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You may not want to read this page unless you have a Dog or Cat.  We are not trying to sell you pet food on this site.  This is an article about our professional work.  We will be updating it continually with new information, articles, news and thoughts from our supporters.  It has nothing to do with Eric Weisman's Campaign for Ramsey County Commissioner '08.

I would like to take this time to thank the many long time customers who have believed in us, who have stuck by us, through the ups and downs and growing pains of the continuning struggle of keeping our company alive over the years.  Also, sincere thanks to all the people that have helped or are helping with our rescue operation and to those who have permanently adopted some of our wonderful friends. We have some of the very nicest and most committed customers and volunteers:  We think you are great! The time and energy and costs of product manufacturing and product development have been a labor of love and ethical commitment:  Not profit over the years. I've seen many Pet Food companies come and go out of business after a year or two:  We've hung in for almost 20 years now out of pure commitment, realizing the demand for an ethical vegan pet food company.  The overwhelming demands of running Evolution Diet Pet Food Corporation and running a small animal rescue have been exhausting on a daily basis.  There aren't enough hours in the day or funds to do all we would like to do.  

We are finally seeing our goals and dreams happening.  Many of you don't realize what is going on behind the scenes when we try to improve a product or don't answer your e-mails.  One time we had over 900 e-mails waiting which crashed our system. By the way it takes a lot of time to answer e-mails! We like to talk to our customers in person as some of the answers are easier to answer by phone:  It often takes less time by phone.  

The demand for Evolution Diet nationwide and worldwide is there:  It's just been hard to keep up with demand and costs.  We are committed and tenacious, that's why we persist! Our new website is a great avenue to communicate with our clientel because we are able to go in and change or add information ourselves instead of paying someone $100.00 an hour to do it for us! 

We have hardly any donations for our work with the animals (and few volunteers!).  We spend much of our own time and money treating the sick and healthy animals we take in.  That includes cleaning teeth, clipping nails, bathing, treating, cleaning up Cat Boxes, walking the Dogs and cleaning up after them and treating  the sick with various nutrients and drugs.  Additionally, we are involved in weekly Television Programming on local Cable Access in 70 MN Cities, new product development, packaging, labels, advertising, paying our help and paying for warehouse space, taking care of 20 animals every day eats up almost everything we have including our time. Putting in very long days with little sleep can sometimes really do "it" to us!  Eric and I have been working together since 1997, and have been married now since 2002. We work very hard.  Looking back at all we've accomplished since we've been together is truly amazing!  We want you to know, that always, we have the best interests of the animals in everything we do. If we thought for one moment that feeding a Dog, Cat or a Ferret or some other small animal a vegan diet was dangerous, we would close Evolution Diet Pet Food for good and go onto something else (like a vegan restaurant perhaps).  We have been feeding Dogs, Cats and Ferrets Evolution Diet all over the U.S and Canada very sucessfully!  

We need your help!  Over the past 12 months our basic food costs have gone up by 25% because of the doubling cost of soy beans and increased cost of corn gluten.  We do not want to raise our retail and wholesale charges, but we must.  We also need to sell more food.  Please tell your friends about Evolution Diet.  Also, our rescue operation needs continuing improvements and we want to open an large shelter with all the amenities for both sick and healthy animals.  When you buy and promote Evolution Diet Products, you help "OUR" cause. 

Our two oldest cats are now 23 and 19 and have been eating Evolution for more than a dozen years. We had an older ferret who lived to 13.5 years old. Our oldest dog, an English Bull Dog, lived to 15.5 years (which is unheard of:  They usually live to about age 10 or 11). We have many customers who have been following our feeding instructions by adding water, supplements and shredded raw fruit and vegies to their pets diet:  Virtually all people doing this are getting fantastic results.  We love you for doing this!  You are making a huge difference for the cause of vegan companion animals.  You are the people that are debunking the myth that companion animals need to eat flesh.  You are the people proofing that the longest and healthiest living dogs, cats, and ferrets are strict vegetarians.  Again, Thank You!  We will be putting these testimonials on our site soon.

I have been reading some of our client comments on some of the chat boards which causes me concern.  Clearing up your questions and concerns is foremost in my mind. Questions like: why has the product changed, feeding problems, unanswered e-mails.  Thats why I am writing to you now, to inform you of what's going on!

A small number of you have had problems starting your Cats off on a vegan diet. Most of these problems are easily fixed. We have thousands of customers that have easily switched their Dogs, Cats and Ferrets to Evoltion Diet.  We have had the most finicky Cats who have come to us and they have all switched over.  It never takes more than a week.  I will put some examples on our site for you and tell you how long it took, my observations, and what I did to switch them over. We usually have between 12-18 Cats of our own at any one time, all rescued animals, and all of them switched to Evolution Vegan Diet.  They are all usually very happy and healthy. We do take in sick animals, but we have never, ever had a cat, dog or ferret that has worsened from being on our Evolution Diet.  Virtually every one of the hundreds of animals that we have dealt with over the past 15-16 years has improved with respect to their overall appearance, performance and general health. 

