Hi. I upgraded to 1.8.9 and getTotalRows started to act different:

<?php
  $pod1 = new Pod ('vste_madeby'); //2 records
  $pod2 = new Pod ('discogs_style'); //5 or 6 records
  $pod3 = new Pod ('links_cat'); //5 records
  $pod4 = new Pod ('links'); //up to 50 records

  $pod1->findRecords('name ASC');
  $pod2->findRecords('name ASC');
  $pod3->findRecords('name ASC');

  $rows1 = $pod1->getTotalRows();
  $rows2 = $pod2->getTotalRows();
  $rows3 = $pod3->getTotalRows();

  while ( $pod3->fetchRecord() )
    {
    $pod3name = $pod3->get_field('name');

    $pod4->findRecords('name ASC', "link_category.name = '$pod3name'");
    $rows4 = $pod4->getTotalRows();
    echo '<br>Link Category: ', $pod3name, ', rows: ', $rows4;
    }
echo '<br><br>Pod 1: ', $rows1, ' rows <br> Pod 2: ', $rows2, ' rows <br> Pod 3: ', $rows3, ' rows';
?>

this code outputs following results:

Link Category: Development, rows: 2
Link Category: Forums, rows: 2
Link Category: Friends, rows: 2
Link Category: Inspirers, rows: 2
Link Category: Labels, rows: 2

Pod 1: 2 rows 
Pod 2: Resource id #140 rows 
Pod 3: Resource id #140 rows 

The while section can allow dynamic category update (hide unused categories and display used as soon as they get first record by simple "if $total_records>0"; i used this with the previous Pods version), but getTotalRows thinks that $pod4 is not even an uplevel $pod3 (5 rows, as you see), but the first initialized $pod1.

p.s. there is another initialized pod on this page before pasted code, but it calls for a specific entry (provides only one result) and doesn't affect anyhow.