About Pet Connection

The Pet Connection blog was founded by Christie Keith and Gina Spadafori, two longtime journalists and best friends.

Writing about pet care and veterinary medicine since 1991, Christie was founding editor of Veterinary Partner, a contributing editor to The Bark magazine, a pet columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle/SFGate.com, and a media consultant for a variety of animal welfare, no-kill and veterinary clients.

Gina has written well over a dozen books on pets and their care, many of which have been top-sellers, and most of which were co-authored with “America’s Veterinarian” Dr. Marty Becker. She also wrote the first three books in the For Dummies pet care line.

Dogs For Dummies, Gina’s first book, was given the President’s Award for the best writing on dogs and the Maxwell Medallion for the best general reference work, both by the Dog Writers Association of America. The award-winning Cats For Dummies, co-authored with Dr. Paul Pion, was named one of the best moments for cats in the 20th century by Cat Fancy magazine.

Christie and Gina started working together at the Veterinary Information Network, and their Pet Connection blogging project gained prominent attention when they broke open the story of the 2007 pet food recalls, leading to appearances on national news programs and stories in USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, among other news outlets.

In 2019, PetConnection.com was acquired by Petful, the web's #1 independent source of detailed U.S. pet food recall information. Founded by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editor Dave Baker, Petful is on a mission to give its readers the best, most accurate information to help their pets live happier, healthier lives.

A longtime advocate for pet food safety, Dave has been passionately tracking pet food recalls for the past 10-plus years, and more than 30,000 pet parents are subscribed to his pet food recall alerts — which sometimes arrive even faster than the recall alerts put out by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Animal Radio has called Petful’s list of U.S. pet food recalls “the best, most complete list” online.