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Don't Miss Our Earth Day Events!
Big Sale and 5K Fun Run
Did you know that when we opened in 2004, we were the first pet supply store in the nation to specialize in sustainability? (Fun Fact, when this newer location was first certified "Gold" by the City of Portland's Sustainability At Work Program, we had the highest marks of any retailer in all of Portland). Earth Day is a major holiday for us! For that reason, we've got a big Earth Day weekend celebration planned for you! Because Earth Day Falls on Easter Weekend, our events will be the following weekend, Saturday April 27th and Sunday April 28th.
Saturday April 21st - join us for a big sale!
In honor of our favorite day of the year, we like to offer you a sale!
OnSaturday April 21st from 10-6, take 15% off of all regularly priced items that aren’t food! Better yet, if you bring us gently used pet supplies that we can donate to rescues (or purchase something to donate while you’re here), you can feel free to increase your discount to 20% by recycling them here!
Details About The Sale:
This is not a Secret Sale - you do not need to be sneaky at the register to get your discount, just come on in and stock up! Everyone's welcome of course!
Why no food on sale? We try so hard to keep our margins slim, and we’re proud of how hard we work to not mark up a product more than we need to. The margins on food are already very narrow, so there’s not a lot of room to mark them down. Some folks have deeper sales at their stores, but many people who price shop tell us that our regular prices beat many other stores they’ve been in, including Mud Bay. Some stores mark up all of the toys and treats quite a bit so that their food can be discounted a bit more, but we’d prefer to keep all of our margins as slim as we can.
Are treats (cookies, etc) and chews (like bully sticks) eligible for the sale? Yes! They are on sale! We define "food" as the complete daily diets that you would put in your pet's bowl at mealtime. Even though treats and chews can be eaten, they’re still eligible for the sale.
What sorts of items can you donate? For cats: food and crates are often most needed, as many rescues can't accept used toys and beds. New toys, beds, treats and scratchers would be welcome. For dogs, crates of any size are incredibly useful, as are stainless bowls, food, toys (please make sure they are gently used and clean), treats, clean beds and blankets in good condition, and clean undamaged flat collars, leashes, Gentle Leaders and harnesses. We can also take unused pet medications.
These sales are a great time to stock up on things you know you'll use like supplements, treats, and chews, or to pick up that new leash and collar set you've had your eyes on! The discount also applies for items we special order for you during the sale.
Sunday April 28th - Join us for a 5K Fun Run! Dogs Welcome!
Join us for our third annual 5K Fun Run in partnership with Foot Traffic!
Meet at Foot Traffic at 10am (4020 NE Fremont St, Portland)
- Dogs Welcome! Walk or Run.
- Race ends at Green Dog, with a free frozen treat for dogs that participated!
- $10 voluntary donation gets you 6 free Raffle Tickets, and benefits BARK, a non profit dedicated to protecting and preserving the beautiful forests of Mt. Hood. This nonprofit brings together a diverse array of committed professionals and passionate activists. Since 1999 they have trained hundreds of volunteers on the basics of forest policy, brought thousands to Mt. Hood National Forest, and saved tens of thousands of acres of forest from logging and roadbuilding.
The Raffle is full of great prizes from us, our vendors, and our businesses in the neighborhood! We're selling raffle tickets now, and will draw winners on Sunday April 28th. Amazing Prizes include:
- Gift Certificates from Prince Coffee, Beaumont Florist, Blackbird Wine, Little Griddle, Mad Hannah, Pip's Donuts, and more!
- Free Acupuncture Session from Wild Hearts Wellness
- Gift bag from Foot Traffic
- Gift Bags for Dogs and Cats from Green Dog and a variety of our distributors and vendors!
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| Thank You For Your Generosity!!
