An interesting documentary called “Pet Pharm” will be airing tonight on CBC, (Thursday Nov 4th) at 9pm

PET PHARM
Pets on Prozac – the height of compassion, or an overly indulgent society chasing its tail?

Check out the documentary website here.

It’s often said you can know a society by how well it treats its children. Increasingly, with nearly 140 million dogs and cats sharing our lives in North America (twice as many households now have pets than children), it seems we need to add pets to the equation.

Pet products are North America’s fastest growing retail sector, with over 53 billion dollars in annual sales. Doggy spas offer “pawdicures” and “doga”, or canine yoga; celebrity chefs dish up treats at pet delis; and everything from braces to stem cell transplants to heart surgery is now available for your pet, assuming you can afford it.

Pet Pharm, a new film by Patrick Reed and White Pine, investigates the newest trend which is the most controversial and revealing: psychoactive drugs for pets. Identifying a multi-billion dollar untapped market, Big Pharma has just developed and released a handful of designer drugs for pets, treating aggression, separation anxiety, obesity and diminished mental capacity related to aging, with many more medications to follow.

In Pet Pharm, Reed looks at this unfolding phenomenon from a number of perspectives including those of experts in the field like Dr. Nicholas Dodman and Dr. Ian Dunbar, who represent the polar opposite positions on psychoactive drugs for pets.

Canine Confidential is a documentary aired on CBC a few weeks ago. I sat down to watch it and really enjoyed the program. CBC is wonderful in that it makes most of its programs available online to watch if you missed it. So if you’d like to see it, click on the image above and enjoy!

CBC’s television series, Marketplace, has always had great features and I trust them to get down to the bottom of things. When someone told me that they were going to air a feature on How Not to Buy a Puppy, I was eager to check it out. It is a very informative piece on what goes on behind pet stores that sell dogs, and where they actually do come from.

You can watch the segment online through the CBC website.

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If you frequent the Arboretum with your canine companion, you will have to be sure to have them leashed. A new rule will soon come into effect that will allow city officials to give you a ticket of $125 for not having your dogs on a leash.

Read more on CTV Ottawa News Website and the CBC News Website.

If you would like, you can send a clear, polite letter outlining your displeasure about this new rule to the Minister of Agriculture The Honourable Gerry Ritz here.

Karine Langley and Bubba the Pirates

The segment aired this morning at 7:50am and luckily they post all of their archives online. To listen to the clip, please click here or visit the Ottawa Morning Show Archives and check out Trick or Treat: gone to the dogs under October 30th, 2008.