Blog Posts by Sarah D. Bunting

Trainer Ray Gilmer rides Tennessee Walking Horse "Cash For Keeps" in 2000. AP ImagesSoft-drink giant Pepsi announced Thursday that it would no longer sponsor a national horse show, thanks to startling footage aired by ABC News of a horse in training. The video showed the horse undergoing an abusive practice known as "soring." (Warning: Video may be upsetting to some viewers.)

Pepsi had sponsored the Walking Horse National Celebration since 2010, said the horse show, which is the nation's leading competition for Tennessee Walking Horses – a breed whose best-known attribute is its unique high-stepping gait. Pepsi spokesman Vincent Bozek confirmed, without elaborating, that the company has "ended our sponsorship of the event." Nor would horse-show officials explain the specific reason for the end of the relationship.

But according to Reuters, a Walking Horse showing insider, who chose to remain anonymous, thinks it's thanks to the ABC News footage of "soring," filmed by a Humane Society of the United States undercover operative and given to ABC News for broadcast. Keith

An animal-welfare group wants to keep your puppies off of 16 And PregnantA new set of ads produced by the Best Friends Animal Society is educating the public on when to spay and neuter their pets – by comparing puppies and kittens to human teenagers.

Sponsored by the BFAS and featuring voice-over work by actors Linda Hunt ("NCIS: LA") and Eric Stonestreet ("Modern Family"), the public-service announcements hope to grab attention for the new campaign, "Prevent more. Fix at month four." One of the ads, narrated by Stonestreet, is a fairly straightforward cute-fest in which puppies and kittens frolic around animated words while Stonestreet explains the perils of waiting too long to fix a young dog or cat.

But the attention-grabber is the ad titled "Afternoon Stroll." A dad and his (human) daughter go for a walk in their suburban neighborhood while teen boys rush up to the windows and fences nearby in a dog-like fashion, eagerly greeting the girl and "panting" things like, "Hey! Hi! Live around here? You're pretty. Where you guys going?" The dad looks

Can 16 pigs from the Univ. of Guelph find a Shady Acres to call their own?More than a dozen genetically modified pigs, part of a series of experiments at an Ontario, Canada university, will not get adopted out to "loving homes." Despite a plea from an animal-rights group for the University of Guelph to release the pigs to civilian pet owners, Professor Rich Moccia, an associate vice president at the institution, claimed on Tuesday that "there is absolutely no opportunity for this to occur for many reasons."

Although Moccia didn't get into specifics, one of the reasons seems to be that the so-called "enviropigs" could represent a danger if they aren't supervised in the strict manner they are currently. Moccia acknowledged the "many generous and well intentioned offers" the university has received from both animal-protection groups and individuals interested in adopting the porcine subjects. But it seems that the risk of an enviropig either getting loose and interbreeding with "standard" local pigs, or making its way onto a dinner table, isn't one the U of G is

Who needs cable when you've got a CatGenie! (...?)Dwelling as we do in the impossibly glamorous environs of a three-cat household, we don't find the concept of the CatGenie 120 perplexing. We find it awesome, actually, the kind of Jetsons-y applied-science advance in pet maintenance we've dreamed of. After all, we spend a lot of time on litter – scooping, airing out, changing, raving angrily at split trash bags, worrying that guests can smell cat tinkle – and the CatGenie isn't baffling. It's brilliant. Self-cleaning, self-washing, and self-recycling (among other things, the system features washable granules that get reused over and over), the CatGenie 120 would seem to solve all of a cat-owner's problems.

That's what gets us, though: it just seems too good to be true.

Here's how the CatGenie works, from what we can tell (we've never actually tried one). Your cat does his thing in the litter area, or the "bowl" part of the CG, which is shaped more or less like a "people toilet." After the cat exits the bowl, either the human can hit

Sue Manning's article on feline kidney disease in the Miami Herald last week contained a number of sobering facts about the illness, starting with the fact that we don't know what causes it, or how to cure it. And one in every 12 senior felines has chronic kidney disease, according to a recently-released report from the Banfield Pet Hospital chain whose data set included nearly 430,000 cats seen by Banfield veterinarians – so it's not an uncommon problem, either.

Manning quotes Dr. Nina Nardi, who's chief of staff at a Banfield facility near L.A., on the subject of acute kidney disease, which often proceeds from a cat ingesting antifreeze, grapes, toxic plants, or other poisons. Nardi is encouraging about a cat's prospects under those circumstances, especially if the problem is identified quickly: "If you can catch it, you can treat it."

Shine Green: Work native plants into your garden

But chronic kidney disease is a different story; it's more widespread, and incurable. Treatments focus

Summer's coming – and that means vacation's coming too! Yay! And you've got to make the reservations, pack, get that last-minute pedi, pack for your S.O./kids, try to find the travel charger…the lead-up to leaving on a trip can get stressful and disorganized in a hurry. (At least at our house. We have narrowly missed packing a sleeping cat in our suitcases sooooo many times.)

Scheduling and prepping for the pet-sitter can add another half-dozen hassles to your pre-flight checklist, but it doesn't have to. By standardizing your pet-sitter prep so it's the same each time you leave town, and creating easy-to-modify documents for reference, you can cross this task off your to-do list in just a few minutes – and reduce the stress level for you AND your animals. Four tips for prepping the pet-sitter (and the pets!) for your vacation.

Have a home visit. It's wise to do this during the vetting process (no pun intended) when you're selecting a sitter; introducing the animals to the temporary

UPDATE 5/11/12: Recall expands to 39 states total, plus Puerto Rico, and may cover more brands than initially thought. Click here for more details.

Check your pantry shelves – a nationwide recall of products from Diamond Pet Foods may affect you and your pets.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says it's looking into a salmonella outbreak – in humans – that may trace back to Diamond Pet Foods' dog food. The affected food was manufactured in South Carolina, but the illness has cropped up in 14 people across nine states overall. CDC investigators believe it's possible that those who have fallen ill with the rare strain of salmonella got sick via contact with dogs who had eaten the tainted food, or the food itself.

The recall has expanded since April, when Diamond -- whose website touts its products as "holistic" and "all-natural," and gives pride of place to its purified-water cooking process -- pulled just three brands. Now, as a precaution, the company has broadened the

Meow passed away of complications due to obesity last weekendMeow, allegedly the country's heaviest feline, passed away over the weekend after developing respiratory complications.

The nation met the rotund kitty last month after his 87-year-old owner dropped him off at the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, claiming she could no longer care for him – no surprise, given that Meow tipped the scales at 39 pounds. The average cat Meow's "height" weighs 8-12 pounds; an equivalent-sized human would weigh around 600 pounds.

The orange-and-white tabby became a media sensation, appearing on Anderson Cooper's show and elsewhere in an effort to find a new home (and perhaps raise awareness of the country's growing pet-obesity problem). But Meow's high weight put him at risk of life-threatening complications, which sadly took his life before his new caretakers' dietary measures could show a benefit. "We are devastated," Mary Martin, the Santa Fe shelter's executive director, commented. "We were in a race against time to get the weight off Meow before he developed