Birds are great, so majestic, interesting, and different from most other types of pets. And then there's their mystifying us with their ability to fly, and my lands there are the ones that TALK!! Say no more, if you have never had one you are missing out...

What do we mean when we say my cat has "Nine Lives?" Are we talking reincarnation? I'm not sure where the saying originated, but we can probably agree on its meaning, and it goes for other animals as well. Multiple lives refer to a near-death experience that the animal lives through...

Recently we have added goldfish to our repertoire of family pets. I hadn't had these since childhood so I had forgotten how fascinating they really are. They are related to coy (large fancy fan-tailed goldfish) and carp (found in local waters -- in giant sizes)...

Pets seem to be so completely perfectly matched for us humans. Why do pets play such an important role in many of our lives? The answer has many facets, and the story begins way back to the earliest of human civilizations. The early ancestors to our modern day dogs and cats existed even by the time when the Egyptian pyramids were built. Hand-drawn pictures of pets with humans appear in the art found in the tombs, which means they would have been domesticated at some level by then...

The following is advice gleaned from our own local veterinarian, Dr. Anthony Pike, Highway 23 South, Eureka Springs, 479-253-8923. The summer months bring on the worst due to the shear number of things that can trouble your pet. Warmer months bring out the most activity in our animals, as well as the pests in swarms, namely fleas and ticks, and diseases that ticks can give your dog or cat...

This may ruffle some feathers out there, since there are so many different opinions and brands of packaged foods you can get for them. Let's start with the facts. Ideally, animals should eat what they would eat if they were not domesticated, or as close to that as possible...