Can You Put a Tent in the Dryer?

Megan Humkey

It rained on the last day of your camping trip, and now your tent is soaking wet. Or you had to wash off some mud, tree sap, or spilled coffee, and there are some wet spots. You might be wondering, can you put a tent in the dryer?

The short answer is no; but let’s dive a little deeper into why not, and ways you can make sure your tent is nice and dry before you store it.

Why Can’t I Put a Tent in the Dryer?

Tents are designed to be tough in rugged environments. However, they are not meant to withstand the extreme conditions of a man-made clothes dryer.

The heat of the dryer can:

·       Warp the shape of your tent.

·       Cause the seams to de-laminate, which may be irreparable.

·       Affect the waterproof coating.

Not to mention the tumbling action of the dryer can create rips and tears which will also shorten the life of your tent, if not ruin it altogether.

How to Dry Your Tent

The ideal environment for drying a tent would be outdoors, out of direct sunlight, on a warm breezy day. This isn’t always possible, so some other good options include:

·       Bathrooms

·       Garages

·       Other well-ventilated rooms

Setting your tent up will be a great way to dry the top and sides, but will make it nearly impossible to dry the bottom, and will take up a lot of space. Hanging the tent is a more efficient way to ensure all sides of the tent are dry.

It is important to make sure there are no deep creases in the tent as it hangs—these creases will facilitate mold growth and can weaken the fabric of the tent over time.

If you’re hanging the tent in a bathroom, the exhaust fan can help to pull excess moisture out of the air. You can also use a portable fan to keep the air circulating throughout the room.

Make sure your tent isn’t hanging anywhere near a direct heat source, as this can cause some of the same problems as using a dryer. This is also why we don’t recommend using portable heaters to speed drying time.

How Dry Does the Tent Really Need to Be?

Your tent needs to be 100% dry before you store it. Any lingering moisture will cause mold and mildew to grow in your tent.

Mold and mildew will not only make your tent smell terrible; they can destroy the materials of the tent. Mold can start growing in as little as 24 hours, so time is of the essence.

If you have to pack up a wet tent at the end of a camping trip, here are some things to keep in mind:

·       Try to dry it off as much as you can before you take it down.

·       It’s ok to pack up a wet tent as long as you remember to take it out to dry as soon as possible after getting home.

Making sure your tent is completely dry before properly storing it is worth the extra effort to prolong the life of your tent.

Storing Your Tent

You just put time and effort into making sure your tent was totally dry. Now it’s important to store your tent properly. Your tent will last longer if it is stored loosely in the right conditions.

The stuff sack your tent came in is a great way to transport your tent, especially for activities like backpacking. It is much too tight to store your tent long-term.

You can keep your dry tent in a loose mesh bag or pillowcase. You can store it out in the open, but the mesh bag or pillowcase may help to prevent your tent from getting dusty in the off season.

Great places to store tents in your home:

·       Under a bed

·       On a shelf

·       In a gear closet

Garages can be good places for tent storage, as long as the conditions are right. Attics, basements, and backyard sheds aren’t ideal because they are often too humid, too hot, or can experience large temperature swings.

Cool, dry, and well ventilated are the keys to protecting your tent when you’re not using it.

8 Dog Food Ingredients to Avoid

Megan Humkey

Who doesn’t want the very best for their dog when it comes to food? There are so many brands, flavors, and formulas to choose from today, it can be downright overwhelming. How many of us have never even looked at the ingredient label on a bag of dog food—or if you did, had a hard time making heads or tails of it? And trying to research quality ingredients online can be confusing at best, and terrifying at worst!

Here are 8 ingredients to avoid when choosing a dog food.

1. XYLITOL
Xylitol is a sugar alcohol. It’s become a popular sweetener in human foods like sugar-free candy, jellies and jams, and even some peanut butters because it is a low-calorie substitute for sugar and considered safe for diabetics. As much as we like to think of our dogs as (sometimes) smaller, hirsute humans, they do metabolize things differently than we do. Xylitol doesn’t prompt an insulin response in humans, but it can cause a dangerously fast, dramatic drop in blood sugar for dogs.

2. ARTIFICIAL COLORS/DYES
If you’re in the United States, food dyes are probably an everyday thing in your world,

and you may not take much notice of them. In many other countries, though, artificial food dyes like Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, and Red 40 are banned in human and animal foods because of their suspected links to behavior problems and certain cancers in humans.

