Brrr. With temperature in some parts of the country hitting 20° or below, it’s pretty cold even for your household pets. Here are some tips for cold weather safety for dogs and cats. Tip 1: In cold weather most dogs and cats should be kept inside. Some long-haired double-coated dogs such as Alaskan Huskies can do well in freezing temperature if they have a well-enclosed dog house filled with clean insulating straw, are used to the cold weather, are not too young or too old, get a special high-calorie diet and are closely monitored while others with a more meager coat, inadequate shelter, inadequate diet or an

Brrr. It’s below 20° and the only sane place for a person is sitting inside in a nice cozy, heated home. But what about your dog? While I generally recommend all pets stay inside too, some dogs love being outdoors and were bred for cold weather—when is it safe for dogs to stay outside in the cold? I had the extreme good fortune to meet veterinarian, Dr. Susan Whiton on a recent trip to Anchorage, Alaska. She provided a personal tour of her sled dog kennel and told me how she and her husband, top musher Vern Halter, own Dream

A reader recently emailed me about a hot topic of debate in his town of Carl Junction, Missouri. The town is considering revising their leash law to allow owners to walk their dogs on electronic collars including when they are running their dogs next to them in the street while driving golf carts. His specific question was, “Does this provide good control?” There are several factors involved in answering these questions. First, you have to understand how such collars work and how dogs need to be trained in order to learn the goal behavior of heeling next to their owners

If you have cats, especially if you have more than one, chances are that sometime within your lifetime you’ll have to deal with urine-spraying outside the box. Here are some facts you should know: Over 80% of cats that spray urine can be treated successfully.    90% of intact males spray, so if you have an intact male and he’s spraying, the solution is to neuter him.   10% of neutered or spayed cats spray during sometime of their life.    Cats normally spray to identify their territory, but they also spray to just identify that they were in a specific

It’s a multi-cat household where all get along, then one day a change and now everything’s wrong. Before they were buddies or at least sort of friends, but now one chases the other to no happy end. While disputes among human family members are often status quo, a sudden feud among felines can leave everyone frazzled. It seems strange that amicable individuals could erupt in a friendship-ending fight. Anyone who watches soap operas though sees it happen all the time with humans. Two college buddies are closer than a sock and a shoe. Then add a big party, alcohol, and

Here are some tips to make traveling with your pet safe and enjoyable.