During
tax time we’ve been looking back at the year’s
activities, and are always amazed at what our customers help us do for
pets in the community and for the environment. Thank you so much to all
of you that have bought raffle tickets, delivered gently used pet
supplies and winter clothes for humans to us to give to local rescues,
put loose change into our donation jars at the counter, bought a bag of
food during a food drive, and even to those of you who have returned pet
food that didn’t work for your pet. Last year we donated over 2,500lbs
of returned food and loads of supplies (our back room is always overflowing with donations - see photo above) to places like Meals on Wheels
for seniors to feed their pets, to Angel’s Eyes, a small rescue out near
the gorge that takes in un-adoptable dogs, to the PAW Team (who also
distributed a giant van load of winter clothes that you donated for both
dogs and humans to homeless and low income pet owners), and to Safe
Dogs that supports a community in town of low income pet owners. Last year’s
Earth Day raffle allowed us to send $849 to Oregon Shores Conservation
Coalition to help protect our coastline. Putting pennies in our donation
jars at the counter really adds up too, especially because we have matched
most of those donations. Last year we were able to send $300 to
Multnomah County Animal Shelter, $138 to Fences for Fido, $262 to the
Feral Cat Coalition, $129 to Lovers Not Fighters Pit Bull Rescue, and
$102 to Safe Dogs By the River. Your Holiday Food Drives let us send
1,016lbs of cat food to The Feral Cat Coaltion and we sent
$2,100 of food drive $$ to The Pongo Fund that will buy over 4,800lbs of
pet food for low income and homeless pet owners. When you bought our
Holiday Calendar, you helped us send $178 to Underdog Railroad Dog Rescue.
Santa Paws photos helped us get $710 to The Pongo Fund to support their
Emergency Medical Fund and Mobile Animal Hospital. You came out and
supported us on a Saturday in September to help us send a portion of our
sales and raffle proceeds to Prince Coffee and Beaumont Barber Shop
when they had to close their doors due to a devastating fire. We couldn't do this without you, and we just want to say thank you so much.
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| | Nominate us to be a Part of Willamette Week's "Best of Portland" Reader Poll!
It’s time for the people of Portland to nominate their favorite things in Portland for Willamette Week’s “Best of Portland” Reader Poll! The first step is to get us on the ballot, then there will be another call out to you to vote.
Please nominate us right now by going to https://www.wweek.com/bop2019/#/
Click on “Local Business” category and vote for Green Dog for “Best Pet Supply Store!”
Thank you for supporting locally owned independent stores like ours!
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Attention Pure Vita and Nutrisource Customers - We have Good News!
Ok - I hardly know where to start and I don't want to burden you with a giant explanation, although I think I just might, because one of our suppliers has decided to do something virtually unprecedented.
Here are the bare-bones bullet points. KLN, a company we love, makes two pet food brands that have always been popular at our store. They transparently provided answers to questions we asked of them, completely understanding that we might not like the answer. And, alas, we didn’t.
Recently we expressed some concern regarding some of KLN’s formulas; that we weren’t comfortable them and therefore could no longer carry these brands. We were transparent with KLN as to why we had made this decision. Here’s the nearly unprecedented part. Not only did they agree to make adjustments that addressed our concerns, but they are going to make these changes in the shortest amount of time that will still allow them to do so properly. I don't know if you realize how unlikely that scenario is, but it's absolutely remarkable. This food will remain on our shelves.
The Longer version: We ask many questions every year of all of the companies we carry. This year we inquired about the % of their guaranteed analysis that is derived from animal proteins as opposed to plant proteins. The numbers that KLN gave us were below our minimum threshold and we felt we had to make the tough decision to let them go. In our 15 years of business, we've had to make a decision like this about 7 times, often with our most popular brands. I assure you it gives us no pleasure and it's always extremely difficult to do. The first time we did this was devastating to us - how could we tell so many customers we were discontinuing a food that they loved? We were terrified, crying over it, so worried about the fallout. But our customers blew us away with their nearly across-the-board support of our decision. We know that the Pet Food Industry is an ugly swamp that makes it nearly impossible for consumers to know which brands are telling the truth when they say they’re the best. That’s why we know it’s our responsibility to only carry what we feel very good about, and to check up on all of our companies regularly. When it comes to meat in our foods, we feel strongly that it’s important to the health of our obligate carnivore and facultative carnivore family members (cats and dogs) to insist that the majority of their proteins be derived from animal sources (and we suggest that humans should perhaps eat less meat to make up for the demand our pets have for it). We believe that simply using synthetic supplements in foods with a high % of plant proteins doesn’t quite cut it. We decided to start telling our customers right away about our difficult choice to remove KLN brands from the store. In the past, decisions of this kind have traditionally given us some sense of relief, but this one really was tearing us up, because KLN, the manufacturer of NutriSource and Pure Vita, is a really good company. We wish all of the companies that we buy from would be so transparent and responsive, so filled with knowledgeable people, have such modern and safe manufacturing facilities, and be so open to constructive criticism. The wholesome supplements they use in their foods are unique and have incredible benefits not found in any of our other brands.
