In the final sprint before launching the Pet Travel Book Club next Thursday (November 10), I started thinking about pet travel writing as a genre. Naturally, it’s as varied as any other type of travel writing — or writing, period — and is designed to serve different purposes. But whether I’m looking for advice about…
Pet Travel Is Here To Stay, Chris Elliott. Live With It
Imagine that a travel expert, writing for a megatraffic online travel site, chose a large segment of travelers to dismiss — say, baby boomers. “Baby boomers are slow moving and crabby,” he’d write. “They’d be better off staying home to care for their grandchildren, which most prefer to traveling anyway.” Then imagine if the evidence…
Interview with Mary-Alice Pomputius of Dog Jaunt
I’ve known Mary-Alice Pomputius and her blog, Dog Jaunt, for quite a while…well, quite a while in blog years, which are similar to dog years for telescoping time. Looking back through my email files to see just how long, I saw that I asked her to write a guest post for me in November 2009,…
Denver dreaming: Take me to your BlogPaws pets
Getting ready for the BlogPaws West conference involves finishing up a bunch of assignments that are not — shockingly enough — dog related. And I’m not going to be taking Frankie along to Denver because he’s not exactly a road warrior and the idea of dealing with needles and insulin and a carrier… well, I…
Versatile & Lovely Blogger Awards, Pet Edition
Confession: In the past year and a half, I received a Versatile Blogger award from Jana Rade of DawgBusiness and one from Sharon Castellanos of Grouchy Puppy, as well as a Lovely Blog award from Vera Marie Badertscher of A Traveler’s Library. And I haven’t passed them along. That is VBBK (Very Bad Blog Karma).…
Road Trip: San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter
Frankie and I are headed over today to DogJaunt.com, where we explore San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, which we recently visited. There are many reasons I wanted to write about this dog-friendly neighborhood of one of my favorite cities for one of my favorite blogs — as opposed to, say, for this one. I owe Dog…
Use Some (Car) Restraint: Small Dog Edition
I don’t generally use blackmail to get guest bloggers (0nly because I don’t generally have any leverage) but in the case of my car safety series I mentioned in public that I’d asked my two favorite pet travel bloggers to help me out. What else could they do but identify themselves by complying? Rod Burkert…
BlogPaws, the (Partial) Poop
I came, I talked, I learned. And I was inspired. For those who missed BlogPaws, the first pet blogger’s conference, I’m happy to report it was a huge success. I don’t have all the stats about how many attended — a big ballroomful, for sure — or how much money was raised for pet charities…