Dog Talk ® (and Kitties Too!)
DOG TALK® features Tracie's interviews with authors, pet experts and animal welfare advocates from around the world, discussing practical and philosophical issues regarding our relationships with dogs, cats, other pets, wildlife and the natural world.The show broadcasts from WLIW FM 88.3 in Southampton, the only NPR station on Long Island, reaching from the East End across Long Island into Southern Connecticut and Westchester.
The show’s theme song is “Mmm My Best Friend” by Sophie B. Hawkins from her album TIMBRE.
Episodes
904 episodes
A British Veterinarian Passionate About Animals and the Natural World
#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 capt...
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30:22
"One and Done" — the One Injection Treatment for Arthritis in Dogs
#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 ...
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30:41
Studying the Human-Animal Bond Around the World
#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.
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29:29
Lady Cow Vet and the “Glass Ceiling” in Dairy Barns
#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.
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30:57
Sports Medicine for Canine Athletes
#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...
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30:33
What Your Pet Would Say if They Had an "Interpreter"
#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.
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29:17
Dogs to the Rescue in a Mountain Thriller
#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.
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30:09
CBD — the Wonderful Healer for Pets (But Buyer Beware)
#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...
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29:54
Scientific Proof of how Acupuncture Works
#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 ...
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29:20
A Luminous Thriller Set at a Sheep Dog Trial
#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 ...
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29:59
The Grand Tradition of Dogs in Grand English Country Houses
#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...
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30:03
“There’s a Mushroom for That!”
#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 ...
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29:11
The Little Girl & Her Fluffy Little Pekingese Who Rule the Dog Show World
#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...
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29:07
The Legacy of the DNA Sequencing of Tasha the Boxer at the NIH
#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, disco...
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30:34
The Sacrifice of Beagles for Humans
#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 ...
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29:51
Jane Goodall’s Legacy for Us All to “Keep on Caring”
#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 th...
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29:06
Wolves and German Shepherd Dogs
#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 —...
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30:29
“Dogsitivity” — Does That Describe Your Dog?
#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.”
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27:31
The Challenges of Prescription Drugs
#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...
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27:21
The Man Who Wanted to be a Hippopotamus (at age 3)
#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...
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31:54
Sherri Franklin — Muttville’s Patron Saint
#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 m...
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29:15
Cat Mummies for Sale in Ancient Egypt
#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 travele...
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29:11
Free Living Dogs in India Deserve to LIVE
#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 exterminatio...
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29:28
Dr. Elsey’s New Year's Promise to Your Cats
#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 nee...
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30:46
You do Know Your Cat is Not Actually Your Baby, Right?!
#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...
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29:26