Walking Your Dog Down The “Go Green” Path

There has never been a better time to reduce the environmental impact your dog makes on our planet. Whether or not you believe in the stories of global warming you cannot deny that “going green” with environment friendly products saves both time and money.

For humans time seems to be the caveat for not reducing our footprint; it takes longer to divide the trash, drive slower to work to conserve gas, and cooking with raw ingredients instead of the using the prepackaged all-in-one dinners. By converting to energy saving light bulbs and turning down or up the thermostat, depending our local climate, will reduce your energy bills.

For our dogs, going green saves time. The task of every dog owner is to pickup after our dogs; by changing their diet, you will notice an immediate difference in the amount of dog waste you have to clean up. Most inexpensive commercial dog food is loaded with fillers that offer no nutritional value to your dog. The fillers have to go somewhere and dog waste is it with the end result of you spending precious time picking up after your dog.

Moving to an organic dog food or all-natural dog food and your dog will retain more of the food as it is filled with the nutrients they need for a long healthy life. With no fillers in the dog food…well you get the idea. If you live in an urban environment, the need for caring dog waste bags to pickup after dog is necessary.

On the market today, there are biodegradable dog waste bags. These bags can be loaded in a dispenser kept by your back door for convenience ready for you and the daily dog walk. To go one-step further, also on the market today are pet poop compost converters. What a great way to finally ride your yard or biodegradable dog waste bags and end up with useable fertilizer for garden and potted plants.

The Tumbleweed Pet Poop Composter consists of two nesting boxes with lid, which form a compact unit. Worms eat and breed in the top composter box. This has a perforated base to allow liquid waste to drain to the bottom box. Worm castings remain in the top box and harvested. The bottom box collects the valuable liquid waste, which can be diluted and used as fertilizer on your garden. The Tumbleweed Pet Poop Composter design allows for maximum efficiency and greater amount of castings than most Pet Poop Composters.

The Tumbleweed Pet Poop Composter will handle droppings of two medium dogs. This varies with age, diet, exercise, and breed. The greater amount of droppings recycled through the tumbleweed pet poop composter, the quicker the level of castings built up. Worm castings are harvested, and used around the flower garden or in potting mixes.

Lastly, purchasing the right dog toys and dog chews is something we can do to help our dogs go green. Toxic dog toys are dangerous to both humans and our dogs. Let’s face it dogs love to chew, it helps them with boredom and anxiety while keeping them from chewing our furniture and shoes. However, some dog toys are toxic and we should be reading the labels to ensure their safety for our pets.

By know we should know the dangers of giving our dogs rawhide chews. These chews as well as pigs ears and other similar dog chews will harm your dog if not supervised while chewing; add those dog chews with artificial flavors and coloring to simulate beef and chicken and you have increased the toxicity of the dog chew. There are plenty of natural and safe products for your dog to chew on that will reduce stress and anxiety while protecting them and the environment.

With the latest estimates of over 70 million dogs in the United States as family pets, going green with your dog will make an environmental impact. Couple that with humans going green and we have saved ourselves a considerable amount of money and time; set an example for your kids, friends, and neighbors by walking your dog down the “green” path.