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My senior dog Otto has never liked fireworks, but he’s never been a total wreck around the Independence Day holiday, either. He will pant...

So, a couple of weeks ago I wrote about going to the grocery store late one Sunday evening and being completely bummed about a couple who was selling puppies (who looked too young, and not well cared for) in front of the market. I thought about all the things I should do and say at that time – though at the time, I did nothing. I was too tired and hungry and it was rainy and late . . . But the memory of those chilled puppies, numbed by the intake of too much stimulation, has stayed with me.

Responsible breeders are more concerned about placing their puppies in the right home, where they will thrive and be a blessing to their new families, than they are with making money. If it's not a little bit difficult to find someone to sell you a puppy – to prove you are up to their standards – then you probably don't want that puppy. Puppies bred specifically for sale, like produce, with the goal of bringing income to a family – you don't want that puppy!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a story that had been widely shared on social media about mixed breed dog DNA tests....

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.

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.

According to a news release from the American Kennel Club (AKC), more French Bulldogs were registered with the organization than any other breed of...

We often read discussions of whether dogs experience guilt; we’ve published a few, too. But here is a twist I don’t think I’ve ever...

I need to update everyone about Odin, my foster puppy - the last of the mange puppies. There isnt much news about his eye yet, though. Its been looking better and better, and hasnt caused him any discomfort for weeks, which is a really good sign. But its still mostly blue - filled with edema and scar tissue inside - and were only at about day 40 of a 60-day mini-trial of a medicine were hoping will help.

There are lots of reasons that a house-training failure can occur. Perhaps the dog has a particularly small bladder or had a urinary tract infection. Perhaps the owner wasn’t able to let the dog outside as frequently as needed to support the house-training habit, or didn’t have the means or ability to manage the dog’s environment,

I was in my local shelter one day last week when a couple brought in two intact male pit bull-type dogs. Both dogs were white, which made it easy to see how filthy dirty they were – and to see the wounds that each of them had. The larger, overweight dog had what may have started as a sunburn and developed into a dermatological condition. But the younger, smaller dog had truly ghastly wounds on his hind legs; it looked as if he had been tied up (or even hung) by ropes around his hind legs.

I was teaching a “teen dog” class last night, and we were working on the “stay” behavior. In the training center where I teach, we instruct...