pet connection

[Gina note: We're getting a lot of new visitors -- which we like -- but also a lot of people who are being dorks in the comments, which we don't. So I'm moving this post to the top. Please read it.]

I hate to be the blog police, but Gina’s out of town and she left me in charge, so, well… here we go.

New here? Look up at the top of the main page of the blog. See that thing about our “comment guidelines“? Please read it, especially the part about how all first time commentors are held in moderation to prevent spam — a system that blocks THOUSANDS of spam comments a month that would otherwise make your reading experience here pretty craptastic.

We release comments at what I have to consider super-human speed, but even bloggers must enter our regeneration pods from time to time, so please don’t accuse us of censoring your oh-so-dangerous-and-brave commentary because your comment didn’t appear two seconds after you made it.

Also, note the part where we don’t allow comments with “usernames” as opposed to, you know, names. That means no, we don’t release comments if you’re using the name “Hater of Famous Dog Celebrity” or “Truth About Important Social Pet Issue” or even “BestDogMomEver.” And we’re definitely not going to allow “House of Pet Supplies at Great Discount Prices” or “Yet Another Pet Blog You Really Must Read.”

If you’re an individual and are dead set on hiding your identity, it’s not like we’re going to come to your house and ask to see your ID. Go ahead and use any name, Bill or Sue or ZsaZsa. We’re cool with that.

And yes, we have some long-time commentors who use non-names, but they started doing that before we made this rule, so it’s kind of like the dog who you let stay on the bed when you’re trying to make it because you started doing it when he was just a cute little puppy and now that’s he’s a 135-pound Great Dane you’re stuck with it.

Also, please don’t include your website, commercial or otherwise, in your actual comment. You can include it in the “website” field when you fill out the comment.

Questions? Feel free to ask.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email

On the heels of the news of the tragic death of Paul Palika, husband of our own Liz Palika, came word that Dr. Nancy Kay’s father passed away over the weekend. Dr. Kay, our hearts go out to you for your loss, and you and your family are in our thoughts and prayers.

Dr. Becker, Gina and all of us here at Pet Connection are full of grief for Liz and Dr. Kay, and are taking a day of silence here at the blog to mourn their losses.

Although we won’t be blogging, we know that both of them will be reading, so please continue to leave notes for them here if you wish.

Until Wednesday.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email

Liz Palika’s husband, Paul Palika, was killed in an accident this morning, after SUV spun out in front of his motorcycle on the rain-slicked highway. Liz has friends and family around her now, and she is coping as best she can. I will update with information on services as soon as it’s available. You can send a card to Liz here:

Liz Palika
Kindred Spirits Dog Training
3343 East Vista Way
Vista, CA 92084

I’ve known Liz for a long time, but I met Paul for the first time last summer, when we all went to Del Mar. I could tell in a moment why he and Liz were together. I loved talking to him, and when we parted, I told him I looked forward to seeing him again soon.

UPDATE: If you would like to make a donation in Paul Palika’s memory, their service dog training center is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Paul was very involved in the group.

Make checks out to Kindred Spirits Canine Education Center and send them to

Terry Albert
14021 Earie Lane
Poway, CA 92064

You’ll receive a receipt for your tax deductible donation.

Here is a picture of Paul with Archer, his service dog.
.

.

Semper Fi, Paul.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email

And most of them barely get paid enough to live for doing so, jockeys included. They do it because it feels like flying.

Zenyatta’s last gallop in California. She’s now retired in Kentucky, with everyone waiting to find out if she’s in foal.
.

.
As for me, what Christie said is the doG’s own truth. I’m working nonstop on the preparations for a 30-city book tour that starts in a little more than a month.

Good times.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email

For a few months now, a lot of things have been going on behind the scenes here. You know Dr. Becker has a book coming out in the spring — “Your Dog: The Owner’s Manual” — which I helped to write, along with Kim Campbell Thornton and Jana Murphy, with additional input from the rest of the PetConnection team, especially Dr. Tony Johnson and Christie “Deerhound Connection” Keith.

And yes, we’ve also upped our reporting from conferences and trade shows, added more places where our work shows up (such as AARP.com) and generally, just hustled our butts off to try to make it in a tough economy that’s even tougher for writers.

One thing I wanted to try was e-books. We have a team that many veterinary schools and certainly specialty practices would envy, not to mention we have some of the top writers in the pet-care world. So I had this idea of e-books, short, tightly focused and very inexpensive works on a single topic people need to know about, such as how to know if your pet needs to go to the ER (Dr. Tony, of course, in his own unique style), how to introduce a new baby to an established pet (Arden Moore and Mikkel Becker), hospice care and pain management (Dr. Robin Downing), various dog-training topics (Liz Palika) and so on.

We’re getting ready to make the first of these book available soon, with the help of an outstanding editor, Greg Melvin (that’s him at right, going over Dr. Tony’s e-book, which he’s editing on paper, being Greg).  Greg is MY editor, the person I have worked with the longest in what is becoming a pretty long career (just because, hey, I’m getting old!). Until fairly recently, Greg was at Universal Press, where he edited Ann Coulter, Aaron McGruder, Dear Abby, Roger Ebert, James J. Kilpatrick and many more writers and cartoonists, and yes, that’s the entire range of left-to-right politics, and all his writers loved him.  (Here’s an article on him, talking about what it was like to edit such a wide range of opinion.) He is an old-school editor, the kind of person whose mastery (and I don’t use that term lightly) of the language is complete, but more than that, you never see his fingerprints on your work: When he edits, it’s as if you wrote it, but better. And yes, he prefers to edit on paper, even e-books.

He is the best editor with whom I have ever worked, and I have worked with a lot of very good editors. He has also, over the years, become my very good friend.

Greg is now working for the federal judiciary, but since he has nights and weekends available in theory, I asked him to take on editing the e-books, and he agreed.

I’m writing from his home in Overland Park, Kansas, now, staying here over the weekend to talk about the e-books (and Madeira, jazz, film noir, Monty Python and Chaucer) before I head in to Kansas City for a couple days of meetings about the spring book tour.

This morning Greg took off for a four-mile walk (he walks 36 miles a week, four miles a day during the week and four miles twice a day on the weekends, no matter the weather … even during blizzards) leaving me with his utterly charming cat, Harry.

Turns out Harry is an editor, too, “helping” me with my writing this morning.

That Harry is here to harass me is a bit of a miracle. He was born on Greg’s uncle’s farm in Mississippi, and Greg saved him on a family visit. He tried to catch all the kittens and the mother, but only Harry would allow himself to be picked up.  The little kitten had every kind of parasite known to cats, and barely made the transition from farm kitten to suburban housecat, he was so sick. Now he has it so good that Greg immediately got a stern warning from me about Harry’s weight … which he’ll need to be reducing slowly before I am back in Kansas City this spring.

Hmmm … maybe the editor and the editor’s cat can write a feline weight-loss guide together. Then I can edit him.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email