Tips to keep your pet healthy in the heat

(BPT) - Spring is here, summer is approaching fast and it's time to get outside and start taking advantage of the warmer weather. Dr. Jeff Werber, Emmy award-winning celebrity veterinarian, has a few tips and tricks on how to keep your pet happy and healthy in the heat.

Before you start your jogging treks, hiking excursions or bicycle touring with your furry partner by your side, it's important to understand these spring/summer safety measures to keep your pet happy and safe.

Easing into exercise

After sitting around all winter, it is not a good idea to jump right into a full exercise regimen full speed ahead. The best approach to get your pet ready for more activities outside is a gradual introduction into exercise. A game of fetch is a perfect way to get your pet up and moving. The Chuckit! Launcher and Locator Sound Ball provides an easy way for your pet to increase their stamina, with the added entertainment of retrieving a ball that emits an audible pulse sound every few seconds to help pet parents and dogs locate the ball in any terrain after launch.

If your pet enjoys chasing ground pursuits (think rabbits and squirrels), the Chuckit! RingChaser is a great option to satisfy their instincts. Again, short bursts of chasing and retrieving are a fun way to get your pup back into shape.

It's also critical to choose the best time of day to exercise - and noon is not it. The best time to enjoy your pet's company is early in the morning or early in the evening. Keep in mind that in the evening after the sun is down, the pavement can still be pretty warm, as it retains heat for quite a while. Where possible, try to exercise on a grassy or dirt surface to avoid burning or irritating their paws.

Keeping cool and staying hydrated

What we love so much about our dogs is how loyal they are and how much they want to please us. This can be a problem when it comes to potential overexertion, as they will keep going just to be with us, even though they may be overheating. Moreover, many dogs and cats can overheat from lying around the house or backyard as well. When leaving pets outside during the spring or summer, make sure that shade and fresh water are always available. There are many devices available that can provide water automatically or on-demand, like the Petmate Replendish Waterer, which provides a constant flow of fresh water throughout the day for pets even when the pet parent isn't home. If you're out and about with your pet, consider the Replendish To-Go Water bottle that conveniently includes a travel bowl for your pet. For longer excursions, or for hotter climates, wet a bandana and place it in the freezer the night before so it will remain nice and cool a little longer. Also, make regular stops in a shady area to allow both of you to catch your breath.

Indoor dogs and cats also need to escape from the heat. Make sure the house isn't kept too warm. Keep at least one room cooler by leaving the shades or drapes closed. Enough has been written about pets and parked cars, so I'm sure you are all aware of that potential deadly hazard. Don't do it, not even in the shade or "only for a few minutes." Enough said.

Limitless possibilities, while on a leash

You and your pet are finally enjoying the great outdoors, and the fun activities with Fido are endless. Our pet nation has a huge population, and it's important to be a good citizen. Remember to respect other pets' "space" and boundaries, and don't assume every dog is dying to play with yours. Wherever you and your pet decide to roam, be mindful of the local leash laws. You don't want to turn a fun outing into an emergency room visit for you or anyone else.

If you're heading off to a park or hiking area, make sure you have everything you need for your trek. Travel treats and water bottles are always a good idea to keep with you, to make sure you and your pet are well fueled and hydrated. Keep essentials, like your keys, lip balm, waste bag, etc., all in one place with the Petmate Zipp Leash that features an expandable pouch built right into the leash to hold all dog-walking basics while on the go.

Regardless of whether you choose to run, romp, hike or trek, spring and summer are great times of year to bond with your pets. I encourage all of you to get outdoors, enjoy the warmth and sunshine, and to include your four-legged kids in your activities. Just remember to play it smart and keep them safe.

Movie Review—Thoroughbreds

Thoroughbreds

by Peter J. O’Connell

Thoroughbreds. Released: March 2018. Runtime: 92 mins. MPAA Rating: R for disturbing behavior, bloody images, language, sexual references, and some drug content. 

