Dr. Becker and PetConnection executive editor Gina Spadafori will also be signing copies of their latest best-sellers, “The Ultimate Cat-Lover” and “The Ultimate Dog-Lover.” The VCA folks will have free refreshments and tours of the facility.

The schedule:

2-3 p.m.: Tours of the VCA Sacramento Veterinary Referral Center. Free refreshments.

3-5 p.m.: Hear Dr. Becker and get your book signed. Bring your own copies of his books or buy them there.

The VCA Sacramento Veterinary Referral Center is at 9801 Old Winery Place, Sacramento 95827. Phone: 916-362-3111

Click for a map

Click to download the flier

Best of all, I got to see a whole lot of really cool dogs and visit with my friends Teresa and Debbie. Teresa’s girl Sprint (who is my McKenzie’s sister), got her first championship point. Not that Sprint cares. She’d rather run agility (she’s already a MACH — an agility champion) and she IS her registered name, Windfall’s Made to Run. She ran clean twice in addition to the show-ring ribbons, which made it a pretty nice day all around.

Teresa’s other dog, Jazz, I’ve written about before. She was given a few weeks to live more than a year ago, and look at her go! Look at the picture I took this morning: Does this look like a dog with cancer? Not at all! She just keeps living her life the way she loves it.

Jazz is one special, special dog. (By the way, we put the story of Jazz in the new book.)

Hard to pull myself away, but with a six-hour drive ahead of me, I had to. That was a 825-mile roundtrip “weekend getaway.” Zounds, that’s a lot of driving! But I loved the Jetta SportWagen, so I’ll be writing a good review for DogCars.com. Nimble, comfortable and economical. Pretty darn cute, too.

Speaking of pretty darn cute, what about this quartet of Smooth Fox Terriers?

I was planning to fly down this morning, but I am fried. (We finished the books around 6 a.m. on Tuesday.) So I’m going to spend today hanging with the pets and leisurely doing a little laundry and then pack to go.

With my flight canceled, I’m choosing to drive tomorrow instead of fly today. Maybe crazy, but I wanted to switch. I’ve logged a lot of sky time in the last couple years, and it’s ugly up there. Volkswagen gave me permission to take this week’s DogCars.com test car, the Jetta SportWagen, on the road trip. (Usually reviewers have the vehicle for a week, and are not to put more than 500 miles on it.) I’m hoping the drive will be a little mental “reset” button for my tired mind, and I’m grateful the Jetta is pretty fuel-efficient.

It’s six hours door to door, which means eight hours with traffic, probably. I’m having lunch Friday with my college buddy Russ Stanton, who’s now the editor of the Los Angeles Times. (I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around that. I mean, he was always smart, hard-working and talented, but Editor of the Los Angeles Times? Wow.) Then I have to run to the first of the book-signings in the L.A. Convention Center, one on Friday and two on Saturday.

This is just for the industry … like everyone else, we’ll be trying to impress the buyers from bookstores and from the big retailers like Target and Costco.

Signings late Saturday afternoon, and then if I have any energy left, I’m going to drive home Saturday night. More realistically, I’ll crash in the hotel room the publisher has provided and drive back early Sunday morning.

And then … I swear … no travel for a long, long time. I wanna stay home with my pets and my garden!

Pupdate: I just found out that my friend Teresa is competing all weekend at an agility competition in Pasadena (Teresa has Jazz, written about here, and also Sprint, the fastest agility dog in the world and sister to my girl McKenzie.) So … looks as if I’ll be spending Sunday morning at the park next to the Rose Bowl!

“People come in and say, I had a black and white tuxedo cat before, so that’s what I want,” says Jim Monsma of the Washington Animal Rescue League in Washington, D.C. “But cats are not all the same. They have widely divergent personalities.”

That’s why the shelter is now using the Feline-ality program, developed by behaviorist Dr. Emily Weiss of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

Part of the ASPCA’s Meet Your Match program, which also includes Canine-ality for dogs, the program assesses a variety of behaviors in individual cats. It rates the animals on confidence and sociability, which Weiss’ research has shown are independent of each other.

The program then tallies those assessments to place the cat into nine personality categories, which can be matched with a family’s situation and desires. [...] The program is used at 45 shelters, with additional facilities preparing to use it.

Our Pet Connection behavior team, Susan and Dr. Rolan Tripp, just wrote a piece (coming out next week) for our newspaper clients on how to judge personality types in kittens.

