Dog Talk ® (and Kitties Too!)

#991B: Dr. Angela Lennox has so many letters after her name they barely fit on a page! She is triple board certified — in addition to her DVM she has DABVP (Avian Practice), DABVP (Exotic Companion Mammal Practice) and DECZM (Small Mammal Medicine). She owns the Avian and Exotic Vet Clinic in Indianapolis and when she isn't looking after the non-traditional pets, she’s doing pro bono work in wildlife rehabilitation with her non-profit called Rewilding Indiana. 

#991A: Camille Perri talks about her new novel, “Social Animals,” and what she discovered about the people and their pooches in dog parks through her own experience as a first time "puppy mama" during Covid.

#990B: Janet Scott discusses how she and her husband Jim founded the pet food industry’s first truly “natural” food decades ago — so when they returned with a new company, Rawz, after both their sons had devastating accidents, they decided to give 100% of their profits to charities! They wanted top shelf preparation for their premium ingredients — and thus their kibble is “air dried.”

#990A: Thomas W. Laqueur talks about how he gathered the magnificent images of dogs in art in his beautiful book “The Dog’s Gaze: A Visual History,” which gives a sweeping view of how closely the two species have been connected across time.

#989B: Dr. Maggie Placer, the Science Program Manager for EveryCat Health Foundation, discusses how their nonprofit financed a study of the genetic changes in tumors from 500 cats in five countries. Scientists found similarities in human breast cancer, suggesting this research might become a building block in treating people.

#989A: Rick McIntyre talks about a lifetime of being the most prolific watcher of wildlife in National Parks — from grizzlies to moose to wolves, for which he is most well known, as he describes in his memoir “My Life With Wolves: How I Became the Storyteller for the Yellowstone Packs.” 

#988B: Hannah Palcic adopts special needs dogs and makes it seem not all that difficult, relating it to being a type I diabetic herself and how you can accommodate gracefully to physical challenges.

#988A: Greger Larson, Director of the Paleogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network in the School of Archaeology at Oxford University, discusses recent discoveries about how much earlier humans lived alongside dogs, and how that changes scientific understanding of how and when wolves diverged into ancient dogs.

#987B: Eleanor Lerman’s short stories in “King the Wonder Dog - and Other Stories” include dogs in the lives of all her characters, who are grappling with isolation, ill health, old age, or just being human — and how these dogs are witnesses to their lives and often their salvation.

#987A: Clair Linzey, Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre of Animal Ethics, and Professor of Animal Theology at the Graduate Theological Foundation, was raised by a chaplain father who was renowned for his work promoting animal ethics and our moral obligation to consider animals. Clair Linzey oversees a department that explores human behavior and attitudes towards animals around the globe. 

#986B: Dr Kevin Toman in California specializes in evidence-based solutions to pain and aging and helps people anywhere seeking those interventions — highly recommending Ellevet CBD and Rapamycin among other treatments.

#986A: Canadian novelist Thomas Wharton has put his fertile imagination and historical knowledge to work in his newest book, “Wolf, Moon, Dog,” inventing scenarios from the wolf’s perspective throughout chapters in human history. 

#985B: Oliver Starr, known as "The Wolf Guy" to 300,000 followers actually shares a wolf habitat in Lake Tahoe with a pack that he and his wife have raised and live amongst. His book "The Wolf Lover’s Guide to Raising Dogs” sheds fascinating light on how we can get closer to our own dogs.

#985A: Dr. Erin Troy who owns the Muller Animal Hospital in Walnut Creek, California, is a Certified Veterinary Pain Practitioner who shares her extraordinarily successful experiences using the one-time injection Synovetin OA — both personally with her 18-month-old Lab (who suffered from joint arthritis even so young), and in her clinic with numerous dogs whose lives were turned around from this once-yearly injection with no side effects. 

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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. 

#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.

#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!)

#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.

#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. 

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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. 

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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.

#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. 

#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.” 

#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.

#974B: Every Anglophile (British or otherwise) loves the magazine "Country Life,” which takes readers inside grand country estates across the UK. The publication’s Deputy Features Editor, Agnes Stamp, talks about the huge delicious book she has created called “The Country Life Book of Dogs,” which brilliantly juxtaposes views inside these houses and the dogs who live there — in life and in art. 

#974A: Holistic veterinarian Dr. Robert Silver has spent decades studying and using functional mushrooms to treat many pet ailments — just as Chinese medicine has employed them for human healing over centuries. His book “There’s a Mushroom for That!” gathers his lifetime of knowledge about mushrooms and cannabis for other veterinarians and pet owners to reference.

#973A: Kennedy Green was the #1 Junior Pekingese handler in the USA in 2025 (having just turned 12), working with Dr. Kelly Fishman, an integrative sports medicine veterinarian, who both talk about what it takes to keep Lincoln, a special breed of toy dog, in top physical condition, to compete in the 150th Westminster Dog Show.  

