Pop Art Pet Unleashed

Did you know that February is Responsible Pet Owner Month? Ehow.com provides the following steps to follow so you can participate:

Step 1: Make an appointment with your veterinarian or low-cost clinic to have your dog or cat spayed or neutered, if you haven’t already. Spaying and neutering not only helps control animal population, but it can also protect dogs and cats from various diseases, including cancer.

Step 2: Encourage friends and family members to get their dogs and cats spayed and neutered. Check your local phone book or the Internet for low-cost spay/neuter clinics in your area. Make a list of the low-cost clinics and give them to any friends or family members that are struggling financially.

Step 3: Train your dog; this is extremely important. The Number One reason for dogs ending up in shelters is behavior problems. By training and socializing your dog you can greatly reduce the chances of your dog ever getting lost or ending up in a shelter.

Step 4: Feed your pet a well-balanced and nutritious diet. There are many quality dog and cat food choices on the market today. With a little research you can find a lot of information on food, and the food that would be best for your pet.

Step 5: Clean up after your dog. Whenever you take your dog for a walk or to play at the park or beach, make sure you bring some bags to pick up after your dog. Needless to say, it’s very irresponsible and unhealthy to not clean up dog waste (aside from being against the law).

Step 6: Groom your dog on a regular basis (although some dogs don’t require as much grooming as others). A Pit Bull, for instance, has a short coat that does not require any clipping. A Bichon Frise requires grooming on a weekly basis. Keep your pet’s coat clean with regular trimmings if he requires it, nails trimmed, ears clean and teeth free from plaque and tartar.

Step 7: Give your pet plenty of exercise and feed a proper diet to protect against various diseases. By feeding a nutritious diet you can boost the immune system, which will help keep your pet healthy and vibrant.

Step 8: Let your dog live in the house with you. You need to provide shelter for your dog; dogs are extremely social animals and need contact with their human “pack.” Isolating your dog from the household is detrimental to your dog’s mental well-being. It is unfair to get a dog and then banish her to a backyard kennel.

Step 9: Make sure your pet has up-to-date identification tags on his collar. Check them every once in a while, as pets (dogs especially) do have a tendency to lose their tags. It’s also important to make sure the information on the tag is up-to-date.
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Sadly spaying and neutering rates in America are way down. Even with all we now about the benefits, and about the volume of homeless pets filling shelters and being euthanized every year, fewer pet owners are choosing to have their pet sterilized. We encourage you to please make the responsible choice, and please encourage your friends with pets to do the same.

PS: Pictured above is a friend and very responsible pet owner, with her gorgeous, greyhound rescue, Khai! Photo taken by Cow Dreamz Photography of Phoenix.

We have been long time believers in acupuncture for pets, as we saw how it helped Kylie. But you can click the image below to watch a video featuring an acupuncture demonstration on the lovely, Lucy, and an explanation of the benefits of acupuncture for your pet from two experts:

Plus, this story is kind of a two-for-one because the star of the video, Lucy, is also a friend and one of our favorite clients!

We knew she was a beauty.. now she’s a star, and a very lucky girl to be so well cared for!

We found this article on Healthzone.ca amazing. It provides a scientific explanation for why you love your dog so much – not that you needed one:

It turns out dogs really are bred in the bone – theirs and ours.

So are horses, pigs, cows and all animals that get the oxytocin system flowing, according to a new book that gives sound scientific reason for why we spend billions on the quality and quantity of our pets’ lives.

Made for Each Other: The Biology Behind the Human-Animal Bond, by Meg Daley Olmert, offers the proof most pet owners don’t need about how and why we bond to animals.

“It is run on the same physiology that allows a mother to recognize her baby as her own and want to pick it up and hold it to her breast and protect it,” Daley Olmert says. “That’s the piece of the puzzle that nobody had put together.”

Oxytocin is best known as the hormone that causes labour and lactation in nursing mothers. But we all produce it, need lots of it and, when we have animals in our lives, it becomes a “renewable system” of relieving stress.

The science of social bonding has only been understood in the past 15 years. Oxytocin, and other chemicals that make up the social brain network, exist and work powerfully in all kinds of animals, promoting reproduction and social behaviours. Its origins stretch back to the earliest people, who began to share caves with wolves.

Humans had been prey for animals for a million years. What changed?

Her book theorizes that the earliest interactions created a powerful chemical feedback system that became genetically advantageous and part of the evolutionary process, taming and, at the extreme level, domesticating the animals that made development possible.

Daley Olmert’s early life was spent in a New York housing project, where she had no pets, but a definite “way” with animals. She went from working as a veterinary technician to writing National Geographic documentaries and to a show that examined the ways wild animals assist humans.

After learning about oxytocin in people, she participated in a University of Maryland study of the hormone. At the same time, a flood of studies showed oxytocin stimulates the cortices that control emotions, quiet fears and can switch off the powerful defence system known as “fight or flight.”

It isn’t voluntary, which is why our species survives, and it isn’t specific, making “beauty” literally in the eye of the beholder, Daley Olmert says. “If you perceive something as being not threatening and attractive, it will release this chemistry.”

That chemistry makes us comfortable, prompting us to be gregarious and enter social relationships, animal or human, she says.

So it’s not “unconditional love,” as so many animal lovers cite for the reason they’re devoted to their pets. “It’s highly conditioned by this chemistry,” Daley Olmert says.

“Studies have shown that human and animal contact, specifically with people and dogs, almost doubles levels of oxytocin and serotonin,” she says. “At this point, it appears that our pets are the most powerful releasers of oxytocin in our brains and that could account for the fact that when your pet dies, you feel like a cannonball got fired through you.”