Cats aren’t as diverse in their personalities as dogs are, but certainly the person who wants a quiet lap-cat isn’t going to be happy with an adventurous, always in motion go-kitty. And of course the person who wants a playful, engaged cat will find the lap-kitty too boring.

I’m glad shelters are trying to look at feline personality types to help people make a better match.

Completely unrelated: Check out the lattice mane braid (click the image to see it larger) done and photographed by the amazing Sarah K. Andrew, lead photographer for our Ultimate Horse Lover book. Sarah, you rock! (I also like this picture revealing the secret of the equine photographer: Who needs a tripod when you have a quad-pod?)

More completely unrelated, but way cool: Thanks to everyone who sent me this one:

When Yosuke the parrot flew out of his cage and got lost, he did exactly what he had been taught – recite his name and address to a stranger willing to help.

Police rescued the African grey parrot two weeks ago from a neighbor’s roof in the city of Nagareyama, near Tokyo. After spending a night at the station, he was transferred to a nearby veterinary hospital while police searched for clues, local policeman Shinjiro Uemura said.

He kept mum with the cops, but began chatting after a few days with the vet.

“I’m Mr. Yosuke Nakamura,” the bird told the veterinarian, according to Uemura. The parrot also provided his full home address, down to the street number, and even entertained the hospital staff by singing songs.

Not just “Yosuke Nakamura” but “Mr. Yosuke Nakamura”! Ha!

Not so fried, however, that I can’t snap a picture of my two favorite cats getting along better by the day. I need regular reminders of how important the subject matter is to me! I wonder if I could put in this much effort or interest writing on anything except pets.

I’ve been leaving the door to the attached garage open just enough for Clara to get away from Ilario, who tries to follow her everywhere. I also put a fresh second litter box just for her under the work bench. Today, Ilario figured out how to get over the box I had blocking his path, and right into the garage he went.

She didn’t seem to mind too very much that he shared her patch of sunlight.

This so pleases me that every day she accepts him more — and sometimes even seems to like him.

Thursday, by the way, he’s off to get “tutored.” I figure after he comes home smelling of the veterinary hospital she’ll be all hissy again for a while. But she’ll get over it soon enough.

Here they are earlier today yesterday afternoon:

This morning, triumph! They are cats united in demanding justice: Why do the dogs get to go outside and not the cats?

Teri summed it up midway through my weeklong road trip: “Nest is best.”

Amen.

Which is about all the explanation I’m going to bother you with for why it has taken me almost a week just to get enough energy to blog again after taking a 1,300-mile road trip with the dogs to Oregon and the extreme northern coast of California.

Today, refreshed from a day of sleep yesterday — finally! — I’m ready to tackle the laundry.

But before I do, I have to mention (belatedly) the best part of the trip by far, the events in Crescent City and Arcata.

Russell and Nadine Long did an extraordinary job with the “Evening For Pet-Lovers” event at the Del Norte Library in Crescent City (Russell’s the library director), and the turnout reflected their efforts. More than 100 people came out, pet-lovers all, and everyone had a wonderful time, not the least my four dogs, who smooched on everyone they could. The band was delightful, and I have to say that no one could ever ask for a better socialization opportunity for a puppy — dozens of pet-lovers in a room full of new scents and sounds. Otter, the 6-month-old retriever pup I’ve been raising for my friend Mary, now has been introduced to the sound of a washtub bass played by a Methodist minister.

Otter was supposed to go home with Mary from Oregon, by the way, but with the airline situation in full meltdown, we didn’t want to take a chance. So young Otter’s booked on a red-eye direct this week. I am sure going to miss that puppy! (She’s the looonnngggg dog on the left in the top picture, taken by my friend Jill, whose dog Izzy is in the front. The dog on the right is McKenzie.)

The event included a dramatic reading of a story I wrote for this fall’s dog book. I didn’t remember until about halfway through that the end was a reflection on how I would feel after Heather had passed, and I realized I was in trouble, with Heather very much still with me at my feet. Yes, I cried at the ending, and I wasn’t alone. As for Heather, she waved her tail encouragingly throughout and got lots of hugs from the audience, several of whom reminded me that she was a healthy 11 and could be with me for a long time yet.

I’m sure counting on it. After the event, Jenise Axberg of Mellow Mutts Massage gave Heather a good going over as a reward for all her good manners and graciousness during the trip.

