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A couple of weeks ago, out of the blue, I received a message from Patty, a massage therapist I know. I'd call her my" massage therapist

Skunks, skunks, skunks! Half a dozen of my friends have reported skunk/dog encounters in the past WEEK! These usually happen late at night, when the dog goes out for his last potty of the night before bedtime . . . and suddenly the whole family is wide, wide awake and facing an odoriferous emergency. What to do?

Sorry if this is the fifth time in the past year that we've run a reminder in either the magazine, the blog, or the Facebook page, but here goes: To give your dog the best chance of survival in a car accident, you really have to have him or her in a crate that is solidly fastened into the car, or seat-belted in a proper harness, one that has been independently crash-tested and approved by the Center for Pet Safety (CPS).

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.

The professional" dog walkers have all but taken over all of the dog parks in the area

I did notice that the dog had been wearing a choke chain when I took the picture. I take pains to avoid using pictures of dogs who are wearing choke chains, pinch collars, or shock collars in Whole Dog Journal. I firmly believe that dogs can be trained without these tools, and I want to show our readers well-behaved, well-trained dogs wearing flat collars in the magazine. I want our models to, for the lack of a better word, model" the kind of training that we promote."

A couple of weeks ago, I rented a room in the house where I have my office (editorial office of WDJ) to a super nice 19-year-old guy who has an adorable, three-year-old mixed-breed dog, MJ. You'll start seeing her picture in WDJ; we always need new models! But one of the deals I made with MJ's owner was that MJ would get spayed. He said he had been meaning to get it done - especially after MJ had an accidental litter of puppies last summer - but as a full-time student who works, he had lacked the time and means ...the surgery hadn't risen to the top of his priority list yet. I really like this young man and I really like his dog. I donate money to my own local shelter and foster puppies for them frequently. It was a no-brainer to offer to pay for MJ to get spayed.

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.

You will never find a more ardent lover of off-leash dog walking than me. But I'm lucky: I have access to thousands of acres of "wildlife area" near where I live. It's not quite a state park, but state-managed land where certain types of hunting are allowed in various seasons. Dogs can be off leash there much of the year, except for a short period in spring, to allow the many species of ground-nesting birds to lay their eggs and raise their young. When that happens, I either leash up my dogs, or go elsewhere. As much as I love walking my dogs off leash, and as well-mannered as they are, with near-perfect recalls, I'm not ever going to be one of the many people I see who walk their off-leash dogs past the signs that appear there every spring saying, "Dogs must be on leash from March 15 to June 30 for the nesting season." I appreciate and respect my access to that land the REST of the year; I don't want to risk losing access to it EVER.

Continuing education is an awesome thing. I am so grateful that my publisher sends me to a couple of places or events each year...

BoredPanda.com is a Lithuanian website that publishes articles about “lightweight and inoffensive topics,” including frequent posts about animals. A week ago, the site shared...

We've had some intense heat in California lately, and lots of dog owners are taking their dogs to pools, lakes, rivers, and the coast to cool off. Allow me to remind you about several water-safety tips to keep in mind:• Too much can be a bad thing. "Water toxicosis" can affect any dog who drinks too much in the course of swimming, dock diving, fetching toys from water, biting at a sprinkler, or any other activity that involves water. When dogs are hot or particularly excited, they may drink even more. If you notice your dog drinking more than seems necessary - especially if you notice him wobbling, vomiting, or seeming suddenly lethargic, have him take a break in the shade for a while, until his body can catch up and eliminate some of that excess. See https://qa.whole-dog-journal.com/care/water-intoxication-in-dogs/