pet connection

Our PetConnection team is pretty spread out. Our Dr. Marty Becker lives in extreme northern Idaho; his daughter, Mikkel Becker Shannon, is in eastern Washington. Kim Campbell Thornton and Susan and Dr. Rolan Tripp are in Southern California. Our DogCars.com editor Keith Turner lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Christie and I both live in Northern California, although two places can’t be much more different than hot, flat Sacramento (where I live) and cool, hilly San Francisco (where Christie lives). Christie was born in SF, and I was born in Sacramento, which makes us both a little unusual for California, where most everyone is from somewhere else. We’re also both third-generation California natives, which is even more unusual. [Note from Christie: I'm a fourth generation San Franciscan.]

Want something even more unusual? Her dad and mine were in the same high school class, at Mission High School in San Francisco. My parents, inexplicably, settled in Sacramento after they were married in 1954. If they hadn’t, I, too, would be a third-generation San Franciscan like Christie. I will never forgive them for denying me this. (Correction: Christie is a fourth-generation San Franciscan.)

Anyway … Christie and I have been good friends since we first met volunteering for the old Pet Care Forum on America Online almost 15 years ago, back in the day when the Veterinary Information Network owned the PCF. Eventually, I left The Sacramento Bee to run the PCF for VIN, with Christie second in charge. When I left to write more books, Christie took over my job.

Christie was at VIN long enough to help with its transition off AOL, and the migration of the Pet Care Forum’s articles to Veterinary Partner. And then she left, too, to join PetHobbyist.com and pursue more free-lance work.

Until she and I finally started working together again here, we always stayed in touch.

I love going down to “The City” to visit Christie, although I usually don’t get around to it unless I have something else to do there; yesterday, I was there to drop in on Slow Food Nation.

Whenever I visit, Christie cuts my hair (in a “previous life” she owned posh SF salons, and she is still a brilliant stylist) and yesterday was no different. We also found a great place to eat and talked about story ideas, for the blog and the syndicated newspaper feature. I also always make time to fuss over the elegant Miss Kyrie Borzoi and especially over Rebel, the coolest Scottish Deerhound in the world. (He loves me, too.)

Great day, lots to think about and lots of great posts and stories to do.

Pictured: Christie, in a picture I took yesterday, on the stairs leading up to her front door. By the way, she IS very tall … almost six feet. I’m 5′ 3″, so she always makes me feel extremely short!