Russell and Nadine treated me to a crab omelet at the Chart Room in the Crescent City harbor the next morning, and then I hit the road for the college town of Arcata, down the coast a ways. Susan Fox had set up a great little signing in conjunction with an adoption event, all in front of Arcata Pet, a business I’ve been ordering supplies from for years. (The place looks like a normal little pet store in a grocery store mall, but their selection and service online is super.)

The drive home was beautiful but it goes on forever … from Crescent City down the coast and then inland a little and down the Redwood Highway through all the kitchy drive-through trees and faded lumber towns (I was shocked to see Babe without her head at the Trees of Mystery, but relieved to know she had been repaired within a couple days after I passed her.) Across aptly named Lake County (with voracious half-inch long mosquitoes when we stopped for a break and a bite) and finally hooking up to I-5 for the final sprint home to Sacramento.

The Honda Element couldn’t have been better for the trip. It’s not a big car by any means, but I still managed to fit in four retrievers, four crates (only one set up, the rest collapsed with the dogs wearing seat-belt harnesses), a large suitcase, an espresso machine, 200 books for the signings, a grooming table, a wheeled cart, a dog dryer and other grooming supplies and tools, a week’s worth of dog food, a laptop computer, camera bag and more. Here’s a picture of the Honda before I unpacked. After I unpacked, the mounds of supplies seemed bigger than the car itself.

Plus, it was nimble on all those windy coastal and redwood-lined roads, if a little noisy on the big Interstate. (Honda had thoughtfully installed XM satellite radio, which helped not only with the noise but also with making the 10-hour drive from Crescent City bearable.)

I got home around midnight last Sunday, hustled through a lot of deadlines on Monday, hit the day job the rest of the week and caught up on my sleep yesterday.

Today, it’s laundry time, and after that’s done then I’ll well and truly be home.

I never really go anywhere except for business. Now, I love the work I do, but it seems I’m always getting on a plane for a pet-related trade show, veterinary conference or a meeting with editors either at Universal Press or our book publisher, HCI. And since I’m getting on a plane, I’m not taking the pets.

Not this time. We’re going. We’re all going. Well, me and the dogs, anyway. The non-canines will stay behind with the house-sitter and my neighbors Judy and John to look after things.

Drew is going to stay with my parents (they love him like the child they never had, the good-looking one who always does what you ask him to). Pip is going to stay with his foster mom at German shepherd rescue. And all the retrievers are jumping into a Honda Element and we’re off to Oregon on Sunday.

Why? The Flat-Coated Retriever National Specialty, which is kind of Super Bowl just for Flat-Coated Retrievers. Puppy Otter will compete in puppies. McKenzie will compete with the grown-up girls. Woody will compete against other hunt-titled retriever boys.

And Heather … oh, Queen Heather. My darling heart dog, my 11.5 year-old queen of the world (just ask her) will compete in 11-and-older veteran girls. This is special, because she is the Queen here, and because she has previously placed in two national specialties — as a puppy, and as a 7- to 9-year-old veteran girl.

You know what? She has never looked better. But I may be a little biased. I love this girl, and I don’t really care what happens up there. I am just so happy she is still with me, healthy and as full of her own fine self as ever.

We’re going to hang out with lots of other people who love the smell of wet dogs and talk about … wet dogs! Retrieving! And dogs! Dogs!

Even better, Honda just confirmed that they’ll be sending me on the road trip in our 2007 Best In Show DogCar of the Year, the Honda Element. I just ordered stickers to tape on the car, and everyone I meet with an Element will get one for FREE.

Wait … there’s more!

On the way back, I’m doing two book-signings and readings. The first:

An Evening for Pet Lovers
On Saturday, April 12, at the Del Norte County Library, beginning at 7 p.m.

The evening, sponsored by the Del Norte County Library and the Del Norte Literary Coalition, will bring rare, personal appearances by two of the most authoritative and entertaining pet writers working today: Gina Spadafori and Christie Keith.

Gina and Christie will make lively and informative presentations, offer for sale and autograph Gina’s books with additional participation from the Del Norte County Animal Shelter and the Humane Society of Del Norte.

You can view complete details of this unique and free event in the attached brochure that you may also download and print.

For those not familiar with California, Del Norte’s county seat is in Crescent City, which is about as far north as you can go and not be in Oregon and as far west and not be in the Pacific Ocean.

The day after, I’ll be a little further down the coast in Arcata, at Arcata Pet for another book-signing.

