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,

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

It’s wonderful to come home after a long day of work to relax and spend quality time with your pet. But when quality time includes the following pet owner’s predicament, relaxation is far from the picture. “My Springer Spaniel barks constantly at the table when we eat dinner and it’s annoying,” says one perplexed pooch owner. “He gets table scraps occasionally but he always has dog food available. Any ideas or thoughts?” At this point, cat owners are gloating over their choice of a more peaceful pet, but before you feline fanciers let it go to you head, listen to

One of the first things I did after graduating from veterinary school was to learn some survival skills. I took a personal finance and an investment class designed for economics majors. Within the first week, I knew the investment class would provide me with perhaps the most important information of my life, because the instructor, a highly successful investor, promised to tell us the one secret in investing that would make everyone rich. For days he hinted that the secret was coming, and students judiciously came to class knowing that if they didn’t hear it first hand, they would miss

National Dog Bite Prevention Week, May 15 to May 21, 2011, is coming to a close today. I hope you’ve enjoyed the articles and downloads. Here is a listing of the resources we’ve provided this week both on this website as well as on the Huffington Post Blog and Victoria Stilwell’s Positively.com.  We will add a few more related prevention articles in the upcoming two weeks too. So stay tuned! Thirty-second animated Dog Bite Prevention PSA for adults and teens shows the precursors to bites and the result of ignoring them.  Please share this PSA. If we have enough views on youtube we will be