Dog Talk ® (and Kitties Too!)

#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...

#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. 

#855A: Grant Hayter-Menzies talks about his memoir “Freddie: The Rescue Dog Who Rescued Me” and how their two-way street of unconditional love got them both through the tough times.

#855B: Dr. Deborah Aronson is a veterinarian who is an end-of-life specialist, offering in home euthanasia and also professionally trained in pastoral care so she can tend to the emotional needs of her human patients while consulting on palliative care for “silver whiskered patients.” 

#855C: Sassafras Lowrey’s piece in the New York Times “What We Can Learn from European Dog Culture” makes some interesting points about cultural differences seen through a canine lens.

#855A: Ethologist Jessica Pierce’s new book “Who's a Good Dog? How to Be a Better Human” exhorts us to meet a dog where they stand. Accept them for who they are — appreciate the neuro-diversities of dogs as we now do with children. 

#855B: Tracie talks to trainer Annie Phenix — author of “Positive Reinforcement for Aggressive and Reactive Dogs” — about dog-on-dog attacks and the horror of a pack of German Shepherds kept by a bookstore owner on the Upper East Side of New York, who allowed her dogs to terrorize small dogs and finally to kill one.

#855C: Bob Bryant Mission discusses his K9 Rescue that rehabilitates, repatriates and [when appropriate] finds homes with former military K9 handlers for MWDs whose military service has ended.

#853A: From England, Sarah Brown talks about her newest book “The Hidden Language of Cats: How They Have us at Meow” and how cats actually only meow to people, not other cats!

#853B: Nationally acclaimed pet nutrition expert Ryan Yamka debunks myths about pet foods — particularly that “senior” foods and “keto diets” have no basis in nutrition science, says the man who in 2020 won the Pet Science Pet Industry Disruptor Award.

#853C: Kate Foster in Australia discusses how she and her son are both autistic, which inspired her to write “All the Small Wonderful Things.”

#852A: Widely respected political author and columnist Matt Bai talks about his recent opinion piece in the Washington Post entitled "Master and Commander: Biden's Dog Troubles Hint at a Larger Problem," about the multiple uncontrolled biting attacks by Biden's German Shepherd Commander, which Tracie views as irresponsible and immoral dog ownership and which Bai views as the da...