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.

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.

Brandweek is reporting that bottled water sales grew by less than 1% in the first six months of 2008. That's quite a comedown for the industry that was growing in double digits in the early years of the decade. Just last year the Beverage Marketing Corporation was predicting the U.S. bottled water market would grow 7.4% this year.

There are lots of reasons for the decline. Magazine articles and books critiqued the colossal waste of the $16 billion American water industry. The National Resource Defense Council issued a lengthy report on mislabeling and impurities in bottled water.

Then there were worries about the bottles themselves. CNN noted that less a quarter of all those plastic bottles gets recycled. We've worried about the 1.5 million barrels of oil that the National Conference of Mayors says is used to make all the plastic bottles for our bottled water. For a while some were worried about drinking from bottles with PET (polyethylene terephthalate). But now we've switched to worrying about bottles with BPA (bisphenol-a). Two U.S. agencies issued reports, one saying BPA is fine, one saying it alters hormones.

But for all that my favorite reason for people buying less bottled water (and per person it would be less just because of population growth) is that people are wising up. The recession is making people pay attention to how much money they've been blowing on bottled water all these years.

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.

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.

If you have money to burn and you're allergic to pet dander, but you'd really like to have a cat; have I got a deal for you! ABC News reported recently that a company called Allerca claimed two years ago that they had developed the world's first hypoallergenic cat. Allergic cat lovers immediately began paying deposits for ownership of the sneeze-free felines.

Selling prices range anywhere from $4,000 to $6,000 for your average tabby all the way up to $35,000 for an exotic variety of "wild cat." Emergency room doctor David Avner, who has researched the key feline protein believed to cause allergic reactions, says hypoallergenic cats are a fallacy. That's where the matter becomes a bit cloak and dagger-ish.