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A few weeks ago, the talk of the dog-related section of the Internet was Trifexis, the oral flea-control medication introduced a year or so ago by Elanco Animal Health. News reports alleged that more than 700 dogs have been killed by adverse reactions to this drug. To verify that number, I looked to the FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM), the agency responsible for collecting and analyzing reports of adverse effects of veterinary drugs on animals.

My son, a senior in college, has been counting the days until he can have a dog of his own. For like, the past seven years. You see, he’s one of those children of divorce, so he split his time between mom’s house and dad’s house – and when he was in high school, he said he didn’t want to make a dog move back and forth, or stay with one parent without him every other week

I have to admit: I have met dogs I don’t enjoy, and one type that I have a lot of admiration and respect for, but would never want to share my home with, are hunting dogs.

I’m grateful, beyond what words can express, for the companionship and health of my near-perfect “heart dog” Otto, a six-year-old scruffy mixed breed. Our early years together were a challenge but worth the effort, and I count on him to behave well in all sorts of circumstances and he *almost* never lets me down.

So, one of my sisters visited recently. She lives out of state, and I loaned her my car to drive for a week, which she was going to spend traveling to see her daughter -- about 6 hours drive from me -- our other sister and a friend about five hours from there, and then come back here. All that happened.

I can’t hold it in any longer: I have the most photogenic dog ever. And now I get to celebrate his gorgeousness life-sized, forever. There is a small chain of pet supply stores in Northern California called Petfood Express. It’s my personal favorite, for many reasons. But one of its coolest innovations is something it calls its “My Mutt Program.”

I received a message on WDJ’s Facebook page about feeding trials the other day. Feeding trials are considered by most veterinary nutrition experts [emphasis added] to be the “gold standard” for proving nutritional adequacy claims – superior to the “nutrient levels” method of proof. That’s because it’s quite possible for a laboratory analysis to confirm that a food contains the amounts of various nutrients judged to be necessary for maintaining a dog, but for the product, in practice, to fail at that very job.

Every year for the past seven years, I’ve experienced a Halloween preview that used to be more stressful for my pets than Halloween itself. I live across the street from a tiny YMCA; the facility is just one small building with a fenced play yard smaller than my own front yard. But every year on the weekend before Halloween, the YMCA hosts a huge haunted house in its building and yard. The event, a major fundraiser for the organization, draws hundreds and hundreds of adults, teenagers, and children, who will walk, intermittently screaming, through a winding path of scary sights and sounds.

Two nice dog walks this weekend, with two different friends and their dogs. Saturday evening, my friend Leonora and I met at a local trailhead in a part of our local wildlife area at the same time as a carload of duck hunters – which is how we learned that the duck season opened locally that day. Whoops.

I was thinking about the traits I like in a vet after a friend told me about a bad visit to a new (to her) veterinarian. She was moving to the new vet because of some bad experiences at another practice, and she heard good things about this new practitioner in town. She had called the old practice and asked them to send her dogs’ records to the new practice, and had asked the new practice if they received them; it took several calls over the course of a week or so to confirm that the records had been sent and received.

I rolled out of bed this morning and was greeted by an “erp, erp, erp” sound – that dog-vomit-is-imminent noise. Tito the Chihuahua was standing in the hall outside my bedroom door. I picked him up (one hand on chest, one under hind legs, so as not to hurt his tummy more than it was already hurting) and whisked him out onto the deck in the nick of time. That’s one thing you can’t do with a big dog.

A friend has fielded complaints from a neighbor about her dogs’ barking. The thing is, she leaves her three dogs in the house when she’s at work, and the neighbor who complained to her is, I’m not exaggerating, at least 1,000 feet from her house.