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Tens of thousands of people and animals have been affected by the fire, and thousands of people are helping those displaced. Several emergency shelters were hastily set up to contain pets. Some of the pets were left at the shelters by owners who were themselves homeless and staying in shelters; many more were rescued and brought to the shelters with either an address or rough estimate of where they had been rescued from.

I’ve liked individual dogs of pretty much every breed at some point or another. But there are times when I’ve also NOT liked dogs of some breed when it wasn’t even warranted. I guess you’d call it profiling or discrimination. For the October issue of WDJ, I needed a dog to model a number of no-pull harnesses, so I could photograph them before sending them to WDJ Training Editor Pat Miller to review them. I purchased a size “medium” in all the harnesses so that Pat would stand the best chance of finding dogs to wear and try out the products. But for the photographs, I had additional requirements of the models: they also had to be a light color and short-haired, so the harnesses could be seen easily.

The potential for the loss of liability insurance is closing shelter doors to volunteers. As many of you know from personal experience, volunteers in animal...

The other day, I happened to go into a pet supply store that I had never been in before, and was looking at their...

I agree; all dog owners, but especially people who own large, strong dogs should know what to do in case their dog attacked someone (or themselves) and be capable of doing it.

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.

This is the time of year that all dog owners who live in any of the western states, particularly in any part of California,...

A friend called one day to complain about his dog’s latest vet bill: $300 to remove a foxtail that the dog sniffed up his nose on that morning’s walk. If you live on the west coast, you are likely cringing with recognition of the problem. If you live on the east coast, chances are you have no idea of what I’m talking about. Hordeum jubatum (informally called “foxtail barley” but infamous as “foxtail grass”) is a perennial plant species in the grass family Poaceae. It grows like, well, a pestilent, abundant weed all over California. When the grass is green in the spring, it’s pretty; it produces these lush heads that resemble a finer version or wheat or barley. But the moment the plants start to dry in the later part of the spring, the heads start to fall apart – and each tiny segment of the luxuriant heads becomes a danger to any dog who goes near it.

Looking for an idea for a blog post, I just looked through my oldest posts, wondering just how long I have been doing this. The answer stunned me: since mid-2010. I got lost for a bit, reading through musings from years past. I came across one written at precisely this time of year in 2011, about making new year's resolutions for our dogs.

I read a recent article in The Atlantic about some scientists who taught rats to play hide-and-seek as part of a larger study about the neuroscience of play....

In my experience, it’s possible to make some guesses about future behavior based on the breed of the dog, the temperament of the parents, the skills that run in the genetic line, and so on. If there is one thing that growing up around a breeding kennel has taught me though, it’s that every dog is an individual.

To paraphrase Forrest Gump, life with dogs is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get.In early May, my adolescent Pit/Lab-mix, Woody, started coughing and gagging dramatically. It seemed like he had something stuck in his throat, and though I looked in his mouth and throat I couldn't see anything. It called for an immediate trip to the veterinarian.