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It's one of those jobs you just don't ask a native (and lifelong) Californian to do: review dog coats. The only time I tried it, I failed; I separated the products under consideration into two categories – rain coats and warm coats – and was taken to task, rightly, for not providing a choice for dogs who have to go out in freezing rains. Because . . . a freezing rain? I have never experienced such a thing, much less had to walk my dog in one.

It started as a joke: I take so many cell-phone pictures of Woody sleeping in ridiculous positions that my cloud back-up folders online are packed full of these photos, so I started telling people I was going to launch an Instagram account consisting of just Woody-sleeping pics.

it became evident that the dog was not comfortable with the child. Because I strongly feel that dogs who live with kids ought to be especially forgiving of human behavior and sincerely like kids

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.

There is an article on the WDJ website right now about recalls that is available to subscribers and nonsubscribers alike. I'm glad it's available to anyone who is interested, because it contains information that I wish every dog owner would read and embrace. It's by trainer Lisa Lyle Waggoner, and it's about how to build a consistent rocket recall" response in from your dog. I've used the exercises described in the article over the years with my dogs

It's that time of year again: when rising temperatures lure dogs and dog owners to bodies of water, intent on cooling off, and when the water itself becomes dangerous to drink or swim in. The dangerous element, a toxic substance often called blue-green algae

I'm a big fan of "puppy socials" - a classroom-type setting to which people bring their puppies for socializing with pups of a similar age. It's a powerful opportunity for the puppies, especially the ones who are being raised with no other dog at home to learn basic canine social skills from - or the ones who DO share their homes with another dog, but the dog is super grumpy about puppies.

My friend Leonora owns my dog Woody’s best friend, tiny Samson. Woody and Samson are the exact same age, and both are “foster fails”...

I got to dog-sit my son’s new puppy, Cole, this weekend, while he was out of town at a tournament with his sports team. I actually pulled rank on my son’s girlfriend, who volunteered to be the one who dog-sat Cole this weekend. I wanted to see how Cole’s training was coming along; my son shares his college home with four other young men, all of whom love dogs and have dogs back at their parents’ homes, but who all have varying amounts of proper dog-training knowledge and experience.

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

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.

I’m thinking today about how communities interact with their local animal control/animal shelters and vice versa, and how shelters can most meaningfully affect the...