Animal Scene – March-April 2026

Summary

Animal Scene's March-April 2026 issue (Volume 26, Numbers 01-02) puts an Irish Wolfhound on the cover, asks whether Bunny the Sheepadoodle really talks through a FluentPet soundboard, and tracks Jonna Baquillas' cat Qish from late-2025 night yowling to a feline dementia diagnosis.

Manila Bulletin's Animal Scene builds its 128-page March-April 2026 issue around one question: what happens when the animals we love start to change. Timothy James Dimacali's cover feature walks an Irish Wolfhound through a Metro Manila home, while veterinarian Dr. Rich Briones explains how the breed handles Philippine heat, why a yardless apartment can still work, and what that massive silhouette does to would-be intruders.

The issue's strongest reporting sits with senior pets. Cliff Sawit follows cat caregiver Jonna Baquillas and her cat Qish, whose missing-tooth mouth, 2022 kidney diagnosis, and late-2025 night yowling turned out to be feline cognitive dysfunction. Richard Leo Ramos tests the hype around FluentPet soundboards used by Bunny the Sheepadoodle and Russell the cat, and asks whether owners simply over-interpret.

Elsewhere: Alaina Therese L. Amilanto argues community cats need TNVR, not rescue; Cacai Buenviaje details humpback whales breaking up orca hunts; Gregg Yan traces the Kouprey from Cambodia's national animal to a species nobody has confirmed since 1968; and Angel Ampil explains why the smaller Salminus hilarii suits Filipino fish keepers better than the aggressive Golden Dorado.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover Story

p.44 · How an Irish Wolfhound redecorates your home

Dimacali, a volunteer K9 handler at UP Diliman's UPMV K9 Corps, spends the feature on what actually changes when an Irish Wolfhound moves in: your sightlines vanish. Veterinarian Dr. Rich Briones says island-born Wolfhounds cope with Philippine heat and stay highly trainable, and that a yardless Metro Manila unit works if you commit to walks before the city heats up. On guarding, Briones is blunt – the breed lacks the wariness of a proper guard dog, so treat it as a visual deterrent and invest in real security. Takeaway: plan pre-dawn outdoor time, not square meters.

▸ Mammal Marvels

p.20 · Push-button communication: Can our canine companions really talk to us through buttons on a soundboard?

Richard Leo Ramos traces the FluentPet soundboard from Bunny, a six-year-old Sheepadoodle raised by Alexis Devine after Leo Trottier sent the family a button board, to Russell the talking cat. He grounds it in augmentative and alternative communication, which dates to 1950s speech-restoration work, then flags the Clever Hans problem: keepers may read intent into random presses. The honest position is that animals may understand simple words the way they understand commands. Takeaway: before buying a soundboard, log every press for a week and check whether the same button produces the same request twice.

p.96 · Snowy Anne Margaret: The champion who never needed a trophy

Mona Sabalones Gonzalez's West Highland Terrier was bred to win shows; her first trainer handed her back after one walk, calling her too slow. Then, at barely a year old, Snowy was diagnosed with pyometra – a hormonal uterine infection that usually strikes older dogs – and her uterus ruptured, giving her 50-50 odds in a 10 p.m. surgery that also cleaned her liver, kidneys, and intestine. She survived and came home after four hospital days. Takeaway: pyometra is an emergency, not a wait-and-see illness; know your nearest 24-hour vet before you need it.

▸ Health, Breeding & Welfare

p.32 · Still here but different: Understanding dementia in senior Cats

Cliff Sawit follows Jonna Baquillas of PAWsome Cats and her senior cat Qish, whose first sign was missing the litter box, followed by failed jumps and dimming vision. Qish had already lost all his teeth in 2021 and been diagnosed with chronic kidney disease in 2022; his nightly yowling began in late 2025. Sawit lists the real markers – disorientation, flipped sleep cycles, extra vocalization, accidents – and stresses that arthritis, hyperthyroidism, and kidney disease mimic them. Takeaway: get a vet check to rule out treatable causes, then keep bowls, beds, and litter boxes in fixed places.

p.100 · Anti-aging pills for Dogs are coming: Here's what you need to know

Martina Jauin Mendoza reports that Loyal, the biotech led by founder and CEO Celine Halioua, has an FDA certification of 'reasonable expectation of efficacy' for a beef-flavoured longevity pill. It targets dogs 10 years and older weighing at least 14 pounds, aiming to improve metabolic health, which declines with age. Loyal's own disclaimer: expect roughly one extra year of life, achieved by slowing the rate of aging rather than curing anything. Takeaway: if your dog qualifies, ask your vet about trial enrolment instead of waiting for retail shelves.

p.102 · Netherlands bans hairless Cats, Cats with folded ears

The Dutch ban targets two traits buyers treat as cute. Per the Union of European Veterinary Practitioners, folded-ear breeds like the Scottish Fold carry a cartilage mutation that produces painful joint disease, while hairless cats struggle to regulate body temperature and are prone to skin and ear problems. Breeding, buying, and selling these cats is now illegal in the Netherlands, with exemptions for cats born before January 1, 2026 and microchipped cats. Takeaway: if you are shopping for a Sphynx or Scottish Fold, price in lifelong joint and skin care, or pick a breed without the defect.