The books’ll be for sale and signing — we’re just going for $10 a book, to make it easy — but the publisher has sent a couple of cases of FREE bookmarks, and everyone who asks me will get one.

I don’t really like public events. But I’m doing these because Pet Connection readers Russell and Nadine Long and Susan Fox asked me to. And because Christie promises to cut my hair while we’re both in Crescent City.

Of course, I’ll be blogging the road trip. Four dogs and up to a dozen baby chicks (my new pet chickens!). In a car. For a week. Stay tuned.

I do. Because I blogged it. And then didn’t stop working for the next eight weeks.

A lot of people will be spending the weekend thinking about their dead pets, caring for their sick ones and wondering if it could ever happen again, in pets or even in the human food supply system. The answer?

From Christie’s piece just posted on SFGate.com, on this sad anniversary made even sadder because little has changed when it comes to our government’s lack of ability to protect the food supply:

I didn’t guess when I began covering this story … that it would turn into the largest consumer recall in history, trigger an international trade scandal, launch congressional hearings and proposed legislation on food safety, and result in the indictment of American and Chinese businesses owners. I couldn’t have foreseen that the incident would put a spotlight on Chinese imports that would eventually reveal lead in children’s toys and toxins in toothpaste and prompt a recent recall of the drug heparin.

But it’s equally hard to believe that after all that, the answer to the question “Could it happen again?” is probably “Yes.”

The reason is simple: None of the changes that might prevent a repeat have been implemented. Inspections of pet food plants haven’t improved; the patchwork of state, federal and industry manufacturing standards and regulations haven’t been overhauled; transparency and accountability haven’t increased – not even something as simple as printing the name and contact information of the actual manufacturer on pet food labels – and pet food labeling laws haven’t been revised. The FDA still does not have mandatory-recall authority.

Here’s the rest. I hardly remember those weeks now (they’re just one big, sad blur) except to be grateful to all the people who helped, who supported each other and shared what they knew. We couldn’t have done what we did here without the people and pets we did it for. And I couldn’t have make it through without Christie, without Dr. Marty Becker, without Dr. Paul Pion of VIN and our Web team at Black Dog Studios. And many more people, too.

I know Kim is writing a piece for MSNBC.com and we’ll put that up, too, when it’s posted.

Me? I have never, ever been so bloody keen on anniversary pieces as the rest of the media is. I’ve sighed every time I’ve been assigned one, and I’ve never assigned one to anyone else, either. So this weekend I’m not going to think about tens of thousands of dead and sick pets, a government that let us down (and still does so) and a media that with very few exceptions (USA Today and the L.A. Times, most notably) never realized the implications of the import mess. (And still doesn’t, preferring to cover the details of hiring expensive call girls instead of the sorry state of our nation’s food supply.)

Instead of writing about the one-year anniversary, I’m going to finish writing the first of our three new books, which is technically due in the morning but will really be at the publisher in full on Monday. I like writing. It gets me through the rough spots in life. I’m happy to have to be writing about something else this weekend, instead of revisiting such overpowering sadness.

Kim promises to blog about the new puppy, and Christie is supposed to be home from South By Southwest Interactive sometime today. They’ll have some good stuff to write about, I hope, because I have got to be dedicating my typing somewhere else for the next couple of days.

Please feel free to remember your pets in the comments here — I want to see some names, I want to read those names — and know I am thinking about them all this weekend. And you, too.

That’s it for me until Tuesday. I gotta book to finish.

Update: O, Canada! Geez, at least the U.S. regulatory agencies pretend to care. From the Canadian Press:

After the recalls started last year, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency began a review of its responsibilities to pet food and, according to their website, “determine if room for improvement exists within the Canadian system.”

On Friday, it appeared as though nothing had changed.

“We don’t have a regulatory role – that’s the bottom line,” said Marc Richard at the CFIA’s headquarters in an interview.

“We’re the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. We deal with food – and food is for humans.”

Considering the point that has been made time and time again (including by Dr. Nestle in the previous post) that the human and pet food supplies are interconnected, this seems to be as bone-headed a point of view as can possibly be imagined.  This man needs to find another job … forcibly, if need be.

About the image: Do you remember this kitten? She oversaw our recall coverage from start to finish, mostly on our PetConnection.com home page. Just a stock photo, and probably an old one, but this little cutie’s face is burned into my memory forever. I hope she had a good life.

