"The Petcast" is LIVE on Saturday 9-11 am PT

Join us for the recordings of four all-new -- and duck-poop-free, I hope -- episodes of "The Petcast" Saturday morning at LVRocks.Com. You can call in and ask questions of our guests at 702-383-8120 as well.

Our guest line-up this week:

9 a.m.: Dayna Rich does intake evaluations and cares for animals at the Colorado Reptile Human Society, a statewide shelter for reptiles and amphibians in Longmont, Colo. She'll talk about how it is that these pets get abandoned and what misconceptions lead people to buy them in the first place, plus proper care for reptile pets.

9:30 a.m.: Marlena Cervantes, owner of Flexpetz, dubbed as "a new concept for dog lovers with busy lifestyles." For a monthly $39.95 fee plus a per-day fee, people can rent dogs from centers in San Diego and Los Angeles with plans to expand to New York, San Francisco, London, Boston and Washington D.C. She explains the service, which in some ways harks back to our show No. 44 in which Ed Nicholas talked about sharing custody of his dog, Buddy, with his ex-partner.

10 a.m.: Ben Huh, founder of Itchmo.com, a wildly popular blog site that became quite important when the pet-food recall emerged. Huh and his wife, Emily, operate Itchmo Pets Network, a collection of sites that also includes CatStuffReviews.Com and DogStuffReviews.com.

10:30 a.m.: In studio guests are David Pohl, Keith Brown and their dog Devon, a McNab they adopted after he was mistreated by his first owner. They'll talk about that as well as flyball. Their team is called Fly N Aces and the site is www.flynaces.com.

...But it's a DRY cold...except all this snow...

Today was probably the highlight of our Alaskan adventure: We rode on dog sleds and then hopped into a Cessna to fly around Mount McKinley. It was quite cold out -- high in the mid-20s and, in fact, we clocked -5 F while we were up there in the air. We wore those long johns I still can't remember why we Las Vegans own in the first place.

The top picture is me and Miles in flight, which is remarkable because Miles hates to fly and really, really had to psyche himself up for the ride. But the folks at Talkeetna Air Taxi were so comforting and encouraging, and he rolled with it. We were so glad we did, however, to be able to snap such sensational views as this one to your right. That wing you see is our plane. Also joining us was Karen Harris, the proprietor of the Garden Gate B&B where we're staying and an old friend of mine.

It was quite a beautiful -- and chilly -- flight, and we heard from our pilot, Danielle, that global warming is very much in evidence up here in shrinking glaciers and such. Hard to imagine as you look out at all that snow and ice -- rivers so frozen over they appear to be made of marshmallow Fluff. But surely they know of which they speak.

Earlier in the day, we went to Dream a Dream Dog Farm in Willow, where Iditarod veteran Vern Halter explained the ins and outs of professional and competitive dog sledding. Then Vern and one of his handlers took each of us on an 8-mile dog-mushing jaunt through the frozen wilderness. To your left is Miles on his dog sled. Each sled had 10 big dogs. One of my dogs was pregnant. Vern was so great that I'm bringing him on The Petcast in a few weeks to discuss the whole business of raising and training these dogs. There was no question in my mind that these dogs, while being asked to work hard, clearly enjoy their work and are not tortured or prodded into pulling the haul.

Will write more later. We're tired. Tomorrow we go snowmachining. Not snowmobiling... that's apparently the passe term.