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Your dog just had surgery, stepped on broken glass, caught her tail in a door, has a puncture wound, got bit or scratched, tangled with barbed wire, or has an abrasion that came from who knows where. You want the wound to heal quickly without bleeding, pain, or infection. The following strategies help achieve that result.

The San Francisco Bay Area, where I've lived for the past 10-plus years, just might be the center of the holistic dog-care world. You are more likely to see dogs being walked wearing head halters or front-clip harnesses than choke chains. People trade information about the best holistic veterinarians in the area – not just clues on how to find the only one in a five-county area. The pet supply stores carry a dozen different…

As the sole practitioner of a small animal practice encompassing massage, acupressure, homeopathy, and custom-blended flower essences, I'm always looking for products that may be effective for my clients' animals. The most obvious, positive, long-lasting results I have seen have come from the use of acupressure, massage, and homeopathy. Yet when I heard from a third client about a product called DGP" (short for "Dog Gone Pain")

Our culture’s ambivalence about death is no secret and no surprise. Leaving this mortal coil can be messy and exhausting, both physically and emotionally. So with our companion animals, we oftentimes beat death to the punch, scheduling it on our own terms by taking that teary-eyed ride to the vet’s office and saying a final goodbye on a tiled floor or steel table.

The high-tech world of modern medicine has so many weapons that its “war on cancer” arsenal promises something for everyone. But all along, there have been patients, physicians, veterinarians, and animal caregivers who refuse chemotherapy, radiation treatments, surgery, prescription drugs, and other oncology protocols.

The making of laws and sausage, goes the old saying, is better unseen. Apparently, the pet food industry feels the same way about “wet” food for dogs and cats. We haven’t yet managed to get into a cannery to see how the product is made (but we’re not giving up!). There are a few reasons for this. The first has to do with the fact that there are very few wet food canneries in the U.S., relative to facilities that manufacture dry food. (As a matter of fact, the entire canning industry – of pet food and human food – has seen enormous consolidation in the last decade.

When the dog’s skin is healthy, we don’t give it a second thought. But when it is out of whack – greasy, itchy, smelly, flaky, bumpy, or raw – it becomes the center of attention for our dogs, and us, too. There is no more miserable dog than one with a serious skin problem. The skin is the epithelial and connective tissue covering of the body. Skin is also referred to as the “integument,” a term meaning “a covering or investment.” Cutaneous is also used to describe the skin.

Compare the actions and functions of the musculoskeletal system to a finely tuned symphonic orchestra. Each and every instrument (each of the dozens of independent muscles in the dog) contributes to the whole. For one instrument to be heard above the rest, the sounds from other instruments must be softened – and for one set of muscles to flex or contract a joint, that joint’s muscles of extension must relax, and vice versa. The music of the muscles is this month’s stop on the Tour of the Dog.

Every two weeks I faithfully fill the pill organizers for my Boxer, Tyler. He receives a number of supplements, some for general nutrition and well-being, and some specific to his particular health challenges, including Addison’s disease. I’m not the only one performing this ritual. According to the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, about nine percent of all dogs receive vitamins regularly; perhaps an even greater percentage of WDJ readers give supplements to their canine companions.

The female dog’s reproductive system is the “nest” that nurtures a simple union of two single cells into a weave of billions of intercommunicating cells, which then form into organ systems and ultimately unify into the whole organism we call “dog.” We’re talking about the act of creation, the production of entire litters of living, breathing, best friends of mankind. It’s an amazing, powerful, complex system.

Bone health is reliant upon healthy kidneys in at least two ways. First, vitamin D is necessary for the utilization of calcium, and the activated form of vitamin D is produced in the kidney. Second, normal kidneys excrete phosphorous; chronic renal failure may lead to excessive retention of phosphorous, which in turn causes an imbalance between calcium and phosphorous.

Week 2 of my Peaceable Paws Good Manners class, I ask the question, “How many of your dogs jump up on people?” Generally at least 80 percent of the dog owners in class raise their hands. “Why do they jump up?” I ask. I usually get at least one incorrect answer of “Dominance!” but most of my students realize their dogs jump up for attention. And because much of the time the behavior is successful, it’s a challenging one to extinguish.