Site Seeing - April 10

On a pet trip

Pets are partners not toys. They care, they feel and they love – unconditionally. Only those who have pets know and understand how important they are. Sometimes a pet can be far more sensitive and attuned to your mood than any friend or family member. For the communication and bonding is not vocal but emotional. Straight from the heart. Here are some sites to help you understand your dog's strange behaviour when in a car or chat with like-minded people to discover how you can help your cat's diet improve or decide on the best kind of bird to buy.

www.pets.com

Cluttered but comprehensive, it is part of PETsMART.com (so on typing www.pets.com the URL turns into www.pets.com). It is an online destination for pet supplies and products, health and behaviour information and community interaction.

Considered the most popular online pet site in the U.S. (I would attribute that to the obvious URL as well as the content), it was founded in 1999 and is a privately held company based in California. You can learn how to care for, train and entertain dogs, cats, birds, reptiles and small pets. The Pet Library is really interesting as it offers full-length books online!

Like The Doctors Book of Home Remedies for Dogs and Cats offers an A to Z encyclopaedia of common conditions, with over 1,000 to-the-point tips telling how to treat dogs and cats with simple cures. You can subscribe and get free e-magazines or go through back issues available until June 1999. There's also a thriving community that you can become part of by exchanging free pet postcards, joining the weekly photo contest or vet expert chats. Informative and resourceful, chances are most of your queries will be addressed here. The search option is the perfect shortcut for those who don't want to go through tonnes of reading material.

www.planet-pets.com
Detailed and text-heavy, this would be my first choice to look for specific information. Started in 1996 (in America) with just two computers, the mission was to serve the public by finding, evaluating, selecting, organising and offering quality information and resources.

Part of E-AligNet.com, this is an online B2B and B2C marketplace that offers quality information on the Internet with unmatched services to the people, partners and customers. There's also translation from English to French, Spanish, German, Italian and Portuguese (needs some patience as it takes little long to translate). There's information under Channels for dogs, cats, birds, fish, exotic pets, horses, donkeys, reptiles and bookstore. Under Services there's trainers, breeders, rescues, groomers, petshop directory and more.

The 10 Tips section is good covering topics like obedience review, teething and kittens, barking in the car, digging, doggy timeout, why neuter, learn 'stay' the fun way, stop care sickness, etc. Exotic was really just that with information on Llamas as pets – they are members of the camel family with a bad habit of spitting. :) There are also links to Planet-Flora.com, Planet-Insect.com, Planet-Wildlife.com and Planet-Culinary.com which are sites worth surfing.

http://home.about.com/pets/
Not an easy URL to remember but definitely worth noting down as it offers exhaustive information on almost any subject. And the best part is the information is from experts. The only site that offered prompt and detailed information on how to feed frogs with pictures too.

Though the homepage is very dull and uninspiring to look at (not a single pet picture but that of two of their experts!) the information more than makes up for the lack of pictorial value.

There are links to sites on animal rights, cats, dogs, exotic pets, freshwater and saltwater aquariums, horses, pet birds, veterinary medicines. The pet resources offers details on pet health, choose a pet, pet pictures, food, breed, species, training, behaviour, complete list of pet chatrooms etc.

The exotic pets has plenty to keep you hooked on ferrets, gerbils, hermit crabs, sugar gliders with pictures, eating habits and lots more.
Or go to any of these sites – www.petlifeweb.com, www.a2zofpets.com (for animal lovers in India), www.avma.org/care4pets/ (American Veterinary Medical Association), www.petdiabetes.org (educational information and support group for owners), www.concerninpets.com – which could be of help to you or your pet.