The dog rental business started off as one of those crazy Japanese trends that Americans couldn't quite believe really existed. In Japan everybody has mind-blowing electronics, wears eyelash wigs, competes on wacky gameshows like live Tetris. And, oh yeah, they rent out dogs for $19 an hour or $100 a day.

An American company FlexPetz has tried to copy the formula here, staring with a small office in Iowa. No, just kidding. Where would someone start the Zipcar of dogs but in Los Angeles and New York? They claim they are for people who don't have the time or pet-friendly apartment for a real dog but the more popular theory is they're for singles who want to pick someone up.

FlexPetz tracks their dogs with GPS and says they use rescue dogs "where possible." The dogs in their pictures all seem to be purebreds, but FlexPetz tells the stories of some that come from shelters or were given up by owners. By all accounts they take great care of their dogs. What these dogs' emotional life is like after work, I'm not sure.

Today is National Diabetes Day, and the folks at Webvet are trying to make people aware that dogs and cats are facing their own mini-epidemic of diabetes. It's not anywhere near as severe as the human spread of the disease. About one in 400 dogs and cats now has diabetes compared to one in 12 people.

Just like in people, lousy diet and exercise habits are causing more diabetes all around. The difference is dogs and cats aren't the ones deciding how much food they get and how many times they exercise. We are. Yeah, I know they have those irresistible eyes. That's why one-quarter of our cats and dogs are now clinically obese, according to Webvet. PetClubUK says overweight cats are four times as likely to get diabetes.

To be fair, diabetes isn't just caused by being fat, in either humans or animals. Genetics plays a huge role. In dogs, females and certain breeds, such as miniature Pinschers and cairn terriers are more likely to be afflicted with diabetes. No gender has an upper hand in cats, though some think Burmese are more susceptible.

A while back I wrote about the growing market for special products to help senior dogs. Our pets are living longer and just like people they're spending more of their lives dealing with senior ailments. Pet suppliers are just now catching onto this trend and giving people the tools they need to help older dogs stay more active and comfortable.

Back in May I was still on a quest to find the most important piece of equipment for a senior dog -- or at least a senior dog who lives with stairs. That's a harness. As dogs get older, especially certain breeds and mixed breeds like shepherd or lab, they often lose muscle and nerves in their back end. (And these dogs, my vet tells me, don't suffer a lot of pain because they've lost some feeling.) Others have it worse with arthritis or hip dysplasia.

Whichever condition your dog has, odds are he's going to need help getting up the stairs.

Since May I've tried all the different kinds of harnesses. I'm sure each dog has his own preferences and special conditions, but here's what I found:

The recession and collapse of the housing market may have one bright spot for animal lovers. As the owners of houses and apartments become more motivated to find renters, more are considering allowing pets.

I talked last week with Mike Torchia, president of Healthy Pet Nation, a Los Angeles-based fitness and training program that advocates people spending more time being active with their pets. Torchia, who is also a celebrity dog trainer, is big on dogs getting allowed into public places. He especially goes to bat for the service dogs of people with disabilities that others can't see, but he wants all well-behaved dogs allowed more places.

Torchia says that he's seen--and encouraged--buildings desperate for tenants switch to allowing pets. That goes for either those who rent apartments or condo or co-op boards, in which owners control the common rules of the building. One new Los Angeles luxury rental building wasn't able to rent all its apartments.

In the midst of an ugly recession that has businesses worrying about Christmas spending, Halloween is turning into an unlikely strong spot in the economy. According to the National Retail Federation we'll spend nearly $6 billion on Halloween this year. And a growing part of that is in pet costumes.

More of us are planning to celebrate Halloween this year (64.5%, up from 58.7% last year). And we're collectively going to spend a little more each. The average person will spend $66.54, up from $64.82 a year ago. The typical budget is $24 for costumes (including pet costumes), $20 on candy, $4 on greeting cards and $18 on decorations. Halloween greeting cards? No, thanks--I'd like more candy.

PetSmart surveyed owners this year and found 16 million of us plan to dress up our pets. A survey from Dogster.com found 40% of dog owners had definite plans to dress up their dog, and an additional 25% will include their dog in festivities of some kind.

The Obama family has officially announced that they'll be getting an all-American mutt -- or at least a rescue dog. After Barack Obama and his wife Michelle made a public promise to their daughters to get a dog after the elections, animal groups got really excited. Since the Obamas don't have pets now, it seemed likely they could be swayed into one of the warring dog camps: those who buy purebreds and those who rescue mutts (and also purebreds) from shelters.

The American Kennel Club launched an online poll asking which breed they should purchase. More than 42,000 people voted and they chose the poodle, with the wheaten terrier coming in second. The AKC had narrowed the field down to breeds that don't cause allergies because one of the Obama girls is allergic to dogs. (And I think the poodle won because the other breeds were either small, creepy or both (like the Chinese Crested, which is mostly bald.)

Meanwhile, 50,000 animal lovers signed a petition from the Best Friends Animal Network, urging the Obamas to adopt a shelter dog. That doesn't necessarily mean they're getting a mutt. According to the Humane Society of the United States, about one-quarter of dogs in shelters are purebreds.