Urbanization is another reason we need our pets so badly, the book says. Farms kept us steeped in oxytocin for 10,000 years. We relied on animals for everything from heat to strength to food, maintaining a critical feedback system.

It has taken only 100 years for most of us to leave farm life. There has also been a dramatic increase in psychological problems, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, hypertension and stroke, Daley Olmert points out. Coincidence?

“These are all the type of psychological and physiological effects you would expect to see (with oxytocin deprivation),” she says. “I would extend that to the care and emotions being lavished on pets. It’s a natural corrective.

“(Pets) certainly have stepped in to fill the loneliness void that modern society has created,” she says.
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We can relate so strongly to this, especially the part about feeling like a cannon ball has been fired through you when your pet dies. It’s been a year since we lost Kylie and we still feel so empty without her.

From Discovery News Online:

In the past few days, several organizations have joined forces to create the Animal Relief Coalition for Haiti (ARCH), with the goal of raising funds to help animals in the earthquake-stricken country and to provide direct aid to animals once rescue teams can be assembled in Haiti.

The ASPCA is the latest to join.

In addition to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, ARCH now includes The International Fund for Animal Welfare, the World Society for the Protection of Animals, American Humane, Best Friends, The Humane Society of the United States and Humane Society International.

..Read the whole story here, and please donate if you can to any of these animal welfare organizations to help the animals of Haiti.

Celebrate National Dress Up Your Pet Day this thursday, January 14th!

PetStyle.com has suggestions for selecting your pet’s attire according to their personality and of course the weather. We suggest go beyond the bandanna and be creative, be elaborate, have fun with it!

We have been very resistant to the whole “social media” movement all along, but its a new year, a new decade, so we’ve adopted a new attitude about it… If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! ;)

So here we are on facebook

And of course, twitter.

And no, we have no idea what we’re doing, so please help us out! Become a Fan on Facebook or a Follower on Twitter and we’ll hook you up with a discount code for 15% off a custom pet portrait from Pop Art Pet!

It’s become a holiday tradition, our annual Gift Certificate Sale! Designed to help out all you last minute shoppers, you can get a Gift Certificate for any size or style of our awesome animal artwork for 25% off!

You can place your order through 10PM CST on December 23rd and we will send you a custom Gift Certificate via email within 24 hours.

You can then forward it to the recipient it or print it for a nice presentation. A Gift Certificate allows the pet parent to pick out the picture we work with for their portrait and be totally involved in the process. This sale allows you to save big and be a big hero – they’ll never even know what a bargain you got!

This is the biggest discount we offer all year, and we won’t tell Santa if you decide to buy one for yourself!

Please visit our Specials Page for more details and to take advantage of this super sale!

According to The Daily Camera online, based here in Colorado, 80% of pet parents now report buy holiday gifts for their dogs and/or cats.:

It’s that time of year when the furry, four-legged friends get extra treats and jingle bells on their collars, and dogs even get a pass if they lift their legs indoors (because, hey, somebody put a tree in the living room).

Eight in 10 pet owners say they give their pets holiday and birthday gifts, according to a survey from the American Animal Hospital Association. Another 21 percent sometimes dress their pets, according to the association.

Marc Bekoff, a research scholar at the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver, said pets love the extra attention around the holidays, as their guardians tend to spend more time around the home.

“They don’t know it’s the holiday season, but they know something special is going on,” Bekoff said. “It’s a great time for bonding with your family .. it’s acknowledging that these animals have emotions and feelings. You want to treat them well, and by treating them well, you feel good.”
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So join the crowd, spend time with your furry family members this holiday season!

We are still offering TWO specials on our original pet artwork to help you save money this holiday season and still give a truly unique gift to the pet lovers on your list!:

20% Off Rolled Portraits – You can order one of our custom pet portraits and save big just by having it stretched or framed yourself! You can still choose from any style of our awesome animal artwork, and you can order any size you like. We’ll design it and print it on artist grade canvas and ship it to you, then you can have it framed or stretched locally to your liking. Just order your portrait today, choose No Borders and No Stretching, then in your shopping cart use the discount coupon code ROLL20 and recalculate.

Gift Certificate Sale – Since there is very little time now to order a custom portrait for Christmas, we’re offering our Gift Certificates at 25% off! This is a significant savings on Gift Certificates for any size or style of portrait. Just visit our Gift Certificate order page to place your order then use the discount coupon code GIFT25 when you check out.

Obviously the clock is ticking so check our Holiday Order Info page for details on deadlines!

Wow! It’s that time again.. If you survived Black Friday we hope you’re ready for Cyber Monday! We are, and we want to offer you the chance to save on something other than socks and electronics.

So we have TWO specials on our original pet artwork – one for Cyber Monday ONLY and one that will help you last minute types give a truly unique gift to the pet lovers on your list:

FREE SHIPPING – This is the first time we’ve ever offered free shipping during the holidays but we know everybody needs to find a way to save this season. So order TODAY, November 3oth, and get free shipping using the discount coupon code CYBERMON when you check out! There is no minimum purchase required, this offer is good on any size or style of our custom pet portraits!

Gift Certificate Sale – Since there is very little time now to order a custom portrait in time for Christmas, we’re offering our Gift Certificates at 25% off! This is a significant savings on Gift Certificates for any size or style of portrait. Just visit our Gift Certificate order page to place your order then use the discount coupon code GIFT25 when you check out.

The gift certificates issued during this promotion will be valid from 12/26/09 through 12/25/10, and we promise we won’t tell anybody if you decide to buy one as a gift for yourself! ;)  But we’re not sure how long we will be running this sale so order now!