We believe that when we find an issue that concerns us, we owe it to all pets to try and convince the company to consider fixing the issue, instead of just pulling a food for the sake of our own customers. We do our homework and present the case, and sometimes it works. For example, when we worked hard and presented our case against farmed salmon to Champion foods years ago, they dropped all salmon from their foods and we kept them on the shelves. When we took away canned foods in our store containing carageenan, KLN was one of the few companies that sprang into action and removed it from their cans, so we put them back on our shelves. When we presented our case against KLN's use of farmed salmon, they called us and asked excellent questions. Although KLN owners and management didn’t feel they could reformulate the current foods at this time, they did make a decision going forward to not include salmon in any new recipes. That was pretty impressive in and of itself.
When we approached them about this new issue, two KLN reps who we have known for a long time were in our store within a few days, and met with us for 3 and a half hours. During that discussion they said that our concerns came at an excellent time, as they were actually headed to a national meeting at which this topic would be discussed. They’re aware that the industry has been changing, and that the demand is for higher meat content as a result of the nearly ubiquitous expansion of the use of peas and other legumes in processed dry pet foods. I have to mention that so many of KLN's ingredients are purposefully sourced locally to their manufacturing facility, and that KLN originally began using peas due to their desire to support local farmers and the nearly perfect growing conditions for peas near their plant. They’ve long placed value on accessibility to the consumer for good-quality, well-priced foods, and peas do help in this way. Peas also have a few good attributes such as being fairly low glycemic, but we just feel they shouldn't be used as a primary source of protein. Our reps indicated they were committed to addressing our concerns and they invited us to become an active part of the discussion going forward.
We sprang into action and started compiling and submitting information to them that they could use to support the importance of improving the meat content in the recipes we were concerned about. We joked with them that they should get to work on reformulating it and if we could have the new formula back on the shelves in a month that that would be great. We continued to tell customers about our decision to remove the foods, as we knew that with the pet food industry, even if we got good news, the changes would take ages to occur. A "simple" packaging change can take a big national company months to redesign and get approved, and at the retail level the transition often results in delays that leave holes on our shelves for many weeks. We expected more than a month before even hearing results of meetings, then many months at least to see new products. We got a stunning call from our KLN rep just 7 days later that there was an understanding and agreement that the recipes WILL be improved in the manner we were hoping for. Not only that, but as this wouldn't entail changing the recipe, (just the ratios of meat to plant proteins) that they could begin production in a relatively short period of time. Certain ingredients will need to be ordered in larger quantities to make these changes and formulations will need to be tested. Our rep was stunned by the speed and ease of this decision and said that in his 33 years in the industry that he has seen nothing like this. We are blown away by this news.
So, the bags that we have will remain on the shelves. We feel confident that they are very safe to feed, and we look forward to getting meatier bags on the shelves very soon. Though this decision must ultimately result in a price change, it will be worth every penny and we support KLN’s efforts.
We truly want to apologize for any disruption and inconvenience this news has caused you. We are very sensitive to the fact that some of you that got the news that we were discontinuing KLN foods came right on the heels of removing Orijen and Acana from our lineup, and that you had just accomplished the switch. We hope that this overly long explanation of what happened helps you understand the complexities of these sorts of issues.
We do recommend that you don't run out of your old Pure Vita or NutriSource food before coming to get a new bag, as it would be advisable to treat the new formulation as you would any food switch; blending old with new to avoid digestive disturbances.
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| | | For Earth Day and Every Day, Look for Products That Support the Health of Our Planet.
- Read About "What Are Green Pet Supplies?" here
- Read a Discussion of Sustainable Choices in Pet Food here
- Read About How Consumers Are Creating More Landfill by Contaminating Their Bins With "Wishful Recycling" here
- Planning a Vacation? Read More About How You Can Have The Trip of a Lifetime and Help The Planet At The Same Time here
Check Out Just a Few of Our Favorite Green Products Below!
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| | | Cutest Ever Organic Easter Cookies!
We've had a long relationship with the local woman that makes the fabulous homemade organic cookies we sell at the counter. Our favorite part is that when she frosts cookies, she only uses natural colors derived from foods and flowers. Reds are beets, greens are spirulina, yellows are turmeric, carrots make orange, and to make a lovely blue she steeps edible flowers to extract their color. Lately though, she's stepped up her game with her decorations. Look at these gorgeous bunnies, Easter eggs, and the little three-packs of bunnies. carrots, and eggs. These will go fast!
