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One of the funniest things is watching similarly devoted dog owners miss their dogs. Everyone today has photos and videos of their dogs on their phones, and we all try to behave well and say nice things about our friends' dogs, so they will give us equal time and admire OUR dog photos. And of course when a spouse at home sends a new photo or video of the left-behind dogs, it's acceptable to tap the person sitting next to you (even though you are in the middle of a session, and listening to a riveting speaker) and angle your phone so as to show off the cute photo. Your neighbor smiles, or mimes Cute!" and you make a little sad face

Back in my smaller town, it was sounding like the Civil War. As I hurried around, feeding and cleaning up after the foster pups, my friend's dog started going into his full-blown panic state. My friend was prepared with a veterinarian-prescribed dose of alprazolam (Xanax), and she gave him his first dose then. (The blood levels of the drug take about two hours to peak, and start to wear off in about four hours, so he needed one more dose to get through the night.) Woody was resting on the couch, obviously having experienced some relief from the procedure at the vet, and oblivious to the fireworks sounds, still audible behind the sound of the house fan and the TV.

Otto was vaccinated several more times with the five-way vaccines before I adopted him, but I'm not going to talk about those vaccines right now; I want to focus on the rabies vaccine – the only vaccine that dog owners are legally required to give their dogs in most states. Rabies vaccination earned this special" legal status due to the historical threat that rabies poses to humans; as recently as my childhood in the 1960s

I took Otto and Tito to the veterinarian yesterday for wellness exams (and heartworm tests and blood tests) and spent $500. I had priced things beforehand, and knew what I was in for, but it’s still quite a bite.

Of all the “third rail” topics concerning dogs, here’s one I never could have guessed would make some people incensed: A passerby putting a bag of dog poop in their garbage can. Ack! Apparently, this makes some homeowners angry enough that they put signs on or next to their garbage cans, set up security cameras in order to identify and eventually confront the offenders, or threatening penalties for the alleged “theft of services” (using someone else’s garbage service).

My husband and I were talking about childhood dogs for some reason, and he said, "We got a dog when I was little and it died of distemper, and my parents said, 'That's it, no more dogs.'"When he said that, I suddenly remembered that my family, too, had lost a young dog to distemper when I was a child. I have a solid memory of my mother wiping up vomit, and the adolescent pup lying limply nearby, and my mother telling me, "I don't think she's going to make it." I was probably about four or five years old, but I knew that this phrase meant the dog was probably going to die.

It seems like every time I turn around these days, I hear about another drug shortage (more on that topic in an upcoming WDJ article). This time, it's Novartis Animal Health announcing in late December that it has suspended production of Interceptor, Sentinel, and other drugs while its manufacturing facility in Lincoln, Nebraska, undergoes voluntary" improvements. Numerous human and animal over-the-counter drugs are manufactured at this plant. According to reports

Readers, dog owners, can I ask you a question? Or, actually, a few related questions: If you had to put a dollar figure on it, what would...

I have become more and more obsessed with how what is now called “force-free” dog training can help adolescent dogs in particular. I see so many parallels between the most effective ways to raise a teenager and how to get a dog through adolescence.

Every year since I adopted Otto from my local shelter, I have sent out his blood to a lab for a "vaccine titer test." The test I ask for detects circulating antibodies that defend against two canine diseases: distemper and parvovirus. Veterinary immunologists feel that the results of this particular test offers a reliable indication of whether the dog is adequately protected against the diseases he has been vaccinated for, or whether he no longer has a detectible number of antibodies to those diseases in his body.

It’s probably self-evident that most writers and editors enjoy reading. We read professionally, and also for fun. Lately, though, my reading has been getting in...

The other neighbor who owns a Beagle had seen and spoken to the woman who owned the three large, powerful dogs who attacked Brando. For reasons of his own, he had apparently told her angrily that animal control was on the way and they were going to seize her dogs. By the time the officers got there, she had put her dogs in a truck and fled the scene.