Dog Talk ® (and Kitties Too!)

#984B: Dr. Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH, talks about the study of dog genes, her appreciation of Citizen Science and the international community of scientists studying how to keep dogs (and possibly humans?) healthier for longer.

#984A: Dr. Sean Wensley in England talks about his book "Through a Vet's Eyes: How to Care for Animals and Treat Them Better," which describes the many ways people are unaware of suffering of the animals around them — and the ways we could avoid or alleviate those discomforts.

#983A: Lorin Lindner runs the Lockwood Animal Rescue center north of Los Angeles, where they are full to capacity with wolves and wolf dogs brought when people discover that they should never have been pets in the first place.

#983B: Dr. Stephanie Clark, board-certified companion animal nutritionist, licensed animal technologist, and assistant director of special services at BSM Partners (which formulates and manufactures pet foods for companies seeking their expertise) talks about how much misinformation is floating around about the various modalities of pet food on offer in the marketplace and the burden on pet owners to make sense of the marketing claims about the benefits of the various versions of pet food.

#982B: Nev Fisher, Executive Director of the Coalition for Pet Progress in St Louis, discusses the importance of shelters working cooperatively — which often they do not, to their own detriment. Nev discusses how multiple shelters in one area all share the same goal — the rescue and rehoming of pets — but unfortunately often find themselves in competition for community support and funds. She talks about how her organization has turned this around in St. Louis.

#982A: Peter Abrahams (the real name of author Spencer Quinn) is back with another catchy title for his most recent Chet & Bernie K-9 mystery and explains how he's able to channel the interior voice of Chet the dog, from whose perspective all 16 books in the series are told, and put himself inside the mind of this stream-of-consciousness pooch and his gumshoe human partner, Bernie. 

#981A: Dr. Michelle Dulake discusses her Fera Pets collagen supplement — how much it helps the body but also knowing the reliable purity and potency of the sources of bovine and chicken breast cartilage that it is made of.

#981B: Dog trainer Ineke Vander Aa in Belgium wrote “Dogsitivity: A Guide to Living With Highly Sensitive Dogs” because she is what is technically called “highly sensitive” in people (which leads to her theory on why goats appeal to her so much!)

#980A: Jay Ingram displays a smorgasbord of ideas in his book “The Science of Pets,” making clear why he is so highly celebrated in his native Canada, with his particularly sassy style of combining deeply researched science with highly personal ideas and conclusions about what pets are, why we keep them and what they can tell us about our own species.

#980B: Ric Browde is the CEO of Wings of Rescue, a nonprofit that organizes charter flights to rescue thousands of dogs and cats a year and transport them to places of safety and adoption. It's a complex and challenging business, for which his former career as a songwriter and record producer prepared him because there was constant traveling for tours — but he says pets are better behaved than rock stars. 

#979A: Dr Bob Menardi talks about Synovetin OA, a treatment for osteoarthritis in dogs and cats that involves a one-time radioactive injection into the joint, providing relief for up to a year. He explains that Synovetin OA was developed based on human treatments in Europe, where it has been used for knee arthritis, and is now available in the United States for veterinary use.

#979B: Sean Wensley's lyrical book — “Through a Vet’s Eyes: How to Care for Animals and Treat Them Better” — describes the wonders of animals in nature as juxtaposed with a clear-eyed examination of how humans must improve the way we raise captive animals as pets or products. His book is not yet available in the US but can be ordered from Blackwell's [https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/Through-a-Vets-Eyes-by-Sean-Wensley/9781856754750] in England with free shipping.

#978A: Dr. Linda Rhodes's “Breaking the Barnyard Barrier” is a memoir that is a fascinating chronicle of the pushback and misogyny that confronted her as a young veterinarian determined to get hired as a dairy cow doctor.

#978B: Dr. Annie Valuska, a behaviorist with a PhD in animal behavior, talks about how Purina is funding three research projects on the human-animal bond, with two of the grants going to studies being conducted in Hungary. 

#977B: Julie Hirt is a professionally trained animal communicator who explains what her training as an intuitive taught her about how animals are able to connect with her — allowing peoples’ pets to speak through her.

#977A: Dr Carmela (Carrie) Britt — board certified in sports medicine and rehabilitation for dogs, focuses not just on her canine athletes but on improving mobility for aging pets by first addressing their pain which is usually under-managed or not controlled at all.

#976A: Dr. Joe Wakshlag is a research veterinarian (who also has a Ph.D in pharmacology and teaches at Cornell University) who is an expert on CBD and recently lectured at the annual veterinary conference VMX about the enormous healing value of cannabinoids for pain management in dogs and cats — and why other veterinarians need to trust Ellevet, the leader in the field. 

#976B: Kathleen Donnelly talks about her newest National Forest K-9 thriller, “Buried Lies,” an engaging novel focused on the extraordinary way these dogs work with their human partners in solving crimes.

#975A: Patricia McConnell is renowned for her ground-breaking theories of dog training in her famous book “The Other End of the Leash.” Now she has aimed for the moon — writing fiction for the first time in her 70's — and opened up a whole new world in the glorious novel “Away to Me,” a murder mystery set in the world of sheep herding dogs.

#975B: Dr. Bonnie Wright — one of only 200 board-certified veterinary anesthesiologists in the U.S. — is also an acupuncturist, who explains the medical science behind the centuries-old practice of acupuncture in what she calls “evidence-based acupuncture.”