Most dog food is colored in some way, because without some type of coloring the cooking process would render dog food a grayish color. Since humans are the ones purchasing the food, and most of us would recoil at feeding our dogs gray food, it makes sense from a marketing standpoint to make the food more visually appealing to humans. Who wouldn’t feel comforted at first glance seeing reds, yellows, and maybe even greens in a bag of dog food, evoking images of beef, chicken, and vegetables? Some companies use plant-based dyes to color their dog food, but some dog food manufacturers add artificial colors and dyes to their products to disguise potentially low-quality ingredients.

However, artificial dyes and colors offer no added nutritional value, potentially contribute to health problems, and dogs can’t even tell most of those colors apart anyway! So if we humans insist on feeding our dogs colorful foods, there are plenty of plant-based ways to color food to make it look more palatable to us that aren’t potential carcinogens.

3. NITRITES/NITRATES
Nitrites and nitrates are preservatives used to retain color in food (both artificial and natural colors). We’ve already covered why it’s useful for dog food companies to preserve color in their products. Unfortunately, nitrites and nitrates are also considered to be carcinogenic. Look for ascorbic acid, vitamin c, and tocopherols as preservatives instead. They are a healthier alternative, and some research suggests that alpha-tocopherols actually counteract the effects of nitrites in dog food.

4. BHA/BHT
Also known as butylated hydroxyanisole and butylated hydroxytoluene, these are

artificial additives meant to prolong the shelf life of the food. There is some controversy surrounding these ingredients, though. These are common, and legal, ingredients for dog foods manufactured in the United States. They are banned in countries like Japan, Sweden, Romania, and Australia; BHA is listed as a known carcinogen in the state of California. Most companies using these foods in the United States today claim they are using minimal amounts, and they pose little to no risk to our pets.

5. PROPYLENE GLYCOL
Propylene glycol is a food additive used to keep soft-moist foods from drying out. While it

is approved for use by the FDA, there are some anecdotal studies to suggest it can render red blood cells susceptible to damage, or potentially damage the red blood cells altogether.

6. ETHOXYQUIN
Ethoxyquin was approved as an antioxidant food additive in the 1970’s and has recently

become a controversial ingredient. It has been used primarily to preserve the integrity of vitamins in dry food and to prevent peroxide from forming in canned foods. It has been suggested that ethoxyquin in dog food can contribute to health issues such as allergic reactions, organ failure, and cancer. Evidence seems to point to this being dose-dependent, though, and pet foods that contain ethoxyquin that are made in the USA contain far less than what is considered a minimal or even toxic dose.

A note about preservatives

Preservatives are necessary in dog food because one of the important ingredients in a balanced diet is fat—and fats and oils can go rancid quickly. Preservatives help prolong the shelf life of the food, both in the store and in your home, but not all preservatives are created equal.

7. CORN SYRUP
There are plenty of naturally occurring sugars in dog foods coming from ingredients like sweet potatoes, apples, pumpkin, etc. A balanced diet needs these complex carbs as well as proteins and fats. These sugars help balance the diet, improve palatability, and provide a source of energy. Added sweeteners like corn syrup aren’t necessary in dog foods, and can cause health issues like obesity and diabetes.

8. MELAMINE
You may or may not remember a large-scale dog food recall due to melamine in 2007. Melamine is a chemical compound used in manufacturing things like paper goods, plastics, plates, cooking utensils, and even magic erasers (yuck!). It is not FDA approved for use in human or animal foods in the US. In 2007 it was determined by the World Health Organization that melamine was illegally added to certain ingredients of dog foods to artificially inflate the protein content in testing. Pets that ate the contaminated foods experienced kidney failure and even death. Even in 2007, melamine wasn’t necessarily listed on the ingredient labels of contaminated foods, so the key takeaway here is to know where your dog food is being sourced and manufactured.

You can also visit the American Veterinary Medical Association for information on dog food recalls.

Some of these ingredients are safely used in many commercial dog foods available today. It is important to discuss your pet’s nutrition with your veterinarian. You should also be able to easily find manufacturer’s contact information on or near the label, and any reputable brand of food should be more than willing to answer your questions about their ingredients and manufacturing process.

The American Association of Feed Control Officials (AFFCO) is also a great resource. You can learn more about their labeling requirements here (https://dogfoodheaven.com/aafco-nutrient-profiles/).

RESOURCES

https://www.purina.com/articles/dog/nutrition/is-xylitol-bad-for-dogs https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/color-additives-questions-and-answers-consumers https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/sodium-nitrite https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/sites/lpi.oregonstate.edu/files/pdf/newsletters/ss08.pdf https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/chemicals/butylated-hydroxyanisole https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/CFRSearch.cfm?fr=172.115 https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp189-c1.pdf https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary/ingredients-additives/labeling-and-use-ethoxyquin-animal-feed https://www.fda.gov/food/chemicals/melamine-tableware-questions-and-answers https://www.acvp.org/page/Melamine

Who is AAFCO? 

