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Here's a memory that just came up: A blog post from July 2011 – 12 years ago!

Back in June I wrote a blog post about how many ways I screwed up when having to medicate more than a dozen dogs at the same time (https://qa.whole-dog-journal.com/blog/Problems-with-Pills-for-Dogs-21494-1.html). Some of you generously offered your own mistakes and tips for preventing them.One of the things I goofed on was giving one dog her pills in the presence of another dog. I was dog-sitting my friend's two Chihuahuas: 10-pound S'Mores, who needs blood pressure medication and a diuretic, and Samson, who weighed less than four pounds and was about six months old at the time. S'Mores spit out one of her pills, and Samson dived for it, swallowing it faster than I could grab him.

I'm just back from a week's vacation, wherein my husband and I picked up his grandson from a suburb of Boston and drove to...

It's been said before, but every time I have experienced the loss of one of my dogs, or have witnessed someone else's, I think to myself: That this is the price of all that love we have for our dogs, and all the love and joy we've received from our dogs. If it seems too much to bear, well, remember that the amount of pain we are going to feel is directly related to the love. Those heart dogs" – the companions we love as much as life itself? Well

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

So, for years, I’ve been hearing about the “Furminator,” some sort of super-powered dog brush. I just couldn’t imagine there was all that much to it – and it was wildly expensive. FIFTY dollars for a dog brush? Or, as the company’s literature refers to it, a “de-Shedding Tool,” complete with that completely random capitalization. This year, though, I finally got desperate enough to shell out the money, in hopes of getting a handle on the copious amounts of hair that my darling dog Otto is shedding.

Thanks to the companies who sent samples for WDJ’s annual dry dog food review. Since 1998, the Whole Dog Journal has published a review of dry dog food in its February issue. This timing causes some difficulties, as I need to receive samples and literature about pet food companies and their products during the holiday season in order to complete the review in time to be printed in the February issue. Lots of company employees take annual vacations at this time, and they or their replacements are difficult to reach.

A few years ago, we added a column in our “Approved Dry Dog Foods” tables – an additional data point for people who are...

I've heard of it happening, but have never witnessed it before tonight: the horror of a dog getting his jaw twisted in another dog's collar. May I never witness it again.

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...

Hang around with enough dog owners, and inevitably you will hear someone say to their distracted or recalcitrant dog, “Sit! Sit! Sit! SIT!” I’m...

I woke up this morning with a blinding migraine headache. It hurt to open my eyes, it hurt to sit up, and getting dressed made tears start running down my face. This doesn't happen very often, and I have medication that I can take that will bring relief in an hour or so. But lying in bed was not an option, because I'm currently fostering another litter of puppies, and they don't care whether my head hurts or not: they are hungry, and their pen needs cleaning. That's a responsibility I took on, and so, weepy or not, I got up and dressed, took my migraine med, and got rolling.My adult dogs can handle a delayed breakfast, and thanks to the recent installation of a dog door - one of those inserts that fits into a sliding glass door frame - they can and will take themselves out to potty if need be. But foster puppies in a pen are a different matter. By the time I got them out of the dirty pen to potty outdoors, fed them, cleaned the pen and changed the water, and put them back in the pen with some fresh toys, the throbbing in my head was abating a bit.