PL360 Hip & Joint Formula and Anxiety Relief Review

Hi everyone! I hope you're all having a fantastic day! Today I have a two-in-one review for you on supplements from PL360. PL360 is a company for pet lovers everywhere and their goal is to make pet care simpler for everyone. They only use safe natural ingredients in their products and they have a full range of items from health supplements to grooming and also clean up.

We were pretty excited when PL360 contacted me and asked if we would like to review some of their supplements. If you've been following me for a while, you will know that the girls are really active. Phoenix is the most active of the two and is always flying over some obstacle out at the thousand acre park we like to run at. She's a little firecracker and doesn't always think before she does something and both of the dogs are starting to get older. I've been noticing that they were coming home a little sore on longer runs and hikes. With both dogs being so active, I decided that supplementing them for their hips and joints would be a good idea.

PL360 Hip & Joint Formula

Ingredients:
Glucosamine HCI - 500mg
Chondroitin Sulfate - 400mg
Vitamin C (Manganese Ascorbate) - 33mg
Manganese (Manganese Ascorbate) - 5mg

Beef flavor, brewers yeast, cheese flavor, silicon dioxide, stearic acid, magnesium stearate, cellulose, xanthan gum. 

We've been giving the Hip & Joint for about 6 weeks now and I have noticed that the dogs are not as sore on our longer park trips.

Since Zoe has general anxiety, we decided to try the PL360 Anxiety Relief in addition to the Hip & Joint Formula. Her anxiety ranges from noise phobias, to vet visits and anything in between. Her major one is the noise phobia and being out of her element, like visiting a friend's house for dinner.

Ingredients:
Chamomile - 150mg
Passionflower Powder - 100mg
GABA (Gamma Amino Butyric Acid) - 100mg
L-Theanine - 50mg
L-Tryptophan - 33mg
Thiamine (Mononitrate) - 4mg
Ginger Root Powder - 2.5mg

Beef flavor, brewers yeast powder, liver powder, magnesium stearate, cellulose, silicon dioxide, stearic acid, thiamine mononitrate.

I noticed a big difference when giving Zoe the Anxiety Relief. She has been coming out of the bedroom more, she has been more relaxed when my neighbors are banging around above us and when we went to my friend's house for dinner she was a lot more relaxed than the last time we were there.

I'm really happy with both supplements. The dogs have been doing great on them. The only downside to these is that both girls turned their noses up to them and didn't like the taste. That was easily fixed by rubbing a bit of (safe, xylitol-free) peanut butter on them. Once they smelled like peanut butter the girls easily gobbled them up.

The dogs are less sore on longer hikes and Zoe is definitely less anxious in her "trigger" situations. We even had a dog friend come over and spend the night and the girls were pretty calm about it. I will definitely be ordering more of these when we run out!

If your dog has a need for Hip & Joint care or Anxiety Relief, I would recommend checking PL360 out! You can also find them on facebook!

Have you ever tried a supplement before? How did your dog do on it?

Please Comfort Your Dog When They Are Scared!

The other night we had our smoke alarm alert us to a low battery. It does this by going off and screaming about how the battery is low. It went off at bedtime. If you all remember, Phoenix was rescued from a house fire and she is terrified of the smoke detector. We have no idea how long she was in the house with a screaming smoke detector but it obviously left a lasting impression. She was rescued by firefighters.

We didn't realize we had a problem with Phoenix being afraid of the smoke detector until a little over a year of having her. I probably should of known that it would be an issue and I'm not sure why I didn't think about it, knowing where she came from. I feel really bad that I didn't try to work on it sooner. In our old apartment, the thing never went off. When we moved to our inlaw's house, their smoke detector is extra sensitive and the first time it went off, Phoenix had a PTSD-like episode where she actually reverted back to her pre-adopted state. She was extremely fearful and would not come out of the closet and she would just shake nonstop. She would also shy away from anyone trying to touch her, a problem we hadn't had since we got her. It is absolutely the saddest dog thing ever. I hate watching her go through this fear. Since then we have been working on it but it's very slow going.

You hear all the time how if your dog is afraid you should just ignore them. You don't want to "reinforce their fear with any sort of coddling because it will make them more fearful".

