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Yes, puppies again. My local shelter called yesterday to ask if I could foster a litter of 10 pit/German Shepherd/who-knows-what-mix puppies. Well, sure, of course; I will always say yes if I am not on my way out of town or something. But this group is seriously challenging. Why? They are too young to be separated from their mom.

I did notice that the dog had been wearing a choke chain when I took the picture. I take pains to avoid using pictures of dogs who are wearing choke chains, pinch collars, or shock collars in Whole Dog Journal. I firmly believe that dogs can be trained without these tools, and I want to show our readers well-behaved, well-trained dogs wearing flat collars in the magazine. I want our models to, for the lack of a better word, model" the kind of training that we promote."

Responsible breeders are more concerned about placing their puppies in the right home, where they will thrive and be a blessing to their new families, than they are with making money. If it's not a little bit difficult to find someone to sell you a puppy – to prove you are up to their standards – then you probably don't want that puppy. Puppies bred specifically for sale, like produce, with the goal of bringing income to a family – you don't want that puppy!

Overrepresented in particular on Craigslist are puppies for sale from pitbull-type dogs of every description. The ads try to make them sound exotic and special – so-called red-noses and blue-noses and dogs of bizarre dimensions, large and small. The fact is, far more of these bully breeds" are being bred than anyone can find homes for

We recommend that dog owners switch foods frequently. Many food makers suggest switching foods slowly, by replacing a small amount of the dog's old food with a new food and slowly increasing the percentage of new food over a week or two. If you feed more than one type of food per day to your dog, and switch frequently, you will likely find that these slow switch" schedules are completely unnecessary. Why? Because dogs who eat a varied diet are already accustomed to a variety of foods; their bodies are already making a nice mélange of digestive enzymes that support the sort of mixed population of microbes needed to break down all sorts of foods. It's only when you have been feeding only one type of food for a long time that you need to be so slow in introducing a new type of food."

On May 23, 2018, my young dog Woody got skunked for what I think (and hope) will be the last time. Late in the evening, both of my dogs ran out of the house barking (we have a curtain screen door that allows them to do this). I got up to call them back indoors – and as I approached the kitchen door, that classic skunk stench was already wafting into the house.

A warning from the FDA about a recently reported spike in the number of dogs developing dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) (linked here again) and a possible connection between DCM and the inclusion of peas, lentils, legumes, and potatoes in the diets of a majority (not all) of the dogs means we are going to be talking about diet a lot for a while.

Please note that the FDA's headline did not say anything about grain-free diets" causing heart problems – though almost all the blog posts and articles in other publications have been saying exactly that. If you read the FDA's statement

My senior dog Otto has great survival techniques for coping with the heat. He finds the shadiest places in the yard, and digs holes under plants that are watered daily by the sprinkler system, planting himself into these holes and laying low. My younger dog mostly pants and scratches at the door to come inside. Help! It's hot!""

One of the most astounding things that Aditi told me is that all healthy street dogs have a right to life" in India. It is estimated that Mumbai is home to about a quarter million street dogs. As long as they are apparently healthy and have been sterilized and vaccinated against rabies (indicated by a notch made in one of their ears)

It's been said before, but every time I have experienced the loss of one of my dogs, or have witnessed someone else's, I think to myself: That this is the price of all that love we have for our dogs, and all the love and joy we've received from our dogs. If it seems too much to bear, well, remember that the amount of pain we are going to feel is directly related to the love. Those heart dogs" – the companions we love as much as life itself? Well

Back in my smaller town, it was sounding like the Civil War. As I hurried around, feeding and cleaning up after the foster pups, my friend's dog started going into his full-blown panic state. My friend was prepared with a veterinarian-prescribed dose of alprazolam (Xanax), and she gave him his first dose then. (The blood levels of the drug take about two hours to peak, and start to wear off in about four hours, so he needed one more dose to get through the night.) Woody was resting on the couch, obviously having experienced some relief from the procedure at the vet, and oblivious to the fireworks sounds, still audible behind the sound of the house fan and the TV.