Blog

I imagine that everyone who works or volunteers in animal rescue, or human social services, gets overwhelmed at times with what seems to be a relentless tide of innocents in need of help. Intellectually, I know that there are FAR fewer unwanted pets being brought to animal shelters and fewer animals being in euthanized in shelters than when I was a young person, and yet at times the sheer volume of dogs I'm aware of who are in need of rescue, fostering, transportation, and medical help is just crushing.

I'm fostering a mama dog and her nine puppies. They were surrendered to my local shelter when the pups were about a week old.

I occasionally teach a “leash manners” class at my friend’s dog-training center. In the first class, their hands are all over the place, and cues are, “NO! NO! STOP it!” I almost always see a tiny improvement in week two.

If you like dogs, it’s just a pleasure to pet them, boop their snoots, and smoosh their jowls. However, not all dogs are as into being petted as their owners would like. We need to learn to respect their boundaries and enjoy the time they deign to be petted.

It's one of those jobs you just don't ask a native (and lifelong) Californian to do: review dog coats. The only time I tried it, I failed; I separated the products under consideration into two categories – rain coats and warm coats – and was taken to task, rightly, for not providing a choice for dogs who have to go out in freezing rains. Because . . . a freezing rain? I have never experienced such a thing, much less had to walk my dog in one.

I walk with my dogs in a number of locations in my local “wildlife area,” which consists of thousands of acres of land surrounding...

Do any of you work in a veterinarian’s office or shelter? If so, what are the words that you wish you could forbid people...

As I said in last week's blog post, Otto was vaccinated a lot when he was brought to the shelter from which I later adopted him. He was brought into the shelter as a stray pup on May 7, 2008. He was estimated to be from four to six months old, and, like all shelter dogs, was vaccinated upon admission. He was given a five-way vaccination (distemper, adenovirus-type 2, coronavirus, parainfluenza, and parvovirus) and a separate three-way vaccination (adenovirus-type 2, parainfluenza, and bordetella) made by a different company.

If I’m having a rough day, I can fully expect to find a chin on my knee and big, worried brown eyes gazing up at me. Even if I think I’m hiding my stress well.

When, back in March, I scheduled a week-long vacation for early July, I of course had no way of knowing a huge, dog-related story was going...

We had a little practice fire drill here last week. I mean, there was an actual fire, and the mandatory evacuations that were ordered were close...

When I was about five years old, my parents moved our family from the San Francisco Bay area to a rural farming area about...

Recently, I dog-sat two little dogs for a friend who went on vacation for just over a week. I like to think of myself as a competent dog owner and foster-care provider, but I experienced just about every sort of problem with medicating one of the dogs that a person can imagine. I have an excuse: I also have three of my own dogs, 12 foster dogs (mother Great Dane and her 11 puppies), and my son's dog staying with me while he travels for his sport, so I was a TAD distracted, but even so.

Problem one: Aforesaid Great Dane got the pills down off a shelf in the kitchen that I thought was high enough, and managed to open one bottle, which contained a chewable form of medication, and ate them ALL. I have been through this once before; a few years ago, I fostered a Labrador who swiped a bottle of chewable medication off my kitchen counter and ate them all, costing me a pretty penny at the emergency vet clinic in the middle of the night. Given that the Great Dane foster has already scored butter, bread, and a few other things off my counter, I HAD put the pills on a high shelf - just not high enough.