This book deadline, I seem to be obsessed with catching up on all my DogCars.com vehicle reviews. I’m only a dozen or so behind, after all, and it’s not as if I have Something More Pressing To Do. Like finish the book that’s due Monday.

Anyway, in wastingspending time thinking about DogCars.com, which I have been, lots, I realized that we have been horribly, horribly dissed. It’s true: The L.A. Times’ great Pulitzer Prize-winning auto-writer Dan Neil got to drive the new Mini Cooper Clubman before I did. As I write over on the DogCars.com blog:

I may have mentioned a couple thousand times before that I (heart) the L.A. Times autowriter, Dan Neil. I (heart)  him because he writes about cars in a way that has never before been done, a way a non-gearhead can get into, funny, witty and relevant to the lives of people who don’t go to car shows, as in, um, women. I (heart) Dan Neil because he got a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, previously given only to guys who write about Serious Stuff like Architecture, Ballet and Art, not whether there’s a difference between a “guy car” and a “chick car.”  (Yes, and duh, of course there is. Guy car: Mustang. Chick car: VW Beetle.)

Honestly, having Dan Neil win a Pulitzer gives me hope — dim, dim hope — that someday a syndicated pet-care columnist will win one, too. And that that syndicated pet-care columnist will be me.

That’s why I (heart) Dan Neil.

But right now, I hate Dan Neil, because as the God of All That Is Good About Auto Writing, he got to drive the Mini Cooper Clubman before I have even cast eyes on one in person.

I ask you: Is that right? Is that fair?

Of course not. Because the Mini Cooper Clubman has the look of a serious city DogCar, and I can barely live with my desire to drive one very, very soon. Because a lot of really practical DogCars are — how shall I say this nicely? — dull, and I know that is not the case with the Clubman. I know this, because driving the regular Mini Cooper (along with the Mazda Speed3) last year was just about the most fun I’ve had in a car since I was 17, and Michael Vianni and and I took his Dodge Charger to Folsom Lake and … uh … well now, you just never mind.

Read the rest.

I woke up to find Drew licking my face and the other pets looking at me in bemusement and concern. This is why I suspect my “That’ll do, Drew” was spoken not only in the dream, but to the bedroom at large.

That’ll do, indeed. It’s always like this in the Red Zone of a book project. …

***

Been meaning to point to Luisa’s post over on Lassie Get Help (speaking of herding dogs!) about Toronto’s pit bull ban. Does it ever seem that common sense has never been more lacking in legislation than it is today? (Asked and answered … yes!) Personally, I would rather my government act against real risks to public safety, like imported food and food ingredients. But that would buck some big money, and it’s far easier to take people’s pets away and pretend you’ve done something good.

Luisa’s post:

Dogs aren’t people. Toronto’s city animal shelters aren’t Guantánamo. But dogs aren’t refrigerators or cars, either, so forgive me for comparing Toronto’s shelter system to a prison system, a place of isolation and suffering, when the wardens issue chilling statements like this:

A sign of just how controversial the [pit bull] issue can be, animal services officials refuse to allow the media to photograph or have contact with the condemned dogs in their shelters.

“All it would do is make the public very upset about that particular one dog and whoever might own that dog — it would potentially cause them further upset,” says animal services manager Eletta Purdy.

“Make the public very upset”? And why on earth shouldn’t we be “very upset” that a good dog — a dog that has never harmed nor threatened to harm anyone — may be scheduled to die because of a brindle coat or a broad head? Why on earth shouldn’t a family rage that a beloved, trustworthy companion was taken from them on the basis of a law rooted in ignorance and hysteria?

Why, indeed.

Perhaps Christie or Kim will blog today. Me? The 15th is the elephant in the room here, and he’s stamping his feet. You got more? Put it in the comments. I’m going to write, and then I’m going to the river with the dogs.

* I love “Babe.” I love when the mice sing “Blue Moon.” Yes, I’ve seen it lots. My brother was on jury duty once, and in the jury room they had “Babe” on an endless loop. My brother’s story: “So I’m sitting there in the jury room, and this cranky old man walks in. He looks up at the monitor, shouts, “NOT THE GODDAMN PIG MOVIE AGAIN!” and stomps out of the room.”

Don’t care. I love the goddamn pig movie. Which reminds me: Factory farm discussion over at Dr. Khuly’s, with a post from a “Swine Consultant” point of view.

(Why, yes, I have switched to decaf. Why do you ask?)