pet connection

Back from three perfect — and I do mean perfect! — days mostly offline in San Diego. (I didn’t even take a laptop! First time in years.) Don’t know how many of you have ever lived in Sacramento, but I’ve been here all my life and I gotta say: Coming home from three days in San Diego — where we saw a great baseball game, went to world-class museums and spent two days at the racetrack founded by Bing Crosby — really makes you wonder if you live in the same state (of mind) as San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Ah, Sacramento … the Des Moines of California. (No offense to Iowa, but this is supposed to be California.)

But it’s good to be home, just because home is where the pets are. And so back to work …

The publicity machine that is Simon Brodie — formerly scoring media attention with supposedly hypoallergenic cats and the $22,000 “Lifestyle Pet” hybrid cat called the Ashera — is apparently involved in another pet-related business, Flexpetz.

Our pal Ben over at Itchmo reports that the controversial pet-sharing plan has Brodie as CEO:

Simon Brodie, the controversial founder with a criminal past behind the Allerca hypoallergenic cats, is the CEO of a company that owns Flexpetz, the pet sharing service. Brodie was convicted in the UK of multiple counts of accounting fraud. Ever since his move to the United States, he has been linked to pets or animals in his ventures and is shadowed by a history of failed ventures, lawsuits, unpaid bills, and fraud allegations. He characterized his past by saying “I’ve had some hits, some misses.”

The HSUS has jumped on board this morning in pointing out the problems with a pet-sharing business.

As for CEO-sharing plans, well hang on, there’s more. Back at the Lifestyle Pets site, the company notes it’s “currently developing a new breed of very small dog.“

We can hardly wait.

My favorite commentary on the Flexpetz nonsense is from Terrierman:

Mr. Brodie’s latest doggy adventure (dare I say possible scam?) involves seriously stupid people paying $150.00 “at registration to cover a mandatory one-hour introduction session with a trainer,” and then $50 a month to spend a time with mutts that have been rescued from the local animal shelter. On top of all that, there is an “annual account maintenance charge of $99.95,” and you have to sign up for a full year right at the beginning (i.e. $300 is due at the signing). So, to be clear, in that first year, you are going to be out $850 to give a few walks to some pound puppies. My guess is that your local animal shelter will give you a lot better deal!

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And speaking of racehorses, which I kind of was, at the top of the post, check out Dr. Khuly’s discussion of horse-racing stud-puppies on Dolittler, Fascinating stuff to this horse-addicted person. Be double-sure to read the comments, which are incredibly thoughtful and expert. (By the way, a great read on the horse-breeding industry is Kevin Conley’s “Stud: Adventures in Breeding,” a book that started as a can’t-put-it-down article in the New Yorker magazine focusing on Storm Cat, the world’s top racehorse sire (at $500,000 a date).

Oh yeah, this gives me the chance to show off a picture from our weekend at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club. From left to right, that’s me, my niece Kate and … Kristin Mulhall, who (in 2004 at the age of 21) was the youngest trainer to ever have a horse in the Kentucky Derby. The story of a racehorse retired from the track by Mulhall and now her family pet (and a decent show jumper), is in our new book, and I contacted the young trainer to give her a signed copy of the bound galley. (The book itself won’t be out for another month.) She sat with us for the better part of an hour, and dished lots of inside information.

Mulhall is trying to buy a ranch north of Sacramento to keep some of the other old campaigners she claims and retires. She’s really a remarkable woman, a class act with compassion, brains and true love for horses. I hope I can help her with her racehorse retirement center in the future.