I am here to tell you that is just not true. It is OKAY to comfort your dog when they are afraid and I urge you to do so. You can't reinforce their fear by giving them comfort. Fear is an emotion not a behavior. You can only reinforce behavior. If you would like to read a more in depth article on why this is true, please visit my friend Eileen's blog: It's OK to Comfort Your Dog!

Now when I say comfort your dog, I don't mean clutch the dog to your chest while screeching in a high pitched voice "It's OKAY!!!" over and over. Don't do that. That CAN make them more nervous, if you're afraid they will be afraid, too. Think about the last time you were scared or anxious, what made you feel better? When I'm anxious, a hug from my husband can be really helpful to me. Since dogs are not big fans of hugs, let's stick to scratching them in their favorite spot or something similar.

Try to be as calm as you possibly can. I know sometimes our own emotions can get the better of us, especially when we are having to witness our dogs go through something unpleasant. It's better if you can keep an even, quiet tone, while petting them gently. Or whatever the dog will like that might help them feel better.

So let's talk about what I did with Phoenix when the smoke alarm went off. The first thing I had my husband do was unplug the stupid thing and take the battery out. We knew that when we put a new battery in that it would screech again. So I got ready for that by getting some high value treats out. As soon as he plugged it back in, I started feeding Phoenix as quickly as possible. (This was my attempt at Counter Conditioning, however I would like to note that she was probably over threshold already since the noise had already gone off and she was scared. Counter Conditioning works much better if you are able to keep the dog under threshold and do it before the thing is so scary. Noise phobias are very complicated and hard to treat because they are unpredictable.) I am lucky that as long as the food is very good she will still eat it. Some dogs when they are very scared won't take food at all. If that's your dog, then you just do what you can for them. Getting away from the scary thing is important as well, so if you can move the dog to a different location that would be a good idea. Our apartment is small so unfortunately we don't have that option.

Even after the smoke alarm stopped screeching at us, Phoenix was still very visibly shaken and upset. If I wasn't interacting with her directly, she would run around the house with her tail tucked looking for a safe place to hide. I continued interacting with her, giving her treats asking for very simple known behaviors that would be easy for her to do to distract her. All while quietly praising her and giving her scratches in her favorite spots. Then when she was a little more calm, I broke out one of her favorite toys and encouraged her to play with me, getting her to play with me did take a while. She was still very nervous and didn't really want to but eventually she couldn't resist her favorite toy. When we were done playing, I took both dogs out for their nightly "before bedtime" walk. We actually went further than we usually do and I think the walking also helped her to calm down. Once the walk was done, when she came back inside she was mostly back to normal and we were able to go to bed. This whole process took around two hours but it was so worth it to me! My dog's emotional health is more important than sleep and always will be.

So if your dog is scared, it is okay to comfort them and don't let anyone tell you not to!

I was unable to take any photos during the time I was dealing with Phoenix being afraid. I hope no one minds cute photos instead of fearful ones.

Anxiety Wrap Review

Hi everyone! I hope you're all having an awesome day! Today I have a review for you! Recently we were given the opportunity to try out The Anxiety Wrap by the Company of Animals. If you've visited us before you might remember that Zoe has a terrible noise phobia. It started the year we got her with the 4th of July and has progressively gotten worse from there. Sometimes even our neighbors banging around upstairs can cause her to get upset and she will also get upset over me doing laundry. The spin cycle with the washer shaking freaks her out. We've tried all sorts of calming aids before and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. It just depends on the severity of the noise. I really like the idea of the Anxiety Wrap and I've heard that it works wonders for some dogs.

Living the Anxious Life!

I'm sorry that I didn't get around to everyone's blogs yesterday! I had a really bad migraine for most of the day and looking at shiny screens doesn't work out very well. I spent most of the day in bed hiding from the light! I'm feeling a little better now but my head is still pounding.

I can cue "sad, puppy eyes" if only I could cue happy. Sigh.

Two nights ago we had a thunderstorm roll in. It was one of those weird freak things. Yes, it rains a bunch in Oregon but we don't usually have thunder. My husband said to me, "the weather app says it's going to thunder!" and then we laughed about how the weather apps are always wrong and went on with our evening.