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From time to time why we don’t include foods from giant dog food companies such as Mars PetCare, Purina, or Hills.

I have become more and more obsessed with how what is now called “force-free” dog training can help adolescent dogs in particular. I see so many parallels between the most effective ways to raise a teenager and how to get a dog through adolescence.

What does riding horses have to do with dogs? You can condition a horse to pull (and race) against you pulling on the reins during a ride the same way dogs can be conditioned to pull against leashes on a walk.

Dogs are incredibly quick to pick up on patterns of events that predict what we are about to do, or what we are about to make them to do.

There are lots of reasons that a house-training failure can occur. Perhaps the dog has a particularly small bladder or had a urinary tract infection. Perhaps the owner wasn’t able to let the dog outside as frequently as needed to support the house-training habit, or didn’t have the means or ability to manage the dog’s environment,

I strive to be a good dog—I mean, a good dog owner. But recently, I was stuck between being a responsible dog owner and being responsible for my dogs’ well being, and I broke a leash law in order to protect my dogs. And I got yelled at, a couple of times.

I am sure this is tiresome, having me write one of these every year, but it seems to come up frequently here in northern California. We have a fire burning close by, and neighborhood after neighborhood has been evacuated today as the fire has progressed, close and closer to my house.

WDJ’s authors have previously cited a widely reported statistic: 80% of dogs over the age of 3 years have active dental disease. The odds have finally caught up with me and Boone.

I’m generally a fan of places or experiences that dog owners can enjoy with their well behaved dogs—but not so much when it’s with other people’s unruly, reactive, or loud dogs. Couple any of that with owners who make no effort to limit their dogs’ intrusion into other people’s space or hampering wait-staff, and any progress that has been made to include dogs goes out the window.

Most people aren’t interested in learning theory and the timing of the dopamine release and whether a dog is intentionally signaling aggression when his hair stands up—but I am fascinated by all of those things and can’t even resist telling you right here and right now that he’s not!

Two training accomplishments above all others are the most pleasurable for me—and thus the most important for me to work on with my dogs: a tack-sharp recall and the ability to walk on leash without pulling.

Life with dogs has ups and downs, and I thought I’d share some of the recent happy and sad outcomes to some of the stories I’ve shared with you this year, starting with the most recent and going back in time.