adobe Archives - Ryan McLaughlin

One final toss for The Dooze

An incredibly touching story by ESPN’s Bill Simmons about the death, and most wonderfully, the life of his dog “The Dooze”. Impossible not to draw some similarities between Bill’s loss and our own. h/t Beijing Boyce on Twitter.

February 1, 2009

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Optima Dog Food Saga: It’s Done

Most often I feel time is moving much faster than I expect it to. This last month, however, is an exception. It’s hard to believe that it was just over four weeks ago that we got the news about our Optima dog food being contaminated with aflatoxin. Only a month ago that we began to …

January 22, 2009

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Optima Pet Food Saga: Media’s double-edged sword

It’s been a crazy week – both with trying to catch up on work I let slip while caring for Addie over the holidays and also with trying to bring some perspective to this whole, ongoing, experience. When all this began I created a Google Alert for “Optima dog food”, so I’d know any time …

January 17, 2009

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Shanghai Daily-late and dollar short

The Shanghai Daily finally got around to reporting on the emergency recall of dog food after pets poisoned and seem just as confused as the rest of the net on where the Optima dog food comes from and how it ended up killing dogs in China (including my baby). The site reports: Since the end …

January 12, 2009

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Addie’s Ashes – cremating our dog in China

It’s been a handful of days now, and both Maggie and I are coming to terms with Addie’s death. I still expect her to be there, wagging her tail, when we open the front door; and I still look for her underfoot when I get up from the sofa. But time is a cool leveler, …

January 6, 2009

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From time to eternity

Addie has died. I’ve sat here at my computer for a while now looking for the right words to start this post with and can’t come up with any. But as that first sentence is why I’m sitting here, it seems reasonable that it is where I should start. Reason. Ration. These are vile words …

January 4, 2009

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Addie Update #2: The Youth in Asia Debate

A couple of days ago I drew up a calendar on a whiteboard Maggie uses to keep track of her yoga clients. The calendar shows the dates from December 23 (the day before we found out Addie was suffering from aflatoxicity) to January 4th (one day after the vet said she would be lucky to …

December 31, 2008

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Addie Update

Having been up until 4am the last two nights watching my dog suck endless bottles of medical juice into her veins, my head’s not really in the game – but I wanted to post a bit of an update on her condition and the situation as a whole. First, she’s de-energized but still fighting. She’s …

December 28, 2008

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US-made Optima dog food in China may have killed my dog

In what’s poised to be the absolute worst Christmas ever, there is an excellent chance my dog – my awesome, beautiful, wonderful, fantastic dog – is going to die. After posting the other day about the possibility of her having come into contact with aflatoxin contaminated Optima dog food, a visit to the vet yesterday …

December 25, 2008

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Feeding your dog Optima in China? Stop.

The last two days we’ve been dealing with a bit of a scare. We got a call from our pet shop asking us if we’d seen the news. Optima – the decent-quality, American-made dog food we’ve always fed our pup – was issuing a major recall because contaminants had been found in it. Apparently since …

December 23, 2008

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Addie’s First Birthday

Alright, I never wanted to become one of those people that have a dog and they go on and on about their dog like it was their child. I never did. But I also never expected that such a connection could be formed between myself and a dog. I’ve had lots of pets, including a …

December 15, 2008

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Sexy Bitch

Addie just recently went into heat for the first time (snuck up on us – we were still thinking she was just a puppy). For anyone that’s never had a (ahem) bitch in heat, it can be a bit messy. To combat this we’ve employed a couple pairs of old undies – much to our …

September 26, 2008

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