Was your dog one of the many around the country that ate the tainted pet food last year? You've got until November 24 to file a claim. According to USAToday, only 6,000 pet owners have filed so far, though many times that had dogs that potentially ate the food and got sick. We still don't know how many animals died from the poisoning.

Today (September 12th) is the last day you can file an objection to the $24 million settlement, an amount that upset many dog parents as being far too small.

As you'll recall dogs started getting sick from Menu Food products in February, 2007 and eventually the crisis engulfed 90 pet food brands. After weeks scientists figured out that Chinese manufacturers were substituting the plastic ingredient melamine to boost protein readings.

The settlement money is for "documented, reasonable economic damages" the settlement document says -- for anyone who bought the food. In other words, they're treating pets like just things and not acknowledging how much they hurt both animals and people. The settlement specifically includes "veterinary treatment costs, death-related expenses, deceased pet purchase price or fair market value, whichever is higher, or new pet cost, property damages and other economic costs." They'll give $900 for a claim without documentation.

New Orleans residents all did better this hurricane, including the dogs and cats. What happened last time around during Katrina to animals and their owners inspired some great changes.

During Katrina animals weren't allowed in shelters or buses leaving town. That gave pet owners two awful options: abandon their animals or wait out the storm with them. Thousands of dogs and cats were abandoned. Many drowned. A lucky few were plucked from top shelves or chained inside houses. Saddest of all, some people who stayed to protect and comfort their dogs ended up dying alongside them.

After Katrina emergency workers owned up to the idea that since pets have become part of people's families, they better come up with a better plan than just leaving pets behind. In 2006 the federal Pet Evacuation and Standards Act required disaster plans to "address the needs of individuals with household pets and service animals following a major disaster or emergency."

This time around it seemed to have worked. Petfinder.com, which is kind of like an eBay for homeless animals, polled the local rescue groups and found things went off pretty well. Small animals were just allowed on the evacuation buses, the Christian Science Monitor reports. Officials ordered up 150 semi-trucks to carry out the bigger dogs, the Kansas City Star reports. When people checked in, they would also check in their dogs, then get a tracking bracelet. The dogs' temporary shelters were next to human shelters so families could visit.

The laser pointer is the lazy dog owner's best friend. With a small flick of your wrist, you can send your dog happily chasing after a little red dot, excitedly in a pursuit that never ends. The dot itself never gets covered with slobber or mud, gets lost under the couch, breaks or breaks anything, which puts it ahead of most dog toys. The pet store variety are weak and expensive for how pathetic they are. But there are a few better laser options out there.

I'm not really sure what the actual original purpose of the mass market laser pointer was. Was there a time in pre-PowerPoint offices where anyone needed to point things out on a distant chart in a dark room? I can guarantee that if you tried that in an office today you would not make a favorable impression with your tech prowess. Many years ago someone discovered they entertain cats. Then someone else figured out the same prey drive makes the lasers enchanting to dogs, too.

Somebody brought a laser pointer to my dog run one night many years ago and my dog Jolly and I have been hooked ever since. When he was younger he would be part of a pack of dogs anxiously chasing the dot for 100 feet at a time. Now that he's older the dot is the perfect motivator for going for a walk or climbing the stairs.

This year Americans will spend $43 billion on their pets, including $10 billion on over the counter supplies and drugs and another $10 billion on vet care (which usually includes prescription drugs).

Every year we spend more and more on dogs and cats, but there's one area we can save some money: prescription drugs. Right now you probably just get your pet's drugs from your vet. You may be surprised to see how they are marking up the drug prices and how much you can save by going to a legitimate online pet pharmacy.

I found this out when my vet said my dog Jolly needed an iron supplement he would order. I waited days for him to get the $40 bottle in. Then I found it online for $10, no prescription needed.

China has ordered the 112 official Olympic restaurants not to serve dog meat during the Beijing Olympics in August so as not to gross out Westerners. They also strongly suggest that all the other eateries in town stop selling dog meat for the month, too. The move is like their orders to shut factories to clear pollution for the month: purely cosmetic. If anything it shows how deeply entrenched dog-eating is. Animal groups say the practice is actually growing into a big business worth about $4 billion a year.

Even the government's Xinhua News Agency announcement shows how dog-eating is almost revered: "Gourmets with a special predilection for dog meat will be disappointed if they come to the Chinese capital in the coming two months." The Beijing Catering Trade Association (BETA) will "blacklist" those who don't cooperate, but they'll make an exception for dog meat "for medicinal purposes." Many Chinese think eating canines lowers blood pressure, the agency says.

According to the Asian Animal Protection Network, eating dog used to be a "cottage industry" where the rural poor would raise puppies to take to market. Now it's become fashionable -- especially in southern China and among Koreans. Dog meat is more expensive than pork. Factory farms with horrific conditions raise the dogs. The Asia Animal Protection Network says the farms are now importing big, docile breeds, especially St. Bernards, known locally as "Big Dumb Dog," as dog livestock. The Filipino organization Dog Meat Trade also reports that the dog meat industry is expanding and is now about $3.8 billion.

