best friends 2014

Best Friends - by Malcolm Riordon DVM

2014 Columns

December, 2014 Cat Sense

Cat Sense, (2013) is a book by John Bradshaw published 2013 and was on the New York Times best-seller list. He is an anthrozoologist at the University of Bristol in England and has studied interactions between people and animals, animal behavior and cats in particular for the last 30 years.

October, 2014 The Evolution of our Favorite Pets

Anthropologist Brian Hare of Duke University has been on the forefront of demonstrating a newer more specific refinement of our popular layman's beliefs about how Team Man-and-Dog actually performed their evolutionary dance.

September, 2014 The Essence of Dogginess

We all have our understanding that a dog's personality and behavior stem from the genetics they inherit and the shaping of their early life experiences. Dogs, like people, are a product of heredity and environment.

August, 2014 Status of Infiltration in the USA - Pet Census

62 percent of USA households include at least one pet. There are 96 million pet cats vs. 83 million owned dogs, a reversal in popularity from previous times.

47% of homes in the U.S. own at least one dog vs. 41% with at least one cat.

July, 2014 Extreme Breeding

At humane societies, city and county animal shelters, and for the networks of people who foster kitten litters, it's that busy time called kitten season. And what a scene it is. Litter after litter of angelic sleeping kittens which in another minute can change into mini-demon feline popcorn. Littermates are kept together, so the rooms and cages can be the scene of climbing, horizontal levitations, fissile vertical accelerations, and diagonal displacements — a furry electron jungle.

June, 2014 The Invisible Graffiti of the Feline Universe

Peer into the mysterious world of our domestic cats: the invisible ink of their scent graffiti marks our walls and furniture right beneath our noses. When your cats rub against you, they are not just demonstrating affection (or soliciting food), they are also, in fact, tagging you. As well, in those states of obvious feline contentment when your cat rubs the side of his/her face on the corners of furniture or walls, your cat is tagging its environment as being a friendly, familiar, feel-good comfort zone. No fear here. Home sweet home.

May, 2014 "Tell Me Honey — Do Cats Have Sex??"

In an ongoing forum, Virbac Animal Health has veterinarians submit 'The funniest question you've ever been asked by a client.' Just about daily we have to hide incredulity behind the mask of a serious and respecting manner. Part of the problem is that these moments arrive unannounced, from one second to the next. Below are some of the comments submitted by long suffering veterinarians:

April, 2014 Tumor Hounds

Your dog can be trained - in a matter of weeks - to detect lung, breast, kidney and bladder cancer in human patients. Fact! .

March, 2014 Microchip Identification for Pets

Microchipping of pets has been available for about 25 years now, yet there is still a lack of awareness and some misunderstandings out there in the pet owning population. I'd like to review the basics, and then bring out some interesting facts.

February, 2014 City-Tricks for Hick-Ticks

The talent show of dealing with ticks on our pets seems a lightning rod for drama, freak-outs and myths. How is it that so many pet owners are under the spell of the exact same myths and closely held beliefs? It must be that old-school oral traditions can still carry the day.

January, 2014 The Dogs of Our Lives

"If you can look at a dog and not feel vicarious excitement and affection, you must be a cat." The above quote by an unknown author. Those collected below look at the ocean of feelings between humans and dogs. I have never grown weary of seeing it, being around it, or of being a participant.

"The great pleasure of a dog is that you may make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too." Samuel Butler