I burned my arm last Friday night. Big time. Hell-raising home chef that I am, I was prepping a friend’s gas grill when the whole thing went up in a fireball. Starter malfunction combined with a high flow of gas and basic gas grill unfamiliarity (mine is charcoal) conspired to singe my brows, my eyelashes and every single hair on my right arm...from hand to axilla. In streaks, it burned the...

It’s getting towards the end of the year. That means lots of top ten lists and product reccs in advance of the holidays. This list, over at FastCompany magazine’s website, took things a little further by including whiz-bang veterinary products and services along with pricey niceties like GPS collars and pet-dedicated flights. Nestled among these was Vet-Stem’s product: stem cell therapy for...

Every veterinarian gets this line. It pumps our egos and fills us with the kind of joy only animals can add to working lives otherwise filled with fearful animals who run the other way once they catch wind of us. Never mind that these animals who “simply adore” us often fall into this category, too.

“No, really. Everywhere else they’ve had to muzzle her. She must really love you.”

OK, I’ll...

Yesterday’s email inbox ding-dinged repeatedly with email alerts from a variety of sources, all urging me to look into the recent American Veterinary Medical Association advisory on H1N1. The Internet is abuzz with the news: One Iowa cat was confirmed to have been infected with H1N1.

Here’s the content of the AVMA’s message:

November 4, 2009 – A 13-year old cat in Iowa developed signs of a...

Zyrtec (cetirizine) is an antihistamine approved for use in humans to treat allergy symptoms. In veterinary medicine it’s used in both cats and dogs for the same indication...and more.

For dogs, I’ll turn to Zyrtec when Benadryl (diphenhydramine) fails. Usually, these are the itchy dogs: the hot spot-ridden, flea allergic, food allergic and/or atopic (inhalant allergic). Except in older dogs...

It’s not unusual for landlords and condo associations to be picky about pets in ways that aren’t always best for the people who love them. Pet limits on species type, their weights and their numbers are standard fare when you live in small-box, close-quarter housing. And we all get that. You can’t exactly expect neighbors to get along when someone wants to run a rescue out of his 800 sf...

In his “Let Them Eat Dog: A modest proposal for tossing Fido in the oven,” which appeared in the Wall Street Journal’s Life and Style section last Saturday, acclaimed novelist Jonathan Safran Foer tackles a topic we treat here on Dolittler with occasional regularity: eating animals.

In advance of his first nonfiction book release––title eponymous with topic––Foer’s WSJ contribution was enough...

How about a fun one? Here’s Slumdog in his Halloween splint. And below, another few pics of his rooster getup amid his “flock.” I’ve seen better costumes (go to Lincoln Road on Miami Beach on Halloween weekend and the dog frocks will astound you), but it’s pretty funny to us.

How about yours? Submit your own photos in the comment section and I’ll judge for myself. The winner gets a free month...

Last Sunday’s Style section of the New York Times bravely plastered not-so-stylish images below the fold on its front page: A sliced-up hog carcass alongside a cleaver-wielding student of animal slaughter under the title, "Slaughterhouse Live."

Saw III references notwithstanding (it is Halloween week, after all), the idea was not so much to disgust as to showcase the apparent delight some...

I’m in trouble. Big trouble. I have this house guest coming this weekend. And this week she just happened to author a PetConnection feature post titled, “There’s no such thing as a ‘partially’ house-trained dog.”

It’s a problem why? Because I have a dog who’s not housebroken. There. I’ve said it: “My name is Patty and my dog is not house trained.”

Copping to it in public, however, is not...