What do you do when your kitty is leaving little landmines around the house—a.k.a. pooping outside the box? Follow these tips to a T and your cat will once again poop in his litter box regularly.

This week newspapers and television news have splashed an alarming headline for those pet owners who love to share their bed with their pet. The headlines warn that sleeping with your pet can make you sick and even prove life-threatening in a few rare cases. These headlines are based on an upcoming February 2011 article in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases entitled “Zoonoses in the Bedroom.” In this peer-reviewed article, the authors, veterinarians Bruno B. Chomel, a professor of zoonoses at the University of California, Davis, and Ben Sun, the state public health veterinarian for the California Department of Health,

Trainers often debate about the use of electronic shock collars. Some trainers find these collars unethical and unsafe. The pro-collar camp takes a different stance. Some say it just distracts the dog, calling it “tap technology” and others say it may be painful at the instant but then the dog learns to behave and there are no lasting negative effects. In 2003, researchers from the Netherlands, Matthijs Schilder and Joanne van der Borg assessed the short and long-term behavioral effects of dog training with the help of shock collars. They wanted to know three things: Do shock collars cause pain

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