tips

It’s never too early to teach your puppy cues such as “sit” and “come” that you can use to build a common language between you. A good recall cue is vital for safety of your puppy or dog in all environments, and the sooner you start teaching it, the more reliable it will be.

Far be it from us to tell you to put pesticides on your dog. But we’ve never heard of a single nontoxic preparation that was effective at keeping ticks off all dogs. For some dogs, only the potent pesticides seem to keep ticks away. There are, however, some nontoxic products – both commercially produced and homemade formulas – that work to repel ticks well enough to consider using them as part of a comprehensive Lyme disease prevention program.

Living with multiple dogs brings a whole new set of challenges. Adding a second (or third, or fourth) dog means more fun, more love, more joy and more wonderful doggy companionship. But it also means much more from you: more time, more money, more energy, and more working through problems.

Many dogs who behave aggressively toward other dogs do so as a result of learning that their barking, growling fit results in the other dog going away. Because that behavior has been successful in the past, it’s been reinforced, and the behavior has continued or increased

Kitchen herbs may seem lackluster without trendy, exotic sounding names but some of the most useful and safest herbs for animals are stored in our kitchens.

Most modern dog foods come up short in comparison to the canine ancestral diet in three major ways

Here is a high protein, low-and-balanced fat recipe for full time feeding, developed with Whole Dog Journal’s Mary Straus. We developed this recipe for adult dogs needing a low-fat diet, including dogs with pancreas issues. Approximately 43% of the calories come from protein, 22% from fat, and 35% from carbohydrate.

There are a host of other things you can do to lower general stress in your dogs’ environment.

Have you ever felt dismayed over the shrinking access for our canine companions? I know that to a large degree we’ve brought it on ourselves by our collective carelessness about proper public and leash-walking etiquette.

Over a lifetime, chronic allergies can leave dogs depleted and irritable, with low-level infections constantly breaking out on their skin, feet, and in their ears; worn front teeth (from chewing themselves); and smelly, sparse coats that neither protect them well from the elements nor invite much petting and affection from their owners. Chronic allergies can also deplete an owner’s time and financial resources - especially if the owner fails to take the most effective path to helping her dog.

A dog in the wrong place at the wrong time can be bit by dozens or even hundreds of ticks. Deer ticks go through three stages of life (larva, nymph, and adult), and feed only once in each of these stages; a blood meal ends each stage.

When approached from a holistic perspective, long-term flea control does not begin with insecticide flea sprays, dips or shampoos. It begins only after the caregiver reaches an understanding of how fleas live, behave, and how they select their hosts. From this perspective we can see that it is the effects of fleas, and not their existence, that cause so much misery to our dogs – the fleas themselves are only a single symptom of deep-seated and complex health problem.