#973B: Elaine Ostrander, a canine genomics expert, was on the team that sequenced Tasha’s genome, the first purebred dog studied twenty years ago. She and her colleagues at the NIH have been studying the DNA of many dog breeds since then, discovering which genes are responsible for what physical and health characteristics, allowing them to guide dog breeders in making  decisions to avoid naturally occurring diseases, knowledge which is valuable for human disorders, too.

#972B: Brad Bolman’s book “Lab Dog: What Global Science Owes American Beagles,” takes the long view of the Beagle dog, chronicling its whole history as a breed and how people turned what they had bred as a hunting companion into a “lab rat” to be turned out in the tens of thousands for research. 

#972A: Marc Bekoff, the renowned ethologist, talks about his long personal and professional relationship with the late Jane Goodall, and how important it is that we hold on to her messages of hope and perseverance in caring about animals and the planet, especially through the Roots and Shoots program of the Jane Goodall Foundation.

#971B: Greger Larson, the Director of the Paleogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network at the School of Archaeology at Oxford University, returns to discuss whether wolves were ever introduced into the breeding of German Shepherd Dogs — which was adamantly opposed by early breeders around WW II in Germany. They were purists against hybridization with wolves — although it would have been to the dogs’ health advantage.

#971A: Dog trainer and author Ineke Vander AA in Belgium discusses how she developed her scientifically-backed theory of “highly sensitive” dogs in her groundbreaking book “Dogsitivity: a Guide to Living With Highly Sensitive Dogs.”

#970B: Dr. Doug Mader explains the different ways that pet owners can fill prescriptions for and why they need to understand the value of backup support if their pet has side effects from a drug or gets better before all the pills are taken. Is it best to fill a prescription at the vet clinic? An online store? The local pharmacy? How many pills are necessary? What about refills?  

#970A: Jonathan Balcombe, a biologist and ethologist with a doctorate in animal behavior, has studied and written books about all manner of non-human creatures: “Pleasurable Kingdom,” “Second Nature,” “The Exultant Ark,” “What a Fish Knows” and “Superfly.”

#969B: When Sherri Franklin first rescued old dogs from the San Francisco city shelter and brought them to her own home, nobody wanted senior dogs. Now, two decades later, she is stepping down as the leader of Muttville, arguably the nation's most vibrant and successful rescue nonprofit for senior dogs, leaving behind 600 regular volunteers, 80 foster homes, thousands of oldster dogs happily adopted from its own cage-free campus, vibrant with senior humans hanging out in Cuddle Club along with visitors from around the world. 

#969A: Greger Larson, Director of the Palaeogenomics & Bio-Archaeology Research Network of the School of Archaeology at Oxford University, tells the amazing true history of how cats found their way into human society in Egypt, where travelers making a pilgrimage to the tombs needed to present a mummified cat as an offering — so local entrepreneurs bred them on an island in the Nile in order to mummify them and sell them to the pilgrims.

#968B: Sindhoor Pangal in Bangalore India — anthrozoologist and author of "DOG KNOWS: Learning How to Learn From Dogs" — laments about the current crisis for the "streeties" — also called Free Living Dogs — who are facing wholesale extermination in a misguided bureaucratic legal attempt to control rabies by destroying millions of dogs who people care for and care about across the vast country of India.

#968A: Dr. Elsey started his company on behalf of cats, who cannot speak for themselves. He innovated litters to solve Out-of-Litter-Box problems and then created a revolutionary food called CleanProtein to meet their health and nutritional needs — a lifetime of work on behalf of the kitties.

#967B: Rebecca Van Laer's memoir “Cat” is a slim little book that speaks volumes about the life the author spent as a child feeling closer to cats than to humans and explores how her relationships with her cats have been the through line in her life.  She also shares her opinion that referring to a kitty as your “baby” does a disservice both to cats and human children.  

#967A: Tracie shares her awe and admiration for Dwayne Betts, who, as a result of being incarcerated as a teenager, discovered the power of reading in prison. He came out to become a lawyer and a published poet, founding Freedom Reads in 2020. The nonprofit has put custom made wooden libraries into over 560 prisons nationwide, transforming the lives of many prisoners. His pandemic puppy Taylor, a little Jack Russell Terrier, became Dwayne’s bridge to connect with people in his community with dogs being their common ground. Tune in to hear what Tracie discovers when she boldly proclaims her belief that Dwayne should win a MacArthur “Genius” Grant. NOTE: Donations to Freedom Reads help finance his ongoing libraries, and purchases of his book of poetry Doggerel allow his publisher WW Norton to send the paperback edition to the libraries.