My best friend Clare said a final farewell to her dog Archie yesterday. He was 17 and had been in decline for a while. He probably had a brain tumor, the vet said. It was time. He had a very good life and a good death, with Clare by his side. But the end is…
Help PAWS NY Help the Elderly & Disabled Keep Their Pets
Like every other pet blogger, I get a lot of pet-related press releases in my email inbox, most from people who want me to promote their products (for free) or causes (requiring money from me, or more time than I have). What keeps me from automatically pushing “delete” is that I also get the occasional…
First-Aid for Pets — and Empowerment for Caretakers
Coulda, woulda, shoulda — how many of us second guess ourselves, especially when it comes to the health of our pets? It’s bad enough to be confronted with an emergency situation that has an unfortunate outcome. It’s worse to think you could have done something to change it. According to the American Animal Hospital Association…
Serendipity and Taxidermy
Yesterday I posted about Owney the postal train dog –– and now Forever stamp poster dog — who met his end in a somewhat ignominious fashion, having been shot and then stuffed. My pal Lori over at The Dog Park commented that the real train dog symbol should have been Hachiko, a Japanese Akita who…
A Better Way to Celebrate Owney, the Rail-Riding Dog
Yesterday, to commemorate a pup who provided good luck to the Railway Mail Service, the United States Postal Service issued 60 million Owney the Postal Dog Forever stamps. The Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum is debuting a new exhibit that chronicles his adventures and announcing an Owney photo look-alike contest. In conjunction with the contest, the…
Publisher to Book: Drop Dead
When a piece that is assigned to a writer doesn’t make into print for some reason, the expression is that it’s been “killed.” That didn’t happen to AM I BORING MY DOG, which went to press right on schedule less than two years ago. Maybe it sounds overly dramatic, but I nevertheless took the news…
The BlogPaws Pet Bloggers Conference, Unplugged
Did you ever meet a couple of like-minded professionals and think, “We ought to put on an event together?” That’s not precisely how Caroline Golon, Tom Collins, and Yvonne DiVita started BlogPaws, a series of conferences and a community for pet bloggers, but it’s pretty darned close. Perhaps the lesson to be learned from the…
Pet Travel Thursday: My 7 Links
I was recently posed a challenge by my friend Vera Marie Badertscher of A Travelers Library that’s been making its way around the interwebs: Pick out your best posts in seven different categories and then pass the challenge along to five more bloggers. Called — very aptly — My 7 Links, it was started by…
Wordless Wednesday: Thundershirt Edition
We should all buy stock in the Thundershirt company, if it ever goes public. My friends Rod and Amy Burkert at GoPetFriendly.com just finished a Thundershirt giveaway contest — sorry, they have a winner — that elicited raves about the product. Caleb, pictured here, and his person, Jillian, swear by it too as a cure…
Behind Door Number 3: A Winning Shelter Campaign
Last month I highlighted the Austin Humane Society’s awesome ad campaign, which proved that going positive is not only uplifting but effective. As a result of the new campaign the AHS saw: A 30% increase in monthly adoptions, year-over-year, as of May 2010. A 100% increase in holiday donations, year-over-year. Online donations that nearly doubled…