Have you ever wondered, after a long walk at the beach, why your otherwise perfect dog likes to roll in dead fish? And more importantly how you can discourage the behavior?  Virtually everyone who owns a dog is familiar with this smelly habit. Whether it’s a bath in cow manure, a plunge into the nearest road kill, or a leisurely massage in a long gone fish at the beach, dogs wear foul scents the way people wear perfume. Do they just like the smell? Is it an olfactory disguise their ancestors used when hunting prey downwind?  While most dog aficionados, including

Question: I have a 17-month-old Labrador Retriever who has a very bad habit. When I let her out in the backyard, she bites off the watering jets of our irrigation system. Worse, if I leave her out for a long time (over five minutes), she gets at the main irrigation hoses and she has chewed right through them. This is a nightmare in terms of repairs, costs and loss of function. Can you offer any advice? Answer: Like furniture scratching problems in cats, one strategy for curbing the destruction here is to direct the behavior at a more appropriate object,

As a pet owner it’s pretty easy to care for our pets responsibly, but when it comes to what others do, we have less control. Take the plight of this cat lover for instance: Our female, spayed, indoor-only cat is the recipient of unwanted nocturnal visits from a neighborhood male cat. We have floor-to-ceiling windows in our garden through which this intruding cat can practically touch noses with ours. Our cat howls, snarls and spits when he appears (usually in the middle of the night) and practically flings herself into the glass to get at him. We have tried lowering

Even with the most recent advances in veterinary medicine, your beloved cat won’t live forever, but is the next best thing just around the corner? Will it someday be possible to resurrect your cat with cloning? Nearly a decade ago, on December 22, 2001, scientists at Texas A&M University announced the birth of CC, the world’s first cloned cat. CC, as in Copy Cat, has the same DNA blueprint as her genetic mother, Rainbow. So, like identical twins they share the same genetic code. That means everything’s the same—their looks, their mannerisms, their…. But wait. rainbowandcc Although Rainbow and her

   …and asked me what I thought of these testicular implants for dogs. While I’ve never seen a pair in person, I had researched and written about them in the past. Since their invention in the 1990s they have become fairly popular—relatively speaking. Over 425,000 people have had their male dogs implanted worldwide. To find out  why, who would want Neuticles for their dog, and what Neuticles are really like, read the article I wrote for Victoria Stilwell’s Postively.com blog, “Testicular Implants in Dogs Make Dr. Yin Wonder… Who’s Looking?”      

The problem with treating pets is that they can’t tell you what’s wrong which can make being a veterinarian quite tricky. For instance for the general practitioner in a busy area of town, not a week goes by where someone comes in with an animal with an old festering wound or a large relatively slow growing tumor, who says, “It just appeared yesterday”. Or owners who have no idea if their pet’s appetite or energy level are normal. Luckily for veterinarians, sometimes owners are quite observant and help draw a beeline to what’s wrong. Take for instance my visit with