Comments on: Buying A Dog Bed – Key Points To Consider http://www.1apets.com/blog/buying-a-dog-bed-%e2%80%93-key-points-to-consider Welcom to Dog Zone , a place to connect and share with others who - like you - do more for their dogs. Tue, 06 Jan 2009 01:33:17 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3 By: Lydia Deamer http://www.1apets.com/blog/buying-a-dog-bed-%e2%80%93-key-points-to-consider#comment-5 Lydia Deamer Sun, 06 Jan 2008 05:51:10 +0000 http://www.1apets.com/blog/buying-a-dog-bed-%e2%80%93-key-points-to-consider#comment-5 I found your comments on dog beds interesting. As responsible pet owners, we seek to find the best beds, believing the manufacturer has researched the components used to make the dog bed is not toxic to the animal. Apparently this is not always the case. I bought a large multi-fabric bed, fleece on one side, microsuede on the other for my two small dogs to share. One of my dogs, a miniature dachshund, loves to chew up his dog bed. In this case, he chewed off the zipper pull and swallowed it. I was not aware of that until he became very ill. It appears the zipper pull was made of zinc or was zinc coated. Zinc is poisonous to dogs. Yet there was no warning on the dog bed of that potential hazard. My dog is now dead of hemolytic anemia brought on by the zinc poisoning. All this to say, some dogs chew on everything. Nothing that can be chewed should have anything in it that is poisonous like zinc. Not only dog beds contain zinc. Some dog pens and cages are zinc coated. I have seen dogs chewing on these pens as they try to get out of them. How much zinc is being ingested by those animals.? Many dogs die from the poisoning without anyone being able to identify the source of the poisoning. In my dog's case, the zipper was still in his stomach. Metallurgical tests will be done to determine if the zipper was zinc or zinc coated. Either way, that zipper should not have been an allowable component for the dog bed given that animals chew anything and zinc, for some reason, is attractive to dogs. Just thought you should know. Lydia Deamer Denver, CO I found your comments on dog beds interesting. As responsible pet owners, we seek to find the best beds, believing the manufacturer has researched the components used to make the dog bed is not toxic to the animal. Apparently this is not always the case. I bought a large multi-fabric bed, fleece on one side, microsuede on the other for my two small dogs to share. One of my dogs, a miniature dachshund, loves to chew up his dog bed. In this case, he chewed off the zipper pull and swallowed it. I was not aware of that until he became very ill. It appears the zipper pull was made of zinc or was zinc coated. Zinc is poisonous to dogs. Yet there was no warning on the dog bed of that potential hazard. My dog is now dead of hemolytic anemia brought on by the zinc poisoning. All this to say, some dogs chew on everything. Nothing that can be chewed should have anything in it that is poisonous like zinc. Not only dog beds contain zinc. Some dog pens and cages are zinc coated. I have seen dogs chewing on these pens as they try to get out of them. How much zinc is being ingested by those animals.? Many dogs die from the poisoning without anyone being able to identify the source of the poisoning. In my dog’s case, the zipper was still in his stomach. Metallurgical tests will be done to determine if the zipper was zinc or zinc coated. Either way, that zipper should not have been an allowable component for the dog bed given that animals chew anything and zinc, for some reason, is attractive to dogs.

Just thought you should know.

Lydia Deamer
Denver, CO

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