And what do they have to do with pet food?

Megan Humkey

Have you ever read the label on a bag of dog or cat food? If we’re honest, probably not. If you have, you might have noticed a little something called an AAFCO statement. What is AAFCO, and why are they making statements about your pet food? Read on to find out!

WHO IS AAFCO?

AAFCO is the Association of American Feed Control Officials. They are a non-profit, volunteer organization composed of officials from each state and various federal agencies like the FDA, USDA, and Pet Food Institute. 

They don’t act in any regulatory capacity. However, each member does have some authority in their own state or federal agency. And most states have adopted AAFCO nutritional requirements and standard ingredient definitions for pet food. 

AAFCO LABELING REQUIREMENTS

Just like the FDA requires human food to have certain things on labels, AAFCO requires all pet food to have the following things printed on the label:

-Brand and product name

-Net quantity statement

-Manufacturer or distributor information

-Calorie content statement

-Nutritional adequacy statement 

-Guaranteed analysis

-Ingredient list

-Species designation

-Feeding directions

Some of these are pretty self-explanatory, and it makes sense they’d be on your bag of pet food, like the brand and product name or species designation—after all, you don’t want to feed dog food to your cat. 

Knowing the manufacturer or distributor information can come in handy, especially when there have been recalls in the news. A lot of people are surprised to know which major corporations actually manufacture pet food.

It seems obvious that Diamond makes Diamond food, but did you know that they also make lots of other brands like Nutra Nuggets, Premium Edge, Professional, and Taste of the Wild.

How about that General Mills (of Honey Nut Cheerios fame) makes Blue Buffalo?

Mars—yes, the company that makes candy bars—owns Iams, Eukanuba, Royal Canin, Pedigree, and Whiskas, to name a few. Nestle owns Purina, and Science Diet is made by parent company Hills.

WHAT ARE THE NUTRITIONAL ADEQUACY STATEMENTS?

You should find one of two AAFCO statements on any bag of dog or cat food. The most common statement says, “(This brand) is formulated to meet the nutritional levels established by the AAFCO Dog (or Cat) Food Nutrient Profiles for adult dogs/kittens/senior cats/etc.” This means that AAFCO has laid out an ideal diet’s essential ingredients and nutritional components for that age and species.

Basically, they say that, for example, an adult dog food needs to have a minimum of 18% protein and 5.5% crude fat. They don’t specify what kind of protein or fat. And technically, the dog food company can change their protein source for up to six months before they’re required to put it on the label. This means that you think you’re buying your dog lamb and rice food, but because lamb is expensive during certain times of the year, you might actually be buying chicken and rice dog food. 

Shocking, isn’t it? Don’t panic yet. We still have another AAFCO statement!

This other statement will look something like this: “Animal feeding tests using AAFCO procedures substantiate that (brand) provides complete and balanced nutrition for adult cats/puppies/senior dogs/etc.”

Ok. What are animal feeding tests or trials?

ANIMAL FEEDING TESTS

In these AAFCO tests, dog and cat food companies feed this food to eight dogs (or cats) for a specific period of time, typically six months. They test their bloodwork, body fat, and a slew of other things during the trial. The pets cannot have any of those values change during this test, or the food will not pass. 

The feeding trial guidelines vary depending on the stage of food being tested (adult, reproduction, growth, all life stages).

Once a food has earned its feeding trial label, the manufacturer cannot change any ingredients without putting that food through another trial. So, If you have a food that has gone through a feeding trial you know it has quality ingredients that are all listed on the label!

WHICH FOODS HAVE BEEN TESTED?

A pet food test or trial is an expensive endeavor. And, as we said above, even if a company has passed a trial before, if they change the formulation of their food they must undergo another trial. Because of this, the majority of the foods you find in pet stores will have the statement about simply being formulated to meet nutritional levels as laid out by AAFCO. 

Have you noticed more pet food commercials now than ever before? Several popular pet food brands today seem to have chosen to spend their money on advertising and marketing rather than feeding trials. Only four companies routinely put their money where their mouths are and undergo feeding trials for their foods; that’s why most veterinarians recommend those brands. Veterinarians are scientists, after all, and they appreciate brands that have the research to back up their claims. 

Those four brands are:

-Science Diet

-Royal Canin

-Iams/Eukanuba

-Purina

IN A NUTSHELL

The world of pet food can seem confusing and overwhelming at best, and at times can lead down quite the internet rabbit hole.

Talk with your veterinarian about what foods they recommend and why.

You can also find your state and local AAFCO representativeshere.