Pet News and Blogs

Liveblogging the No-Kill conference: shelter enrichment for cats
Sue Cosby, CEO of the Pennsylvania SPCA, is here talking about ways to handle, socialize and rehabilitate cats to improve their chances for adoption. She’s really allergic to cats and got into sheltering because she loved dogs, but she realized that cats were second-class citizens and made it her mission to change their circumstances in [...]

Liveblogging the No-Kill Conference: Saving lives 2.0
Walked into this session a bit late, as Kim and I had to go in search of caffeine. I’m sorry that we are both at the same session, but I’m a big fan of Mike Fry, who’s giving it, and it’s on social media, so… ummm. Duh. When I came in, he was talking about emerging [...]

Liveblogging the No-Kill conference: using technology to save lives
Christie and I are both here, so it will be interesting to see whether we blog the same things. If you were to take just Facebook users and make them a country, they would be one of the largest countries in the world. In just a few years, 80 percent of all Internet users will be [...]

Food scares and FDA actions: What has happened since 2007?
When I checked in this morning at the conference of the American Veterinary Medical Association here in Atlanta, the press office folks cheerfully handed me a list of highlights for the media, covering the less-technical offerings from the companion animal track of seminars. Thus was highlighted yet another broadside against home feeders, “Do raw food diets [...]

Liveblogging the No-Kill Conference: Forcing Transparency
The “Forcing Transparency” session is part of the legal track, and focuses on how to use “open government, public records, and freedom of information laws to get statistics, policies, internal documents and more.” It’s given by attorney Kate M. Neiswender. From official bio: Kate Neiswinder is an attorney specializing in land use, business litigation and environmental [...]

Liveblogging the No-Kill Conference: Welcome and keynote
Hi, everyone! I’m here in Washington DC with our own Kim Thornton right next to me, waiting for the welcome and keynote addresses for the 2010 No-Kill Conference. Just a general note about liveblogging: This is really live, so there will be typos. Anything in quotation marks is a direct quote, other things are a paraphrase, [...]

Iams expands recall to additional products on Salmonella concerns
It doesn’t appear to be on their website yet — and I’ll post the link when I have it — but we’ve just heard from Iams that they’re expanding their recall. With half our team on the road we’re just getting to this, but of course over at PetSitUSA.com, Therese never sleeps. (I like Austin, [...]

Does Dr. Marty rock ‘n’ roll? He does today!
A veterinarian on a rock talk radio show? That’s right, our own Dr. Marty Becker makes an appearance on “Rock Talk” with Allan Handelman today, fielding your pet related questions. Dr. Becker is a frequent guest on the show, and it’s a chance for listeners to call in and ask questions about pets, with or without a [...]

Summer barbecue stirs up a canine ‘furricane’
There are some things a dog’s just gotta have — and treats off the grill at a summer barbecue is pretty high on the list for the pooches of Almost Heaven Ranch. My wife, Teresa, is an excellent cook any time of year, indoors or out. The other night she made marinated beef shish kabobs (sirloin [...]

Hitting the conferences: No-Kill and AVMA
It’s not very often that Christie and I are on the road and Dr. Becker is not, but stranger things have happened, I suppose. Dr. Becker is a traveler. He has been to more than 100 countries, and the only thing he likes as much as seeing the stars on his isolated Almost Heaven Ranch in [...]