How to find a dog-sitter online, sorting through the DogVacay, Care.com and Yelp options

A ton of new websites promise to find you a local dog sitter. Care.com and its ilk end up inundating you with a depressing number of emails. DogVacay lets you find local dog lovers who open their homes. But I found a dog sitter I love on Yelp.

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Wind Across the Everglades: hypnotically horrible

A 1958 schlocky movie had the star power to ignite the environmental movement–if it hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.

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Curious Critters: local animals with excellent PR

Photographer David FitzSimmons gives local birds, frogs and other common animals the spotlight in a kids book with sharp macro pictures and funny text.

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Bear biologist Lynn Rogers hosts best Wild Kingdom episode ever

Bear biologist Lynn Rogers hosts best Wild Kingdom episode ever

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Sedaris makes animals creepy like us in Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk

Not the usual funny David Sedaris book. Or the usual animal book. The squirrels, birds and chipmunks are prejudiced, dull and petty, just like people.

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Great Migrations, Craptastic Closings

From now on they are migrants, circling the southern world, wedded to brilliant skies and slipping the surly bonds of earth.–ALEC BALDWIN, GREAT MIGRATIONS

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Bradt Australia Wildlife Doesn’t Send You on A Wild Platypus Chase

The latest Bradt guide, Australia Wildlife, shows why more Americans should consider this British publisher of eccentric and eco-friendly guides to big and obscure places around the planet

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Scent of the Missing: CSI Meets Marley and Me

scent of the missing book

Scent of the Missing is like CSI meets Marley and Me. Instead of learning about blood splatter patterns you take a tour of the world of volunteer search and rescue dogs. Susannah Charleson tells a totally personal account of how she got hooked on the work after a divorce and experience as a search pilot. I’d put off reading the novel because I recently lost my own dog, Jolly, and dreaded that kind of Marley and Me heart-wrenching ending. All dog stories have sad endings. Well–spoiler alert–not this one. The story ends when Puzzle is just starting her career as a search and rescue dog after a long journey of training getting there. So dog lovers can go ahead and pick this book up without fear of crying. Until I read this book I had no idea that so many of the search and rescue teams out there are volunteers. It’s like having a highly specialized fire fighting team on a national level. They get calls in the middle of the night, dodge paying jobs to help out in the field. Charleson says the friend who most understands is one who says “you want to learn to fly a dog” It’s that aspect of the book–how the search and rescue teams learn how to communicate with and absolutely trust their dogs–that most fascinates me. The dogs learn how to find any person in the case of disaster, a specific person in the case of a missing child or alzheimer’s

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30x Zoom Comes by March –Moore’s Law Strikes Digital Cameras

By next month two major camera makers plan to sell point and shoot digital cameras under $500 with 30x optical zoom.  These cameras by Olympus and Fujifilm mean that the average animal watcher can have the power of about an 800mm lens. To get that kind of power in an SLR lens, you’d pay around $7.000 – $10,000, and have to schlep around a 10-pound, 18-inch piece of delicate equipment.

These new products mean Moore’s Law, which said computing power doubles every two years, may now apply to optical zoom. 30x is nearly double the then-groundbreaking 18x Panasonic Lumix I got a couple years ago to take wildlife photos. A few years ago the New York Times applied the law to mega-pixels. If it works with optical zoom, we may be looking forward to a 100x zoom by 2012.

I haven’t tried either of the cameras yet, but here’s what we know:

The Olympus SP-800UZ offers 14 mega-pixels and the 35 mm equivalent of 28 – 840mm for $350.

The Fujifilm HS10 has 10 mega-pixels and the 35mm equivalent of a 24-720mm zoom range for $500.

How do two cameras both with 30x zoom have a difference in 15% difference in zoom?  The Fujifilm is a 24mm lens, which is smaller and can pull back further so you can get a much wider angle. So if you want the versatility, go for the Fujifilm. If you’re a zoom junkie, the Olympus is for you. (Also in the

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Spoiler Alert: Don’t Dread The Ending in Koontz’s Dog Biography

Why didn’t anybody tell me that Dean Koontz  after my dog is such a big animal advocate? My sister Karen gave me his book A Big, Little Life after my dog Jolly died. I dreaded reading it, knowing that all dog stories have sad endings. What I didn’t expect was that it was both a delightful biography of an exceptional dog, Trixie Koontz, and an aggressive argument for the case that animals are mysterious, wondrous creatures worthy of respect and compassion. Yes, this novel is just more anecdotal evidence that dogs have complex minds and spirits and not just motivated to eat and survive like some kind of algae. I’m tired of hearing about how animal lovers anthropomorphize from people who would have us believe dogs are closer to corn stalks than to humans. They overlook the vast sums of evidence to the contrary and as Koontz succinctly derides them, are “invariably dogless.” Koontz once included a description of a guide dog from Canine Companions for Independence in book Midnight. The group reached out to him and he and his wife started visiting and supporting the place. Finally they adopted Trixie, who had to cut her guiding career short because of a bad knee. Any guide dog is exceptional–the human equivalent of a PhD–but Koontz delighted in Trixie’s spiritual as well as intellectual strength. While sick in the hospital, Trixie visited the cages of other animals in distress. Like many dogs, she was a discerning judge of character,

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