Question: HELP!!! I have 2 dogs, an 8 year old purebred black lab, and a 5 year old lab mix named Bernie. We also have 2 lovely boys ages 5 and 3. Recently Bernie has demonstrated aggression toward our 3 year old, granted the actions are always ALWAYS after our 3 year old has been rolling on him, but I’m not sure what to do. Bernie is a good dog, but I’m finding myself unsure if he should stay in our house… Our 8 year old lab is the most mild mannered dog I’ve ever seen (when it comes to

“Six-Week-Old Girl Dies After Mauled By Family Dog,” the headlines blared. The LA County Sheriff’s Department reported the familiar scenario. A family member had left the baby unattended on a bed for a few minutes and returned to find her head encased in the dog’s mouth. Sounds shocking, but this isn’t the first time an infant has fallen prey to the family pet. According to the Center for Disease Control (1997), of the 279 dog bite-related fatalities in the US that occurred between 1979 and 1994, most involved children younger than ten years of age, with infants making up a

Last week when lecturing at a seminar with Sarah Kalnajs, I watched an interesting video that Sarah showed. When her friend who had a history of cluster headaches was visiting her, Sarah’s dogs performed an unusual behavior. Typically they would hang back instead of interacting with the visitor but in this case they climbed onto his lap and kept licking his face, especially in the area of his right eye. At the time her friend did not have a headache but 10 minutes later he felt one coming on. As it was starting to occur, he warned that the dogs might

What’s up with the dog that eyes people who approach his food bowl or stiffens and even growls, snaps or bites if others interrupt his meal? Don’t they understand that you’re the provider of the things they want and not a threat to them? Like many dogs that are otherwise easygoing, this type of Fido has a food fetish, and he feels it’s his duty to guard each bowl as if it holds his last meal. While this behavior may seem odd for owners who provide plentiful amounts of food for their pooches, anyone who’s watched free-roaming and stray dogs

Day 4 of my Indonesia Trip (Sept 2009) One fact that’s wonderful about dogs is that whether they’re a pampered pet from America, a trained competition dog in Germany, or a street dog in Bali, the language is the same. So no matter where I go, I know I’ll be able to communicate with them. On the morning of our first full day in Bali, while my friend Asri and her family and I are waiting at Lovina beach for our dolphin-watching boat to get fixed, a little village dog follows a visitor to the beach looking for food. The

Sophia’s Indonesia Trip — Day 3 (Sept 2009) Today we’ve arrived on Bali, an island described as Paradise and one also known for having many stray dogs. Virtually all developing countries have many stray dogs and the dog population is a good reminder of how dogs co-evolved alongside man. That is, while a common idea is that humans purposefully domesticated dogs by stealing wolf pups from dens and then selectively breeding the ones they liked, this process would be labor intensive, especially considering the fact that, even now, to get a tame wolf you must hand rear them starting before 14