Lawns: A Dog Owner’s Guilty Pleasure
I think it’s been pretty well established that lawns are environmentally unfriendly. They require massive amounts of water. Fertilizers, pesticides, and fungicides get carried...
Helping Dogs Adjust to Being Home Alone Again
Though many people who have been sheltering in place for weeks report being confused as to the day of the week, I have been...
New World Order, Puppy Edition
In a world where maintaining safe social distances is going to be the new normal for a while, there are a number of dog-related...
Watching Your Dog Age Is Hard
Barbara Dobbins, my friend and frequent contributor to WDJ,
once wrote a post
for this space that described how her senior Border Collie, Daisy, had earned...
Puppy Potty Training: Simple, But Not Easy
The litter of 10 pups that my good friend was fostering for
our local shelter at her home had a spay/neuter surgery date, and I...
Pet Food Shortages? Don’t Panic
I read an article the
other day about a pork processing plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, shutting
down due to hundreds of workers becoming infected...
Saving Animals While Keeping People Safe From COVID-19
Wow, the world has changed so much in such a short time. This occurs to me several times a day, but today’s biggest shock...
It’s Tick Season!
One minute, my husband and I were having a perfectly
ordinary conversation in the kitchen. In the next moment, I was ripping off my
sweatshirt, my...
Life With Dogs In The Age of The Coronavirus
Life as most of us know it is being severely disrupted by the restrictions and common-sense guidelines being put forth in nearly every community...
Mixed Results: Researching Your Dog’s DNA
It never fails: Every time I take my senior dog Otto into public, people ask what breed he is. And I have to smile...
Coronavirus, Your Dog, and You
From past work on articles about canine vaccination protocols, I was familiar with the word “coronavirus” when the stories about coronavirus disease 2019—better known...
Volunteering: When it’s Time to Get Back to Work
Anyone who has ever volunteered in animal rescue can relate: You vow to take a break. Maybe your circumstances have changed in a way...
Latest Blog
No, You Can’t
Of all the “third rail” topics concerning dogs, here’s one I never could have guessed would make some people incensed: A passerby putting a bag of dog poop in their garbage can. Ack! Apparently, this makes some homeowners angry enough that they put signs on or next to their garbage cans, set up security cameras in order to identify and eventually confront the offenders, or threatening penalties for the alleged “theft of services” (using someone else’s garbage service).