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Warnings about pets and fireworks are so ubiquitous on social media today, that it seems like repeating the obvious to warn pet owners that they should take extra steps to secure their pets for the holiday. However, there are some fine points to consider that I'd like to add to the suggestions that are most commonly shared.

The warnings all discuss taking various precautions to prevent your pet from being traumatized or escaping on the July 4th holiday. Actually, you had better ramp up those preparations NOW, since many people who buy fireworks start celebrating days in advance! With the holiday on Tuesday this year, I would expect to hear lots of snap, crackle, and pops this weekend.

Not quite a year ago, I told you about Ruby, a Cardigan Corgi I had fostered for my local shelter three years prior; she had found a home, but was being returned to the shelter, and I had decided to foster her again, to try to assess what had gone wrong. When I first fostered Ruby, I had observed that she was a confident, tough little dog, who would freeze and give a hard eye" look at other dogs when they crossed her in some way

It's sometimes shocking to me that so many of us live with dogs and never think of looking at their teeth. Like us, dogs can develop problems with their teeth that can affect their overall health. But in comparison to us, their lives are much shorter - and they develop dental problems much more quickly. In fact, if these problems are neglected, they can actually shorten your dog's life.Cavities are the biggest problem for human teeth, but the accumulation of plaque and the development of tartar (also called dental calculus) is the most serious dental problem for dogs. Tartar builds up on the teeth, forming a concrete-like crust on the teeth at the gum line. It also forms under the gums, which helps bacteria get under the gums and proliferate. The resulting infection causes the gums to appear red, swollen, and irritated. This condition, also known as gingivitis, can lead to deeper infections. Infection can also damage the ligaments and bone that anchor the teeth, making them susceptible to loss. Because of the rich blood supply to the mouth, the infection can also spread systemically, making your dog quite ill and/or affecting his heart, kidneys, and liver. This chronic condition can prematurely age your dog.

I once visited with a family friend whom I hadn't seen for more than 20 years, someone who had known my family and me since I was about four years old. One of the first things he said to me was, "Do you still have dogs? You always had a dog or three with you...". At the time of this visit, I hadn't yet started editing WDJ; I was a horse magazine editor - my entire professional career had been about horses (and journalism) and my hobbies were very horse-based. So I rolled my eyes at my long-estranged friend. "I have a dog, but I mean, I have a lot more to do with horses now...". Despite my kneejerk denial, he was right. I have been hanging out with dogs for as long as I can remember. Though neither of my parents grew up with dogs, they both loved dogs and were suckers when their four children all turned out to be dog lovers, too, and wanted their very own dogs. Because my three siblings are five, six, and seven years older than me, by the time I came along, we already had a house full of dogs. And, again because my siblings are older, by the time I wanted someone to play with, they didn't really want to play with me - it makes sense; what 10, 11, and 12 year old wants to play with a five year old? - so I entertained myself by playing with the dogs!

There is a behavior that the vast majority of humans reliably demonstrate when meeting an unfamiliar dog or puppy: they will tell the dog to "Sit! Sit! SIT!" Even in the face of any evidence whatsoever that the dog understands the word, people will repeat it again and again, and say it louder and more emphatically, seemingly certain that the dog was too distracted or just didn't hear them. It never seems to cross their minds that the dog doesn't fully understand what the word means.

It is a testament to our love for and comfort with dogs, I guess, that we so often assume they understand our language. But why do we so often expect a strange dog - or as an even better example, a young, untrained puppy - to understand "Sit!" I find it so aggravating!

Why do I even care? For two reasons:

Here in California, it's foxtail time. This grassy weed is everywhere outdoors - in the wilderness areas where we hike, yes, of course, but also alongside suburban sidewalks and coming up in cracks in city parking lots. They are in my backyard and front yard and side yards. I spend hours each week pulling them up by the roots and carefully discarding them in the green waste bin, because there is a tiny seed at the base of every single strand on every waving frond on every plant that will grow another foxtail plant next year. If you have a very small yard, with enough years of dedicated weeding, you can eliminate them from your yard. I have a large yard and I will never see the end of them.

Why are they a problem? They are so pretty! You can run the fronds through your fingers and they are so soft - as long as you stroke them from bottom to top. If you try to reverse the direction of your caress, you learn instantly why they are the most reviled weed in the west.

After having a medical issue of my own recently, I had an epiphany: I'd rather see a veterinarian than deal with the human medical system.The usual routine with human medicine: If something serious happens suddenly, you have to go to the emergency room; your own doctor can't see you right away for anything serious.The ER patches you up enough to be released and tells you to follow up with your own doctor. At the day of the appointment, your doctor decides you need an x-ray or ultrasound or other test - and sends you to another clinic or testing laboratory where this is done. It takes days for the results to get back to your doctor, and when he gets them, he sends you elsewhere for treatment. At least, that's what happened to me, recently.

