a full time day job.

For a great guide to the different options that are available with details about time, travel, capital, and skills requirements for each career pick up a copy of my ebook - Your New Pet Care Career for just $7.95. It will show you how you can start a new career with pets that you will love and give you plenty of online resources to research each career further.

Look out for my articles in future weeks that will give you tips for naming your new business, ideas on how to advertise and market your pet care service, and suggestions for turning customers into raving fans.

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Arts in the Square - Southlake Texas

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Today my husband Todd and I ventured over to Southlake for the annual Arts in the Square Festival. This week I was challenged to write a post about a local event for the Local Community Events meme at Globally Local by Lynn Terry at ClickNewz.com and I thought this was a great chance to highlight the current popularity of Pet Art.

The Art in the Square Event is organized by the Southlake Women’s Club and it is an opportunity to browse the 100’s of vendor displays where artwork is for sale. They also have live entertainment and food court area.

This year there were several great artists displaying pet themed arts. Some of the different mediums included:

Pet Paintings

Comical Pet Clocks and Moving Sculptures

Pet Inspired Jewellery

Cat and Dog Cartoons

There was also a dog trainer who had her dogs dressed up in funny hats, neck ties and bandanas posing for pictures and playing with her dogs in the fountain (a great advertising trick! She was attracting quite a crowd!).

If you love pets and have artistic flair this could be a great pet career. If you are ever in Dallas Ft Worth in April stop by the Art in the Square Festival or the Fort Worth Arts Festival (April 20-22nd in main St Fort Worth).

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Unusual Pet Careers - Animal Reiki

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Pet Career Animal Reiki I found the unusual pet career of Animal Reiki highlighted in The World of Professional Pet Sitting Magazine this month. Reiki is one of the growing number of holistic healing therapies that are available for use with pets. Reiki is a therapy that involves channelling of energy into the pet either by direct touch with the Reiki practioner or indirectly.

Reiki was founded in Japan at the end of the nineteenth century but has only been practiced in the West since the early 1970’s. A direct translation of the word Reiki is “universal life-force energy” meaning that Reiki energy is the healing energy of the universe. This energy is channelled by practitioners from the universe thorugh their hands. When channelled into a pet the energy balances the body allowing healing.

Animals respond well to Reiki as it is a gentle and relaxing experience for them. Some of the benefits of Reiki for pets include:

1) Pain relief

2) Accelerated healing

3) Stress relief and relaxation

4) Calms aggressive animals and relieves other behavioral issues

5) Eases side affects of chemotherapy or other treatments

There are books and distance courses available to learn more about Reiki and train as a certified Reiki practioner at Animal Reiki Source. This site also has a directory of practitioners in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia.

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Dog Size a Function of their Genes

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Have you seen this big guy in your email box this week? Claims have been circulating the internet that this dog is Hercules an English Mastiff that weighs over the 300lb that is typical of this large dog breed. Unfortunately this photo is a hoax - you can read more about the real Hercules here.

Isn’t it strange though that dogs vary in size so widely compared to other species of mammals? Think about other animals such as cats, giraffes, goats, rabbits etc. The different breeds of these animals are all about the same size. Of course many of the dogs we see today have been bred for specific purposes including hunting and farm work in which the size of the breed was important.

A recent study by scientists at Cornell University revealed that the size varitation can be attributed to gene sequences that are shared between dogs of similar size. They believe that a gene mutation that occurred 10,000 years ago created the smaller dogs that are common house pets today such as the chihuahuas, fox terriers and pomeranians. Visit the BBC article to read more.

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