The Pets Blog Week in Review for December 31 – January 6

Last week Aimee and I said goodbye to 2007 and welcomed 2008. Here’s how we did it. Monday, December 31 The Top Pets Blogs of 2007: January – May A breakdown of which blogs you, Dear Reader, liked most. The Top Pets Blogs of 2007: June – December The continuation of the above for the back half of the year. Tuesday, January 1 Resolutions for a Yappy New Year I listed the goals I want to accomplish both professionally and personally. Survivors of Melamine Poisoning What happened to the pets who survived last year’s Menu Foods debacle? Aimee wrote a … Continue reading

Do You Ever Feel Your Dog’s Not Living Up to His Full Potential?

I get both really inspired and really down on myself after I interview people like Beth Terrell or Joani Ascher. Inspired because they’re doing neat things with their dogs, like teaching them how to dance or grooming puppies to be Seeing Eye dogs. Down because Murph’s one of the smartest dogs I’ve ever had. I often wonder if I’m holding him back from living up to his full potential. At the beginning of this year I resolved to change that. I was determined to look into enrolling Murph and myself in a pet therapy program. Then my mom got sick … Continue reading

The Personal Pet Therapy Project

One of my resolutions for 2008 was seeing about getting me and Murph involved in a pet therapy program. Well, recent developments have certainly seen to it that this resolution will be kept this year. A Family Affair Not only is Murphy going to be involved with the pet therapy project, but so are Mr. Meow and Tabby. And the person we’re going to concentrate our therapeutic energies on is my mom, who in addition to her dementia was also recently diagnosed with lung cancer. Grandma Dorothy Moves In On Wednesday March 19 I flew to Denver. My mom had … Continue reading

Modifying Behavior-Lesson 1: Know Thy Pet

Part of my resolutions for this year in the Pets Blog included writing more articles that you, Dear Reader, would like to see. To gauge just what those might be, I posted a poll in the forum and welcomed replies. One request that came back was about behavior. Mostly modifying it to encourage better behavior. First off, let me plainly state I am no animal behavior expert. Like many of you, I am simply owned by my pets and am lucky enough to have a forum where I can also indulge my passion for writing about animals. However, even though … Continue reading

Diary of a Cat Care B&B: Holiday Aftermath

I’m pleased to report that we survived the holiday rush at the cats only boarding facility! When they said we were expecting a full house, they meant it. We had forty-five cats in the main part of the boarding facility and another twelve housed in the isolation wards in the veterinary clinic side. Plus an extra six cats tucked into various rooms around the building — the x-ray room, a spare exam room, and one vet’s office. Full indeed! The schedule got pretty hectic. Taking care of sixty-three cats can use up quite a bit of time! And that’s sixty-three … Continue reading

Cats, Dogs, Pollywogs…How Is It They All Get Along?

As part of my New Year’s resolutions I decided to make an effort to find out what kinds of topics interest Pets Blog readers. So I posted a thread in the forum asking what you’d like to see from Pets in ‘08 and to my delight I got a few responses. Keeping Peace in Multiple Pet Households On of the issues people expressed interest in learning more about and understanding better was maintaining harmony when more than one pet –-same species or not– shares a house. In one of her replies, Mcmama remarked: “Having a peaceable kingdom is something that … Continue reading