Here's another post to provide closure to some of the foster-dog stories I've shared with you in recent months.

In mid-March, I wrote about being fairly depressed by the arrival of two foster dogs. I had pulled the first one from my local shelter as a prospect for a friend of my son, who was looking for an athletic, medium-sized dog. I had never seen the dog outside of a kennel, first at my local shelter, and then, after we evacuated the shelter during the Oroville (Calif.) Dam scare, at a friend's house (she took in about 20 of the shelter's dogs!). He had a darling face, seemed quiet in the kennel, and looked like a Poodle-something-mix. As soon as it was safe for me to go back home after the evacuation, I asked to foster him.

It wasn't until I got him home that I saw he wasn't going to work for my son's friend. That young man is a professional athlete, and was looking for a dog he could take out for runs; this dog could barely stand up! He had as little muscle tissue as I've ever seen on a dog, and he stood and walked way back on his wrists." It seemed clear he had been kept in a crate or tiny pen for most of his life. He also had a bad habit of barking LOUDLY when he wanted something or when he was frustrated. This

Way back in November I wrote about finding a great prospect for my sister-in-law Leslie and my seven-year-old niece, Ava. In my local shelter, after looking for months, I found a darling young Shepherd-mix who impressed me as having superior self-control for being such a young dog, as well as infinite sweetness and affection for people. On the other hand, she was a younger dog than I had originally considered for them, and who seemed to have the potential for being larger than I had originally hoped. But she was just SO SWEET and fun and smart; she loved engaging with people, loved kids, loved to cuddle, and learned things fast. I discussed her with Leslie, and then brought her home for to evaluate her further. (Because I foster so much for my shelter, I get special privileges when it comes to taking dogs for a trial. Plus, I have a nearly perfect success rate at finding homes for my foster dogs.)Every day I had the dog, I liked her more. She loved playing with my young dog Woody, was able to finesse the grumpy response she got from my older dog, Otto, and met all my other friends and their dogs in a happy, friendly way. Leslie and Ava came to meet her, and really hit it off. Ava named her Rosie, and I committed to keeping and training her for a few more weeks while Leslie would work to find a dog-walker who could help them for a few months, so they could get through Rosie's puppyhood and go on to a happy life together. It all seemed like it was going to work out perfectly.

In the May issue of WDJ, you will see a couple photos of a black and white dog. He is a ward at my local shelter, the Northwest SPCA in Oroville, California. He has been at the shelter since being dropped off there in a cardboard box, found by the employee who opened the shelter that day, shortly before Christmas. He and his two siblings were estimated to be about 8 weeks old at that time. They are now about six months old. When the shelter was evacuated in February, this dog, his sister, and about 12 other dogs were taken in by my friend Sarah Richardson, owner of the boarding/training/daycare called The Canine Connection in nearby Chico, California. She boarded them free of charge for about 10 days, and recruited clients and friends to come over and take the dogs out for walks and potty breaks and play sessions. I was evacuated also, and spent a few days there helping with the dogs. Even though I had seen the dogs at the shelter before the evacuation, this was the first time I had actually put my hands on them.

I recently went on a vacation without dogs, for a whole week. My sister took care of my perfect, nine-year-old dog Otto, but my young adult son took care of my adolescent dog, Woody. It was a better fit because my son is an athlete and runs, and Woody would get enough exercise to keep him out of trouble.About 36 hours after I returned and met with my son and brought Woody home, I awoke to the sound of a dog about to vomit – you all know that sound. I jumped out of bed and ran to open the door and encourage the vomiter, who of course turned out to be Woody, to go outside. He lurched over to some tall grass and threw up. Then he went back into the house, climbed onto the couch, and went back to sleep. I went back to bed.I was way too tired to investigate the vomitus until after it was light out, later that morning. Here is what I found!

More and more often, it seems, I see a super fat dog surrendered to the shelter. I always feel sorrier for these dogs than for the thin ones, because we can get a skeletal dog looking pretty healthy in a month's time, but in the shelter environment, an obese dog may not be able to lose an ounce! Caged in a small run, being over-fed...the conditions are likely to make them even fatter! Plus, few people want the panting, exercise-intolerant, unattractive dogs; they end up lingering in our adoption kennels for a long time. And few of them have ever experienced anything like what must feel, in comparison to their former soft lives, like total deprivation - hard time - in the shelter environment.

One dog I've talked about before was this darling Labrador, who was surrendered to my local shelter weighing 110 pounds. By California law, she needed to be spayed before she could be adopted, but the surgery couldn't be scheduled before she lost at least 20 or more pounds; surgery on such an obese dog takes a long time - the fat just floods into the incision and obscures the tissues that need to be cut and sutured - and is considered high risk.