So you have decided to join the world of the compassionate and go vegan! Good for you! Remember that going vegan is a journey, and if you fall, get up and try again. Not everyone goes vegan overnight. It took me a while to complete my journey. I would first have vegan meals, then "vegan days," when everything I purchased, …

The loss of an animal companion is always a heartbreaking and heavy experience to go through. It's even tougher when we must watch our kids suffer through the loss of a beloved furry, finned, or feathered friend. It's not a pain that can be fixed like a scraped knee. Nothing can take away that sorrow, but there are a few …

Where I live, summertime brings out many animal visitors who are usually not as visible in other seasons, and some of these visitors can be dangerous to animal companions.

For example, cane toads, or bufo toads (Bufo marinus), are venomous—they secrete a toxin that is quite dangerous to animals and can kill cats or …

I was watching a television show the other night on one of those educational channels about a man who weighed more than 1,000 pounds. They had to cut him out of his house. Can you imagine? I mean, that's gotta suck, right?

So the show got me thinking about how fortunate I am-not only because I don't weigh anywhere near 1,000 …

Most of us "in the prime" of our senior years were hippies. As such, we have a longstanding tradition of free-love that includes birds, flowers, and trees. So how is it that we flower children gave birth to a generation that idolizes not free love and …

Has this ever happened to you? You read about some wonderfully heroic thing that someone "out there" does and you wonder why you aren't out there doing great things too? We read about how activists unveiled a flag on a national monument and we think, "Why …

I'm fortunate that my grandchildren–Adrienne (2), Alexander (4), and Austin (6)–live close by, because it allows me to spend a lot of time with them and thus gives me the opportunity to teach them some valuable life lessons.

This was the case one day when Austin was visiting. He …