Of course a very small number (8) of sick animals that we have rescued have died from poisonings, infections, cancer and other injuries.  About seven total animals we have rescued got away from us and were killed by cars or trucks. That is the best we can do with the number of volunteers we have had and money we have had available to run the rescue operation.  Every animal that dies from non-traumatic causes has been tested with a post mortem study at the University of Minnesota Diagnostic Laboratory: Not one of those tested has ever died from a nutritional deficiency syndrome. 

DO NOT CONTINUE TO OFFER YOUR FINICKY CAT OR DOG ITS' OLD FOOD IF YOU HAVING TROUBLE SWITCHING:  THE ANIMAL WILL ALWAYS SWITCH.  YOU KNOW A LOT MORE ABOUT WHAT IS HEALTHY FOR YOUR CAT OR DOG THEN WHAT YOUR CAT OR DOG KNOWS!

We have had health problems as everyone does with our animals, some of these problems were easily rectified, others took  more aggresive action. When you have a lot of animals they can pass health problems on to each other. Most often we use vitamin-herbal treatments and occassionaly we combine standard vet treatments with our established proceedures. We have developed a number of highly successful nutrient based treatments that have saved the lives of many animals.  I am not soliciting our animal treatments, but everyday we get calls from people all over the country that have sick Dogs, Cats and Ferrets.   

We will be putting together a detailed question and answer page on feeding your cats Evolution vegan diet.  We don't encounter the problems some of our customers have had starting cats on Evolution.  The most important point to remember is that when switching a "finicky" cat to Evolution, add a couple of tablespoons per cup of Creamed Corn OR Campbell's Brocolli Cheese Soup OR Cream Of Mushroom Soup, Spagetti Sauce with Vegan Parmesan Cheese or some other flavor enhancer to the canned or dry kibble.  Your cats will "inhale" the food.  If you are a strict vegan and don't want to add the dairy, be creative and make up something you think your cat will like, ( I will be adding recipies later to help you, we only suggest adding dairy when switching). These stratagies work EVERY TIME.  Just mix the food with one of the above flavor enhancers for about 5 days and the most "finicky" cat, dog or ferret will be hooked!  You will be able to feed EVOLUTION without any added flavors after the introduction period. 

So we will try to communicate to you "what we do" with feeding Evolution to our cats. Cats seem to be the most difficult to switch. People have so many problems with feeding their cats! I will put some examples of dogs and switching them over to a vegan diet also.  (I've had some finicky dogs).  I know a person who uses our food on their very finicky dog but mixes it with a well known meat based pet food. The dog doesn't like vegetables but loves cheese and other dairy products which they mix in for the dog.  I've observed their method of feeding.  I know it's possible to change this dogs eating habits.  The dog is very spoiled and is the only dog they have.  It's their baby. Many times it's the owners own personal eating habits and beliefs and worries that are incorporated into the feeding of the pet.  Many times people have very unhealthy eating habits themselves and pass that on to their pet.  I noticed many of you for instance start adding extra enzymes to the food when you start to have problems with loose stools, you don't want to do this because we already ADD live enzymes and bacteria in the food.  Putting more enzymes in the food will make the stool even softer!  Soft stools are not necessarily a problem.  We will address this problem in our questions and answer section when we get it up, and what you can do about it.  Many people do not follow the feeding instructions we recommend on the back of the package about moisturizing the food or adding fresh fruit and vegetables to the food.  GET YOUR CATS, DOGS, AND FERRETS USED TO EATING MOISTENED DRY FOOD:  ADD INCREASING AMOUNTS OF WATER TO KIBBLE GRADUALLY.  WE USE AT LEAST 1 PART DISTILLED WATER TO 1 PART FOOD AND UP TO 1 PART WATER TO 1 PART FOOD.  SOME ANIMALS DO NOT DRINK ENOUGH TO COMPENSATE FOR THE DEHYDRATION CAUSED BY DRY PET FOOD:  ESPECIALLY PREVALENT IN MALE CATS(THAT IS WHY THEY GET URINARY TRACT BLOCKAGE).  OUR OBSERVATIONS CONFIRM THAT ADDING WATER TO DRY FOOD PREVENTS URINARY TRACT BLOCKAGE, KIDNEY FAILURE, SOME FORMS OF HEART DISEASE AND STROKE.

We have tremendous experience feeding Evolution vegan diet to cats, dogs and ferrets with great success.  We want you to have the same fantastic results we are getting and we will try to help you to do that any way that we can.  Please read the feeding instructions several times on the back of the bag.  There are also switch-over "First Time Feeding Instructions & Beyond" we send along with your order in addition to the label instructions: follow them carefully.  Your pet(s) will be very glad you do.

Lynn Crandall-Weisman, President

Aug. 20, 08