▸ Compassionate Causes

p.10 · Why you should be supporting community Cats

Alaina Therese L. Amilanto writes a practical guide to the cats living in your neighbourhood – a group is a colony, or 'clowder,' and its survival depends on volunteers running trap-neuter-vaccinate-return. Her rules are specific: do not pet or relocate them, feed on a fixed schedule and clear leftovers so you do not attract ants and mice, and always pair feeding with spay-neuter or you trigger the vacuum effect. She profiles caretakers at DLSU PUSA, Cats of BGC, and Cats of UST. Takeaway: find your barangay's TNVR group before you set down a food bowl.

p.88 · Adoption changes you: These homeless animals can make you a better person.

Betty Samson admits she drove away from a stray that pawed at her passenger door during a Christmas-season dawn Mass, and carries the guilt a decade later. Her mentor, dog behaviourist Fred Alimusa (1953-2012), had the same regret with a German Shepherd a city pound collected. Samson eventually took in Lucky, a mange-covered four-month-old pup, in 2014; he lived ten years with her pack. Takeaway: her introduction rule is the useful part – meet a new dog on neutral ground like a church or school parking lot, never on your resident dog's territory.

p.58 · Heroes of the ocean: All about Humpback Whales

Cacai Buenviaje collects documented humpback rescues: in 2009 marine ecologist Robert L. Pitman and biologist John W. Durban watched humpbacks three times shield seals from orcas off the Antarctic Peninsula, and in 2017 biologist Nan Hauser was pushed to her boat for over ten minutes while a tiger shark closed in. Pitman later reviewed 100-plus humpback-killer whale encounters logged from 1951 to 2012. Buenviaje also credits University of Toronto researcher Patricia Ganea's 2014 finding that anthropomorphic children's books skew how kids see animals. Takeaway: share whale footage with the caveat that altruism and instinct are still unresolved.

▸ Wildlife & Animal Alerts

p.66 · Kouprey: The Grey Ghost of Indochina

Gregg Yan writes about the world's rarest wild cattle, Bos sauveli, discovered in 1937 when up to a thousand still roamed Indochina. Hunters shipped one to France's Vincennes Zoo; Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk made the Kouprey the national animal, and Dr. Charles Wharten filmed herds for the 1957 documentary Wild Cattle of Cambodia. Yan argues war, not poaching, finished the species – the last confirmed sighting was 23 animals in Cambodia's Phnom Prich Reserve in 1968. Takeaway: see it on a stamp, and treat the museum specimen as a warning about acting too late.

p.74 · Why the Salminus hilarii is the 'good' Dorado

Angel Ampil sorts the five Salminus species for monster-fish keepers and picks the underdog: while Salminus brasiliensis, the shimmering gold-and-red Golden Dorado, is beautiful and relentless enough to bully a whole community tank, the White Dorado is peaceful, still tough, and tops out around 50 centimetres and 1.4 kilograms. Ampil notes it was described by French zoologist Achille Valenciennes in 1850 and is called 'Tabarana' in its South American range. Takeaway: if you want a big predatory characin without a war in your aquarium, ask for S. hilarii.

p.64 · Masungi Georeserve features rare Bird endemic to PH

Masungi Georeserve posted photos of the Indigo-Banded Kingfisher, a bird found only in the Philippines, on Luzon and in the Visayas. The reserve's point is diagnostic: the species only thrives in clean riverside forest with plenty of prey, so a sighting is evidence that the forest and freshwater systems still work. Tree cutting, road construction, and water pollution endanger it fastest. Takeaway: use the kingfisher as a checklist item – if your local river corridor still has one, the watershed is intact enough to defend.

p.30 · K9 Dogs hailed as heroes after Bukidnon landslide

Martina Jauin Mendoza reports that K9 dogs Venom, Paul, and Bella of the 10th Infantry Division found the bodies of Ely and Thelma Utabay under rubble after a landslide hit Brgy. Palacapao, Bukidnon on October 15; the search ran five days. A companion sidebar is the more useful half: during 9/11, search dogs lost motivation after finding only the dead, so handlers staged mock finds to give them a win. Takeaway: if you train a scent dog, let it succeed on a planted find before ending a hard session.

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Editor's Take

The cover is both the weakest promise and the strongest read: an Irish Wolfhound feature that is really a guide to renegotiating your living room, with a vet on the record about Philippine heat. The senior-cat dementia piece is the issue's real spine – Qish, a toothless CKD cat yowling at night, is specific enough to be useful, and Sawit names the lookalike conditions other writers would skip. Yan's Kouprey obituary and Ampil's Salminus hilarii deep-dive quietly outclass the Animal Alert shorts, which lean on Facebook posts and Reddit threads. This is for Filipino companion-animal keepers with an aquarium or a senior pet, not for wildlife specialists. The full-page koi and rabbit-breeding farm spreads sitting mid-issue are the tell that news pages are the filler.

Strengths
• Sawit names the treatable conditions – arthritis, hyperthyroidism, kidney disease – that mimic feline dementia.
• The cover story puts a named veterinarian, Dr. Rich Briones, on the record about heat and housing.
• Yan dates the Kouprey extinction timeline precisely: 1937 discovery, 1968 last confirmed sighting.

Weaknesses
• Animal Alert shorts recycle Facebook posts and Reddit threads without a second source.
• Full-page koi and rabbit-breeder ads interrupt the news run with no visual break.

Verdict: Recommended — Buy it for the senior-cat dementia feature and the Wolfhound cover; skip the alert filler.