Dog owners are facing yet another pet food scare. This one seems so far to be smaller in scale, but six dogs are dead and others sick after eating Nutro, according to this investigation by Consumer Affairs. There isn't a recall. Nutro says there isn't even a problem in this special web page it set up to address the issue.

If you're a dog owner you may not have even heard about the latest scare. It hasn't really been in the news. I only found out when a friend at the dog run starting worrying about her dog after seeing the story in an online newsgroup.

Two Italian Greyhounds from Indiana became dizzy, vomited, urinated incessantly and had a peculiar smell, said their owner, identified only as Theresa C. from Indianapolis in the Consumer Affairs story. Both were euthanized after kidney failure. The vet suspected antifreeze poisoning.

Last year, investigators eventually found that dogs were poisoned because Chinese manufacturers had added melamine, a component of antifreeze, to boost protein readings. The Food and Drug Administration analyzed their Nutro food, looking for melamine and similar chemicals as well as other common food poisoning agents like salmonella. The FDA found nothing wrong with the Nutro food.

"I wonder if there's something in the food they're not testing for," Theresa C. told Consumer Affairs -- echoing the concern of dog owners everywhere.

The Attorney General proposed some new updates wants to update the American Disabilities Act this month. The changes were greeted mostly as a boon--a potentially expensive one--to disabled people. One provision of the law actually cuts back on accomodations of people who use service animals.

The main problem with this law remains that some businesses feel like they can ignore it and exclude service dogs. I have a friend who is blind and lives in a building for the blind and a store across the street routinely harasses blind people with seeing eye dogs. We are not in some epidemic of bogus service animals, are we? The DOJ worries that we are. The proposed law claims there has been "a proliferation of animal types that have been used as 'service animals,' including wild animals." If an animal is under someone's care and control can it really be called wild? It's not like people are going into McDonald's with seeing eye deer or hearing raccoons, are they?

The new law will clamp down on animals that provide just emotional therapy, not specific physical services. That's fine. Some people were exploiting the rule--though hardly so many that it seems to warrant a federal crackdown.
The new law will also make it more difficult for animals who are not dogs to qualify for service. The law already requires that the animal "be individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of an individual with a disability."

BioArts International, a California-based biotech start-up, is hoping to kick-start commercial dog-cloning with five successive daily auctions for the service starting July 5.

The opening bid is $100,000 for the first auction, with a 10% buyer's premium. In each of the successive auctions, the opening bid goes up by $20,000. So by the last auction on July 9, you'd need $180,000, plus 10%. Talk about inflation:

Plus you have to either pick up your puppy in Korea, or pay to have him shipped home.

The same guy ran another genetics company (Genetic Savings & Clone) a few years ago and offered cat cloning for $32,000. (That company went under in 2006 after cloning two cats.)

Before we talk about the fascinating peculiarities of this process, I do feel like I have to point out that we're not exactly running out of dogs here. We euthanize nearly 10 million dogs and cats a year. On the other hand, I understand the desire. My dog Jolly is a grumpy 14 years old. As I always tell him, he is the best dog in the world: loving, loyal, clever, funny, brave, silly and handsome. I would do practically anything to extend my time with him. I'd love to be able to see Jolly as a puppy since I adopted him when he was past two. But this isn't that magic opportunity. For starters I don't have $110,000 to spare. But more importantly what makes Jolly Jolly is his life and experience, as lousy as that might have been to start (he was found in a drug dealer's backyard.) A clone would only get me a handsome dog, not Jolly.

Ok, enough about the serious implications. Let's get to the grotesque details. First the financials. You have to have cash or credit of $250,000 just to sign up to bid. If you win, you have three days to put the money in a Wells Fargo trust. They only take the money out if you accept a healthy puppy -- except for some deposit fees.

Friday June 20th is the 10th annual Take Your Dog to Work Day, a totally made up holiday, but a fun one. Pet Sitters International started celebrating in 1999, six years after the Ms. Foundation started bringing daughters into the workplace.

The purpose is entirely different. The daughters and sons are supposed to be learning about work world opportunities. On Dog Day, or TYDTWDay, as Pet Sitters calls it in shorthand, the dogs aren't supposed to learn anything (though I do think they're curious about where we go all day.) Instead it's your co-workers who are going to have their minds blown. The idea, according to Pet Sitters, is to encourage people to adopt dogs from shelters by showing them how much fun your dog is. Or, as they put it, "people without dogs will see the loving bond their co-workers have with their pets and will consider adopting orphaned pets for their own."

Sounds a little flimsy, but I still love it.

The similarities between the holidays don't end there. Answering understandable complaints for boys' parents, in 2003 the Ms. Foundation officially changed the holiday to include boys. It's now the Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. Cat people didn't want to be excluded either, so now Take Your Pet to Work Week expands the holiday from June 16 to 20 (in case your office has something serious going on Friday). The kid holiday is somberly always on a school day, a Thursday, so that kids can go back and talk about what they learned on Friday. The dog holiday is the Friday after Father's Day, probably because it's a pretty casual time and nice weather.