Dog Talk ® (and Kitties Too!)

#863C: Jeanne Selander created a sanctuary called Rivers Wish for senior chihuahuas in Key West, where they have a loving home forever

#862A: Celine Halioua is the CEO of Loyal, which has been developing a drug for large dogs that is expected to let them live longer with good quality of life — increasing their “healthspan” as well as their lifespan.

#862B: Lisa Erixon’s charming book “No Ordinary Cats” tells the stories of all the kitties she has lived with, but seen from their perspectives in their voices. 

#862C: Chelsea Barstow talks about the fun (for people, too!) activities she has created for people to do with their dogs in her book  “Happy Dog: 101 Easy Enrichment Activities for a Healthy, Happy, Well-Behaved Pup” 

#861A: Jim Dougherty’s book “Pet Project” tells the surprising and inspiring story of how he had a vision for a large supermarket style pet store that nobody understood. He struggled with just one store in Arizona and faced a mountain of challenges and impediments, but eventually proved everybody wrong and changed the face of the pet industry. 

#861B: Dr. Doug Mader, Tracie’s co-host on Exotic Pets (and author of the wonderful memoir “The Vet at Noah’s Ark”), talks about what it takes to become a veterinarian and get into vet school, a long path that some people may choose in midlife after another entire career.

#860A: Jen Danna, writing “That Others May Live” as Sara Driscoll, explains how search and rescue teams navigate a building collapse with their highly trained dogs — and in this thriller how they get to the bottom of the cause of the disaster. 

#860B: Pet food consultant Dr. Ryan Yamka shares Tracie’s frustration with veterinarians who cannot get past the erroneous mistaken belief that premium pet foods using peas and lentils have any relationship to DCM (dilated cardiomyopathy) in dogs. 

#860C: Trainer Annie Phenix talks about the challenges of a multi-dog household and how pack mentality can lead to escalating behaviors (barking, chasing, aggression). Her bottom line advice is only get another dog if you really want one and have the time to manage one more, but “Don't get a dog for your dog!”

#859A: US Navy Captain Risa Simon talks about why and how she created Leashes End, a home setting sanctuary for senior dogs and cats in Maryland (her “day job” is Deputy Senior Naval Intelligence Manager, Near East, assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence)  

#859B: Heather LaHaise is a painter and dog portraitist who features dogs in almost all her art, which will be on display for three days from 11AM to 8PM — Dec 15, 16, 17 — at what she’s calling Dog Borough, 616 East 9th in New York’s East Village. 

#859C: Jeanne Selander runs the Monroe County Prison Zoo on Key West — where she turned the hurricane-proof space beneath the detention center into an eclectic zoo that inmates maintain and work with the animals. Children and community members visit and learn about the local wildlife and exotic animals housed there.

#858A: Wendall Thomas explains how she created the hilarious protagonist of “Cheap Trills,”  a fashionista travel agent, who is on a quest to rescue endangered birds while dealing with a captivating cast of colorful characters. 

#858B: Christine Dorchak talks about her book ”Brooklyn Goes Home: The Rise and Fall of American Greyhound Racing and the Dog That Inspired a Movement, which chronicles her career as an activist lawyer fighting to end greyhound racing worldwide.

#858C: Dr. David Brodbelt discusses a UK study on cancer, which they based on the Morris Animal Foundation Golden Retriever lifetime study. Tracie asks whether there are differences between US and British Golden Retrievers in their genetic tendency to cancer. 

#857A: Tracie is mesmerized by the all-encompassing world view of Alexis Devine, who discusses her magnificently architected book “I Am Bunny: How a ‘Talking Dog’ Taught Me Everything I Need to Know About Being Human,” a book that changed Tracie’s opinion about dogs “using” human vocabulary because Alexis learned to communicate with Bunny on levels far beyond the “talking buttons” that made her an online phenomenon. 

#857B: Dr. Melissa Shapiro — the veterinarian who raised Piglet, a tiny blind deaf puppy, who inspired the nonprofit pigletmindset.org, discusses how she took in Georgie, another blind deaf puppy who also enlarged her life and world view.

#856A: Jordan Holt from Camping with Dogs talks about the founder’s book “Every Dog Deserves an Adventure” which grew from a powerful Instagram page to a community of dog lovers with a shared lifestyle.

#856B: Renowned pet nutrition expert Dr. Ryan Yamka and Tracie make mincemeat (sic) of the recent press release that “vegan cat diets are better for cats” who are obligate carnivores. Sure they can, Dr. Yamka says, so long as the kitties can hunt, catch and eat birds and mice, the way they did in the “research study!"

#856C: Tracie asks Ace Tilton, author of “The Little Book of Dog Care” who is non binary (and disabled) to help others accept and understand the whole he/she/they topic with nonjudgmental compassion.