Green Tip: Not only is organic farming is good for the environment, organically grown foods can actually be better for you (and your pets) nutritionally than their traditionally grown counterparts. Read more here |
| | | Genius Camping Product is Made by a Company Focused on Sustainability!
We love to bring our dogs camping, but one must worry about their safety when we need to put our attention towards tasks like setting up the tent or cooking food. Ruff Wear's Knot-A-Hitch gives us a great solution - string it around two trees and your dog has some room to move around (that attachment slides back and forth along the line) while keeping them secure.
Why We Love Ruff Wear
Not only do they make the best outdoor gear in the industry, they say, "As a company dedicated to making great product, our definition of success includes embracing our responsibility to our community and to our planet. Sometimes stated as "doing well by doing good," to us this means conducting our business in a way that maximizes the good we can do in the world while being mindful of the impact we have on the planet. We are therefore committed to a continuing process of reviewing and improving our product and our practices to increase the positive impacts of our business while reducing unnecessary harm." Not only do they carefully consider the materials that go into their products for durability, sustainable sourcing and performance
- They proudly support avalanche rescue teams around the United States and Canada by providing gear for their highly trained rescue dogs.
- They are a proud partner of Best Friends Animal Society, a nonprofit organization based in southern Utah that has locations across the country. Working with Best Friends, they launched the Ruff Adventure Dog (RAD) Adoption Program to help their fresh air-seeking, high-energy dogs find loving homes.
- They provide gear to all of the dogs at Conservation Canines who are Sniffing for Science - these scat detection dogs and their handlers are deployed in projects around the world, using non-invasive techniques to collect vast amounts of information on species abundance, distribution, resource use, and physiological health.
- For the last decade, Ruff Wear has been a proud member of The Conservation Alliance, a group of outdoor businesses that work together to protect wild places throughout North America, where wildlife thrives and where we recreate.
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| | | New Durable & Recyclable USA-made Products Join Our Favorites From West Paw! Pictured here are the amazingly durable Quizl (blue) that can hold stick chews tightly or be stuffed with softer treats (even stuffed with raw food or peanut butter and frozen) to keep dogs busy. Also pictured (in orange and purple) are their great new tug and float toys, not meant so much as chews as interactive fetching and tugging toys. All of the many West Paw toys have a chew guarantee, which doesn't mean they can't be chewed by some dogs, but if one ever gets chewed apart you can bring it back to us for a one time replacement! We'll send it back to Montana and they'll melt it down and make new toys. West Paw is also a Certified B Corp company, which means all of their business practices are focused on social responsibility and sustainability.
Green Tip: Buying extra durable products and materials that can be recycled mean less stuff ends up in the landfill. |
| | | NEW! Fantastic Coloring Book, Stickers, and Greeting Cards From a Local Artist! You won't believe how cute, funny and beautiful these designs are. From punk rock cats to beautiful realistic watercolor portraits, these products will make you smile.
Green Tip: Buying locally made items reduces the amount of fossil fuels needed to transport them to market, and supports our local economy.
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| | | | Neighborhood News
Garden Space Needed!
While "Truly Juicery" navigates the permitting process for their space next to Prince Coffee, owner Destiny Sternod is hunting for a nearby garden space in which to implement her Garden Volunteer Program. The goal: for volunteers in the garden to grow foods for local food banks and receive discounts and free drinks in the shop! This is just a small part of Destiny's master plan to source direct and local. Contact them here (This news taken from the Beaumont Business Association Newsletter)
New Class at Doggy Business!
Rally 101 - Introduction ticking up a new hobby? This class will show you how to train the foundation skills necessary for dog sports, which can also be useful for day-to-day life! This class is perfect for people curious about rally, competition obedience, trick titling, agility, or freestyle, but don’t know where to begin. The class will be structured in the context of Rally-O but will be applicable to a variety of sports. More info here
Neighborhood Spring Clean Up Events!Now's the season to clear out waste such as metal, electronics, batteries, mattresses, tires, old TVs, and sometimes even plastic clamshells and block styrofoam. Different events accept different materials, so check before you go. Roseway, Cully & Rose City Park are some of our nearby upcoming events. |
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Ash Says, "Thank You So Much For Your Support of Locally and Independently Owned Pet Supply Stores Like Ours!"
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| | | | Located in Beaumont Village 4327 NE Fremont Street, Portland, Oregon 97213
Telephone: 503-528-1800
© 2007 - 2015 Green Dog Pet Supply. Green Dog Pet Supply® is a Registered Trademark. |
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