You have a question? We may have an answer!
By Gina Spadafori
March 26, 2008
For the three months, we’ve quietly been working behind the scenes on a pretty big Web project: Developing a complete and completely searchable archive of years of pet-care articles. This has been a dream of mine for a long time, but I didn’t have the technical skills and time to develop a searchable database myself, or the money to have someone else do it.
When Dr. Marty Becker and I wrote our first two books together (”Why Do Cats …?/”Why Do Dogs ..?”), we knew we had something good going. We loved working together and we never fought about anything. So we joined forces officially, with him dropping his Knight-Ridder (now McClatchy) newspaper column to join me at the world’s biggest and best provider of syndicated content, the Universal Press Syndicate. (Not to mention the nicest: I love the folks there, especially my gifted, long-time editor, Greg Melvin.) Dr. Becker brought with him behaviorists Susan and Dr. Rolan Tripp, and I dragged the incomparable Christie Keith along with me — a kind of pet-care Brady Bunch, if you will. (We’ll have more top pet-care experts joining us soon, too!)
Dr. Becker and I merged forces on Jan. 1, 2007, and we’ve never looked back.
But what about those articles? I still dreamed of making them available to people who needed help — and not just the advice, but also things like Christie’s transcripts of interviews with important people in the animal world. A few months ago, Dr. Becker was kidding me about what I wanted for my 50th birthday, and I told him: A searchable database! He thought I was kidding, but … it’s really what I wanted most.
So now we have one.
We have a lot of companies asking to buy sponsorship banners on PetConnection.com and DogCars.com, but we turn most of them down. For one thing, we don’t want to clutter up our site with a ton of little junky ads. And for another, we’re not about to be giving space to puppy-mill retail sites or outfits pitching snake oil to desperate pet-lovers. So we’ve entered into sponsorship agreements with a handful of companies we respect, and made sure those companies understand that they are not buying us or our content — they get a banner to reach our readers.
One of those companies we decided to work with was Pfizer, and when we asked them to underwrite the development of the searchable archives, they eagerly agreed. Our Black Dog Web team drew up the prototypes and the behind the scenes interface, and we hired top pet-care editor Phyllis DeGioia to handle the difficult task of editing and inputting thousands of articles.
She’s about halfway through that job, with more than 2,000 articles in the database, so we’ve launched it to see how it works as she continues to add another couple thousand more.
Check it out and let us know what you think. You can get to the article search from the Pet Connection home page or from any Pet Connection page by clicking on “Article Search” in the top navigation.
We’re considering this a “soft-roll” beta version and will continue to tweak it until it’s exactly best for helping the most people and pets. And if you don’t find something you need an answer to, let us know. That probably means we need to do an article on it for our newspaper feature. Or maybe it means Phyllis hasn’t gotten to it yet!
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Did you miss Dr. Becker?
Last week he was all over the media. We now have all the links so you can watch online
ABC News Now:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video
Pudgy Pooch? Best Doggie Diets!
Learn how to alter your dog’s diet to get your overweight pet back in shape.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video
Fido Fitness Unleashed!
Help your dog put their best paw forward with the latest walking accessories.
XM radio 155:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video
Good Morning America video:
http://abcnews.go.com/Video
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA
For the rest of the week, you can watch the clips from “The Martha Stewart Show.” Go here, click on March 24 and then go to the second set of videos on the right — “Pet Emergencies” and “Giving Medicine to Pets.”
Congratulations Gina and Dr. Marty - this is an amazing collection of articles. I’ll make sure to add to my list of useful pet-related resources on my blog.
There’s a lot of information available in the pet world but alas, so little is worth the bits and bites it’s written in. Your work is top notch. Thanks for bringing it into the light of day.
Comment by Laura Bennett — March 27, 2008 @ 6:23 am
Thanks Laura! The true value of having someone like Phyllis comb through the last 10 years of articles is that she knows pets, and has culled the outdated information. Phyllis is also the editor at VeterinaryPartner.com, which is owned by the Veterinary Information Network (VIN.com), co-founded and run by the respected and uncompromising Dr. Paul Pion. (He’s also my “Cats For Dummies” coauthor!)
I have admired what Phyllis does for years, and was delighted she was able to work for us on this important project.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 27, 2008 @ 6:46 am
Just watched Marty Becker on the Martha Stewart Show.
The best suggestion for me was to mix a tablespoon of non-flavored cooked pumpkin in the cat’s food if the cat is constipated.
Another tip I learned was to give the animal water with the pill.
Dr. Marty Becker gave a lot of good information for dog owners.
Thanks, Gina, for posting the show on this page.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — March 27, 2008 @ 11:15 am
your show opened my eyes and let me see what went on in puppy mills and it made me think of how people could do that to animals i have two dogs fo my own and i love them very dearley we had three but chioc died on december 3 2007 and we miss him so much thakks for the show on puppy mills it really made me open my eyes
Comment by stephanie — April 7, 2008 @ 8:39 am