In Thoroughbredswhen Amanda (Olivia Cooke) enters the mansion in Connecticut where Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) lives, she is not just entering a brightly lit world of wealth and privilege manifested in decorative excess, she is bringing the dark world of her mind with her. And writer/director Cory Finley will take us on a tour of both worlds. 

Amanda is a dark-haired, dark-eyed, blank-faced high school girl who is facing animal cruelty charges for having knifed her horse to death. Lily is a golden-haired, blue-eyed, porcelain-skinned high school girl with cupid-bow lips—seemingly a classic “nice girl.”

The two girls had been best friends earlier but grew apart after the death of Lily’s father. They meet again under the pretense of having Lily provide a casual tutoring session for Amanda. It’s quickly learned, however, that Amanda’s mother, worried about Amanda’s social isolation because of the notoriety surrounding her from the horse knifing, has paid Lily to tutor her daughter, primarily to lessen the isolation. In this community, money is behind many things.

But love is in short supply. Lily lives with her mother and stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), a vain and cruel man, continually exercising, whom Lily hates because of his emotionally and verbally abusive attitude toward her and her mother (Francie Swift), who is suffering from cancer.  

Despite the bogus nature of the tutoring session, Amanda and Lily renew their relationship. Fluttery and seemingly sensitive, Lily is nevertheless fascinated by Amanda, who says: “I don’t have any feelings, ever. Joy, guilt—I really don’t have any of those. And that doesn’t necessarily make me a bad person; it just means I have to work a little harder to be good.” 

Amanda substitutes mimicry for the emotions that she lacks and can even cry on cue using a “technique” that she has taught herself. She says that psychiatrists flip through their manual seeking to find a term to describe her and have currently decided on “antisocial personality disorder with schizoid tendencies.” But Amanda doesn’t care what they say. She just wants to be like college dropout/digital genius Steve Jobs.   “I want to skip college and Steve Jobs my way through life.” 

Lily is soon imitating the affectless but charismatic Amanda by darkening her hair and in various other ways. And when Mark threatens to send her to a boarding school for girls with behavioral issues and not pay for college, Lily goes Amanda one dark thought farther and suggests that they actually begin to plan in detail the murder of Mark that Amanda had casually mentioned earlier. Lily has taken to heart Amanda’s concept that “the only thing worse than being incompetent or being unkind or being evil is being indecisive.”

In furtherance of their scheme, the girls rope in Tim (Anton Yelchin), a jittery drug dealer, one interested in young girls, who is working as a dishwasher. Like Amanda, Tim is also a big admirer of Steve Jobs. (Ironically, it is entrepreneurial Mark who actually seems to resemble Jobs.) Various twists and turns involving the murder plot lead up to a surprising conclusion.

Along the way we learn that Amanda has a recurring dream about a future society that has fallen apart because of human vanity and has to be run by horses if it is to recover. This dream may remind some moviegoers of the final part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, in which a better society than England’s is run by Houyhnhnms (“whinny/humans”), a race of talking horses.  

If this reference is intended, it is certainly appropriate, for Thoroughbredshas a kind of Swiftian pitch-black humor and slashing (in more senses than one) satire of class and gender expectations vis-à-vis actual behavior and of society’s formulations about normality and abnormality. The cast, particularly the two leads, is pitch (black) perfect. The movie has mostly one setting, the mansion, but the cinematography is so good that though, in several senses, the characters operate within the world of the mansion, the audience doesn’t feel confined by the setting. The score, which often incorporates what sounds like Mark’s exercise rowing machine, contributes much to the movie. So, trot off to Thoroughbreds!

“Footnotes” to the film: There is a small subgenre of films about murderous young women. An actual case in France spawned: Jean Genet’s playThe Maids(1947); a 1975 British film based on the play, starring Glenda Jackson and Susannah York; and Claude Chabrol’s film La Ceremonie(1995). Patty McCormack was a young murderess inTheBad Seed(1956). Lord of the Ringsdirector Peter Jackson helmed Heavenly Creatures(1994), based on an actual case from the 1950s in New Zealand. In Heathers(1988), set in a high school, Christian Slater’s character egged on Winona Ryder’s character to off the title characters. 

