What they have in common is that they may not be well known to individual dog breeders because the marketing effort is aimed at a different market or they are sometimes confused with older products. I have used these things and found them quite useful.
CompuPed has allowed me to understand a lot about the fine structure of a dog breed's lineages and comprehend the tangled patterns of relatedness within a breed population. The IGR's have aided in flea control while reducing my, as well as my dogs', exposure to pesticides.
The avermectins are the basis of the once a month parasite control products, and The Merck Veterinary Manual, Electronic Version, represents a step in the direction of the affordable, useful electronic library - an area of special interest that I have.
My home page is maintained at my expense on a private server. I have discussed the matter of this matter of discussion of commercial materials with the server as well as my limited 'cottage industry' offering of products.
It has the ability to calculate coefficients of inbreeding, list 'percentage of blood' (percent of the ancestor's genes in a given animal, generate descendent lists, sib and half sib lists, maintain extensive notes on each animal, export pedigrees to text files and may more features. CompuPed is fast - a five generation pedigree comes up almost instantaneously on my 33 megahertz 386 - and its file structure is compact - a 36,000 dog database occupies only 4 megabytes on your hard drive.
A review of CompuPed with a discussion of some useful CompuPed projects.
About the Borzoi database and Compuped.
For detailed, up to date technical information on CompuPed(c) go to the CompuPed Home Page or contact:
RCI - Ritter Consulting International 1117 Redwood Dr. Loveland, CO 80538 USAphone numbers:
Insect Growth Regulators (IGR's) are hormones that block some necessary step in the growth and development of insects. They are not poisons in the same sense that typical pesticides are poisons. Most dips and sprays are effective because they block essential metabolic pathways in neural conduction in insects. These pathways also exist in mammals. The typical pesticide is toxic to the insect at a much lower dose than its toxic dose to a mammal. Mammalian livers are fairly effective at handling toxins and the differences between body size, surface area, skin type and metabolism render the insects more sensitive to Permetrins, Malathion, etc. than mammals. However one must be careful in the use of typical pesticides, individual mammals may increase their sensitivity with time and cumulative effects can occur. Non-toxic alternatives that aid in controlling the flea larvae in the environment are always to be preferred.
The IGR's act by blocking metabolic steps in the generation of chiton, the protein that forms the surface covering in insects, a protein that is not present in mammals. Because they act on a metabolic pathway that is alien to mammals the IGR's are very safe for use on and around mammals and have no toxic effect at normal application doses.
The IGR's are effective against lice as well as fleas. They are general insect growth regulators and will regulate other insects, not just fleas. This should be kept in mind if you are contemplating outdoor use of them.
There are several IGR's
This product is available as a individual packet from retail outlets. If you only have a room or two to treat it is the product of choice from a price/availability standpoint. I have seen it listed for sale without restriction in a number of the mail order veterinary supply catalogues for as little as $7.00 a packet.
The manufacturer claims that Torus is formulated to have a resistance to ultraviolet radiation so that it does not rapidly degrade in outdoor applications. It is available in a xylene base liquid concentrate (Torus) which must be handled carefully as xylene is toxic and in a wettable powder designed to be mixed with water (Torus WP)of very low toxicity . However Torus was pulled from the market in 1996 when the manufacturer released their product Advantage, which is formulated for direct application onto a pet and kills fleas directly by interfering with insect specific neurotransmitters rather than interfering with their life cycle.
Torus has been replaced by another product called Archer, from a different manufacturer.