Can we blog from Aardvark to Zebra?

Dylan at work

Some time last month my guinea pig Dylan announced he was going to do the A to Z Challenge next year.  He wouldn't be the first guinea pig, since Victor took part in 2012, doing the A to Z of guinea pig food.  Dylan hasn't come up with a theme yet, but I think if he does, he's going to need some help.

Victor made a lot of friends with other animals on the A to Z challenge that year.  There was Dreamweaver, The Mane Point, and Rob Bear, who comes out of hibernation around then to do his blog Chrome on the Range.  I don't think he kept up with them for very long, but time flies when you're a guinea pig.

Last year I noticed that my good friend and fellow A2Z minion Guilie Castillo has a second blog called Life In Dogs.  It's about dog rescues - which she does in Mexico, but also about cat rescues and any animal rescues at all.  She set up a linky for other pet bloggers on the A2Z which I thought was a wonderful way of getting special interest sites together.  If she does it again next year then I'll tell Dylan to sign up for it, as well as the main challenge, and the Theme Reveal, and all those other extras that go with being part of the A to Z Challenge in April.

Are there any Aardvarks or Zebras blogging out there who would like to get involved in the A2Z Pet Network?

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Last week was a painful reminder for me of the good reasons for backing up your blog.  Mine was out of action (although readable by viewers) for nearly a week after a conflict in upgrades gave me no back office/dashboard access.  Faced with the prospect of rebuilding it, I looked for my last back up.  I can do a simple posts export which is the easiest way of keeping content - and in a useable format should I need to change hosts.

I last saved my posts on April 17th - presumably the date I had all my A2Z posts done for the month.  So if things had gone wrong then, all my posts were ready and scheduled.  It's a good reason to schedule posts anyway - you never know when the gremlins are going to hit you!

Given that I'll be away for a week at the end of March, I think I'll have to do most of my April posts before then.  Schedule, and back-up (or save off line).  It's the only way to get peace of mind.

Dylan had better start planning his posts now - then I can back up his blog too!

What about you?  Any interest in pet blogging?  Done a back-up lately?

Jemima Pett blogs at jemimapett.com, and is on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.  She has written the Princelings of the East series (whose characters are guinea pigs) and is working on a new scifi series, the first of which, The Perihelix, Viridian System #1, will be out in 2015.