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I think of my dog Otto as a really well-behaved dog. And he is, mostly. But not dog is perfect. And he definitely has some flaws. One is that, if an unnamed husband leaves one of the gates on the side of our house open, or even just unlatched, Otto will wander out to the front yard, and eventually, if he’s left out there unsupervised long enough, he’ll do something naughty.

My Border Collie Daisy is a consummate counter surfer; she hangs 10 with the best. The trainer in me sighs and acknowledges that I was not successful in getting the behavior to cease over 10 years (so she’s now had a decade of practice). The student of canine ethology in me watches in fascination at the opportunistic seeking and realizes this descendent of wolves has not succumbed to learned helplessness. The dog mom in me says “You go, girl!” and is filled with joy that this dog who was diagnosed with cancer over two years ago is feeling this feisty and that her spirit – and appetite - hasn’t been dampened by treatment.

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.

I just received the results of my youngest dog’s mixed-breed DNA test from Embark; I already had results from Wisdom Panel. Over the years,...

Recently, a dog was admitted to a veterinary hospital in northern Michigan with symptoms that looked just like those of canine parvovirus type 2...

It never fails: Every time I take my senior dog Otto into public, people ask what breed he is. And I have to smile...

WDJ contributor/freelance writer Barbara Dobbins sent me a text from the waiting room of a busy veterinary practice the other day:"Sitting at the veterinary specialist and watching all the traditional cones go by. Why don't they offer or even discuss alternatives? Sigh."The classic cone offered at most veterinary practices is made of very heavy, stiff , opaque plastic. Most dogs suffer more from the cones than whatever wound they have that is being protected. They are often bigger than they have to be to protect the dog's wound site, and because the plastic is opaque, the wearer often bashes into doorways and table legs, trying to move around his house.

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.

In the November issue of WDJ, I wrote an article (“What a Waste!) about the many ways that pet food gets wasted at every level of production and marketing – and a few ways that thoughtful people are combatting that waste, particularly at the retail level. I hope that dog owners and those involved in animal rescue will look for and share other ways that perfectly good but unsalable pet food can be saved from landfill and donated to needy animal shelters and rescues.

I had this thought on Tuesday, July 5, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off since then: Is any progress being made at all in the world of dog ownership? This was prompted by my brief custody of two small stray dogs, the ones I found trotting down my street the morning after fireworks were going off all over town. Fortunately, Otto was with me in the yard as I watered our roses and azaleas, and the dogs came in my gate to greet him; I was able to close the gate behind them. They wouldn’t come to me at first; once they realized the gate was closed, they trotted up and down the fence line a few times, to confirm they were, in fact, trapped in my yard.

I am thankful that I'm from a family that loves dogs.

My sister hosted Thanksgiving this year. Her husband recently retired and they moved to my town - across the street from my office/house! They have three little dogs: perhaps 10-year-old Bo, a scruffy Terrier-mix they adopted from a friend whose life was too much in flux to keep him; Daisy, a 2-year-old Jack Russell-mix adopted from a Jack Russell rescue; and Dinah, the ?-year-old "mommy dog" that I fostered (along with her puppy) last summer. (My sister dog-sat for me when I was traveling and ended up falling in love with soft-coated Dinah, her first non-terrier!) Daisy is the most social and well-adjusted with guests, jumping into anyone's lap for petting and play, but the other two both spent a fair amount of time on the laps of the people they knew. It was nice to be able to reach out and pet a dog in any room we were in before and after dinner! To keep the chaos level low, we made sure that they were the only dogs in their home.

My sister and her husband used to live down the street from a fire station. At least 10 times a day (often many more),...