Barnum Festival Senior Dance

Tomorrow's Wealth Manager?

Amazon's Alexa is the voice that empowers our voices. We can summon news or music, order shampoo or groceries, turn on the lights….

The next step seems inevitable:

Alexa, what's my equities to fixed income ratio today? 

Today your ETF portfolio is 87 percent equities and 13 percent fixed income.

Alexa, rebalance to 80 percent equities, 20 percent fixed.

Rebalancing done. I've sent the trade details to your phone. 

Can Alexa take over the personal investing business without the ability to offer investment advice?  Sure. Millennial passive investors may see that disability as a plus.

Our Founder in 1942

The Merrill Anderson Company was founded in 1934 in New York City. Merrill was a successful copywriter who decided to start his own company. The company specialized in working with bank trust departments. 

Eight years after launching the Merrill Anderson Company, our founder was on a roll: he was elected president of the New York Financial Advertisers.

Good looking, wasn't he?

That wasn't Merrill's first appearance in The New York Times. Using Times Machine we found this item in an April 29, 1923 report on an AAU gymnastic meet.

Indian club swinging, popular in Victorian times, was losing favor in the 1920's, but it endured long enough to be a gymnastics event at the 1932 Olympics.

Our founder may not have been a gold medal club swinger, but he was a champion high jumper. And he captained the track team at Amherst.

Simple ways to save on your pet's medical costs

(BPT) - Pet parents know that there's nothing like the love of furry family members. Keeping your pets healthy is a priority because you want them to live as long as possible. However, health care costs for pets are expensive, and if you are dealing with additional expenses such as prescriptions for chronic conditions, it can become a burden to your budget.

Fortunately, there are several things pet owners can do proactively to keep pets healthy and save money on health care costs.

Invest in preventative care

"An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" is just as applicable to pets as it is to their human caregivers. One of the most important things a pet parent can do to ensure the ongoing health of any animal is to bring them in for annual checkups whether they are experiencing health issues or not.

During wellness checkups, veterinarians can screen for a variety of health conditions. They provide insight on diseases, age-related concerns, dental health, nutritional considerations and so much more. Plus you're able to provide your pet with important vaccinations. Regular checkups help vets identify problems sooner rather than later, and this can translate to more affordable health care costs to pet parents in the long run.

Get an Inside Rx Pets prescription card

Costs for managing your pet's health can be a bear with pet owners spending more than $8 billion on prescription and over-the-counter medications annually. The Inside Rx Pets program offers savings on commonly prescribed medications such as insulin and antibiotics, as well as seizure, glaucoma and anti-inflammatory drugs. The Inside Rx Pets savings card is not insurance; it is a savings card you can use for certain human medications that may be prescribed for your pet. A complete list of the medications with which you can use the Inside Rx Pet card, as well as pricing information and other details, can be found at https://InsideRx.com/Pets.

Benefiting from these discounts is easy for pet parents: If your pet's veterinarian writes a prescription for an applicable medication, simply download the free discount card from the Inside Rx Pets website and present it with the prescription at one of the 40,000 participating pharmacies located across the U.S. that fill prescriptions for animals. These include national chains such as Kroger Family of Pharmacies, CVS and Walgreens (yes, the same pharmacies you go to for your own medications).

Exercise and focus on nutrition

Obesity is a growing concern for many pets. Poor nutrition paired with limited exercise causes pets to put on additional weight. This weight can put them at higher risk for health concerns like diabetes, osteoarthritis and ligament injuries. These health concerns not only risk the quality of life for Fluffy or Fido, but also can deeply impact your pocketbook.

Pets, just like humans, require exercise and proper nutrition to stay healthy and feel their best. Whether that's letting your rabbit out of the cage to run or going on a walk with your dog, be sure to make regular exercise a part of your fur family's routine. If you're unsure what is appropriate for your pet, call your veterinarian or bring it up at a wellness visit. They'll be delighted you reached out for more information to keep your pet healthy.

