I love pet blogging for a lot of reasons, including that it’s a great democratizer. I would never have felt comfortable asking my own vet to write about the benefits of pumpkin for dogs but when Dr. Laci Schaible commented on one of my blog posts, I checked out her VetLive site, discovered it was…
Will Work – But How Willingly? – For Food
Service dogs, hunting dogs, drug-sniffing dogs, sheep herding dogs, companion dogs… In recent years, the focus of much writing about dogs has been on the tasks they were genetically designed to perform. We often hear how upset dogs get when they’re deprived of their ultimate purpose in life: To serve man.* For example, the message…
Of Pumpkins and Pooches
If I haven’t convinced you it’s ok to dress your dog for Halloween, but you want to get into the spirit of the holiday with your pup, there’s always the Dog- O-Lantern! These pictures have been circulating around my emails — I believe I got them three times — but it wasn’t until my always…
No Kill: Some Context from a Shelter Board Exec
I don’t know about you, but I often skip the comments section of a post if I don’t comment myself (in which case I go back to see if anyone agrees with or has dissed me). In the case of my recent post, Is”No Kill” a Misnomer? One Shelter Says Yes, it would be a…
Is “No Kill” a Misnomer? One Shelter Says Yes
I was touched and honored to receive letters from administrators at several animal shelters in support of my recent post about the need for the rescue community to stay positive. I respected the desire of some of these letter writers to remain out of the public eye. Animal politics can get rancorous and shelters have…
Frankie: The Gift that Kept on Giving… Eventually
Six years ago, if someone had told me I was going to spend a future birthday at a dog trainer’s conference, I would laughed. Mirthlessly. I would have assumed it was a cruel joke. Six years ago, I spent my birthday crying because I had decided to give myself the gift of a rescue dog.…
Pet Adoption Videos that Won’t Make You Want to Kill Yourself, 2
Brought to you by the Nevada Humane Society. How awesome is this?
Pet adoption videos that won’t make you want to kill yourself, 1
If there’s a common theme to all the animal welfare pieces I’ve been posting recently, it’s the need to stay positive and not to rely on old stereotypes, whether of dogs or of models for shelters. I cited the ASPCA’s Sarah Mclachlan video not only as a waste of money but as a tear jerker…
Dog Dressing, Revisited
For those of you who might have wondered — and even for those who might not have — my blog’s name is short for “Will My Dog Hate Me If I Dress Him?” It’s one of the “99 Other Things Every Dog Wishes You Knew,” and an alternative title to the book that I ended…
No, Pit Bulls Aren’t Perfect. Are You?
I was hoping to leave my review of The Lost Dogs as the last word on pit bulls, but a subsequent comment on my Open Letter to Nathan Winograd caught my attention: Did you read on Best Friends website that the Vick dogs got in a fight and one killed another and the two surviving…