Digger normally likes learning new words and phrases as they help him better communicate with all you folks out there, but this year taught me a few I would be just as happy having never been exposed to, the three most common being sub-prime mortgage, collateralized debt obligation and credit default swap.

2008 saw a lot of hand-wringing about how the troubles on Wall Street were affecting the pets on Main Street (and yes, like you I'm tired of the whole Wall Street-Main Street construction and promise I'll never use it again).

As the foreclosure crisis started gaining steam back in January, pets were being abandoned at alarming levels. Traci Jennings, president of the Humane Society of Stanislaus County in northern California, told AP news that, ''Farmers are finding dogs dumped on their grazing grounds, while house cats are showing up in wild cat colonies.'' The Humane Society began urging foreclosure victims to send their animals to shelters if they could no longer care for them, but this created its own problems. Housing sales were falling, and new home owners are often the people pet shelters depend on to adopt pets, so fewer abandoned pets were being adopted.

One such abandoned animal that captured the whole nation's attention in July was a forty-four pound tabby dubbed Princess Chunk (though actually named Powder) who was found wandering the streets of New Jersey. Obviously no cat only a few pounds shy of the Guiness Book's world's fattest cat record could have been on the streets for long, and it turned out the tabby was abandoned by its owner after her home had been foreclosed. The cat became a minor celeb after it appeared on Live with Regis & Kelly.

The year also saw more and more people relying on food pantries to feed their pets. In Santa Cruz, Calif., a pet food bank run by the ASPCA saw demand spike by about 20 percent in the first six months of 2008.

Other folks relied on human food pantries to help their four-legged friends. Linda Pouliot, executive director of the Franklin Food Pantry Inc., told AP news that her organization has been struggling to keep up with demand.

''When we first started, people couldn't believe there'd actually be pet food because often times they'd take six or eight cans of tuna and we'd find out they weren't actually eating it themselves - they were feeding the cats because they couldn't afford pet food.''

Many veterinarians saw a drop-off in business in 2008, as fewer owners were bringing their pets in for regular check-ups, diagnostic tests and non-emergency visits.

It wasn't all doom and gloom though. An Internet survey conducted in November showed that 23% of pet owners planned to spend less on their pets in 2009. So how can this be good news? Well, of those same respondents, 49% said they planned cut back on their own personal expenses. So while we probably won't see pet spending levels hit their 2006-2007 zenith for some time, its good to know most pet owners would rather sacrifice a few personal luxuries than deny their creatures great and small.

Next up -- a penultimate grab-bag of one-offs and also-rans leading up to Digger's Toppest Pet Story of The Year That Was Undeniably 2008.

(Image: Dogs displayed for adoption at the Stockton Animal Shelter in Stockton, Calif. -- AP Photo)