Start an emergency fund

Choosing between a pet and an unexpected health expense is something no one wants to experience. Being prepared can make a big difference when facing difficult decisions, so it's wise to have savings set aside in case of a rainy day.

Some people are starting pet health savings accounts (HSAs) that are similar to the accounts that people hold for themselves to pay for medical expenses. Whether you choose that path or a traditional savings account, when you have an emergency fund you won't have to worry about any unexpected expenses, so you can simply focus on getting your pet well again.

Being proactive is important for keeping your pets healthy for many years. From scheduling annual wellness visits to taking advantage of the Inside Rx Pets discount card, there are many easy actions pet parents can take today to reduce costs so furry family members stay well.



June is National Pet Adoption Month, a great time to consider providing a home to a pet from a local shelter.

Movie Review—Game Night

Theatrical release poster

by Peter J. O'Connell

Game Night. Released: Feb. 2018. Runtime: 100 mins. MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual references, and some violence.

Game Night, co-directed by John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein and written by Mark Perez, is about a night intended for fun and games that becomes a night of fright instead. But this clever movie makes that fright for the characters into fun for the audience.

Max (Jason Bateman) and Annie (Rachel McAdams) are competitive gamers who meet during a trivia night at a bar, fall in love, and soon are married. The couple want to have a child, but that isn't happening, perhaps because Max feels stressed compared with his brother, Brooks (Kyle Chandler), who claims to be a very attractive and successful Wall Street hotshot.

Max and Annie also are at pains to try to keep a somewhat creepy neighbor, Gary (Jesse Plemons), away from their game nights with friends. Gary is an awkward and humorless police officer, always in uniform, even at home, who stopped being regularly invited to game nights when his wife, a friend of Max and Annie's, divorced him. 

Brooks has rented a really nice house while visiting and invites Max and Annie to come there for a game night with their friends, a married couple, Kevin (Lamorne Morris) and Michelle (Kylie Bunbury), and a dating couple, Ryan (Kelly Magnusson) and Sarah (Sharon Horgan). Max and Annie are determined to beat Brooks at whatever games are played. A preliminary game involving admission of having had sex with a celebrity causes tension between Kevin and Michelle when Michelle is the only one to admit to such a situation, which Kevin never had been told about. But then Brooks announces that he has set up an interactive role-playing mystery game, with the winner to receive Brooks' Corvette Stingray.

At this point an actor—Jeffrey Wright is the actor playing the actor—playing an FBI agent arrives with “dossiers” that provide clues for solving a kidnapping. But suddenly two thugs enter, actually knock out the actor, and take Brooks away despite his fierce resistance. The three couples, believing that this is all just part of a realistic game, set out to try and retrieve Brooks.

Numerous mishaps and misadventures follow, including Max's getting a gunshot wound, and eventually the couples learn that the kidnapping was really for real. Brooks makes a startling admission about his involvement with a gangster called The Bulgarian (Michael C. Hall) and a rich man (Danny Huston), who runs a fight club in his mansion and owns a very special Faberge egg. The couples need to take control of the egg. Their efforts result in a brilliantly choreographed and edited sequence in which the couples toss the fragile egg back and forth while running through corridors and up and down stairs in an attempt to evade pursuing thugs. Eventually, Gary has to be brought into the action, and the mix of game with actuality becomes even more tricky.

Game Night's action is realistic, up to a point, but then its scary and suspenseful nature is transformed into dark comedy by deliciously droll dialogue and deliciously deadpan acting. McAdams is enormously appealing, as she usually is, and Jesse Plemons is a marvel in the way that he turns utter humorlessness into humor. By the way, you should stay completely through the ending credits of the film for two delightful surprises. One is in the middle of the run of credits. The even more delightful one is at the very end of the credits, all the credits, right to the screen's turning blank. Then comes the surprise!