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This is the most trying time of the year for walking my dogs off-leash. On March 15 each year, the rules change for my favorite place to walk dogs, and only leashed dogs are allowed, until the end of June, for the bird nesting season. Rather than walk three dogs on leash - something I "can" do but don't enjoy - I switch to another nearby area where dogs are allowed off-leash year round. But in this particular area, oh my goodness, the ticks abound. I could forgo our off-leash walks for the months when the tick-free area where I walk the dogs the rest of the year is restricted to leashed dogs. But because we are able to walk off-leash so much of the time, my dogs (especially Otto) seem to really miss the joys of leash-free walks: being able to run ahead and run back, stop and really smell something very deeply, running to catch up if sniffing took a long time, stopping in mid-stride from time to time to stare at something or (again) smell the air for faint scents of wild animals or other walkers. After a leash-free walk, they sleep harder and longer, and their behavior is better for more days afterward.

No one likes trimming their dogs’ nails. But it has to be done. Owning multiple dogs makes it worse! But when I notice everyone...

This is going to sound a little bananas. I think you guys can take it, however.

The most fun thing I've been doing lately with my dogs is playing hide and go seek. I'm a behavior geek anyway - I love watching dogs (and other animals) work and play and interact - but I can't tell you how entertaining it is for me to watch my adolescent dog learning how the game works, and try to anticipate my hiding strategies.

The house that I use as an office has three bedrooms upstairs. Sometimes, my husband and I rent them to students who attend a local trade school. In the past couple of years, though, we've had various relatives staying in the house on and off. At the moment, no one is living here, so I have both three rooms to hide in upstairs and no one to watch me at this ridiculous game! (Lest this sound rich - my second house! - let me assure you that the area where I live is so economically depressed, that the mortgage on this house costs us less than rent on office spaces in town.)

Is it just us, or is this the worst year for fleas in a long a time? Or should we say, “best” year for the fleas, and worst year for cats and dogs? Just about everyone we know is suddenly battling flea infestations, and several dogs we know have been tortured by enough bites that they’ve chewed or scratched themselves raw, instigating some awful secondary infections or “hot spots.” And this is in an area not usually plagued by that many fleas.

The company that I work for is based in Norwalk, Connecticut. I have worked for Belvoir Media Group for the past 22 years on Whole Dog...

Since I last wrote about Coco, the little dog with the strange gait (her front feet move normally, but she can only bunny hop...

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.

When most of us hear about animal caught in natural disasters, we sigh and fret – and then move on. One close friend of Whole Dog Journal has done more. Rain has been falling relentlessly in Thailand since July, and many parts of the country are experiencing the worst flooding reported since World War II. Bangkok, the capital and the most densely populated city in the country (with more than 9 million residents) is suffering from particularly severe flooding. Bangkok is also known as a city with one of the largest populations of stray dogs in the world. It’s been estimated that as many as 300,000 stray dogs roam the city’s streets at any given time.

There are many global environmental disasters that I am concerned about in a big-picture way, but at this time of year, the one that I am...

Some years ago, I read a short piece by one of our long-time contributors, Barbara Dobbins, talking about dogs she knew, including one of...

One minute, my husband and I were having a perfectly ordinary conversation in the kitchen. In the next moment, I was ripping off my sweatshirt, my...

Last weekend, my husband and I took our nearly 6-year-old dog, Woody, with us on a backpacking trip. We joined eight of his friends,...