In the last decade some people have questioned the need for giving vaccines, at least so frequently to dogs. In the past the routine suggestion has been to vaccinate once a year. These suggestion were based on the vaccination schedules tested by the drug companies. But the pharmaceutical companies were not required to ask the…

A reader once asked, “How can a dog bark for such great lengths of time? If I holler and scream for a long time, I lose my voice.” The answer, of course, is practice. And it starts when they’re young. Take, for instance, Alf the Aussie, who lives down the street. He started out at…

A reader once asked me, “My cat is an avid hunter, and in our area there appears to be a plentiful supply of rats and mice. He was bringing me samples on a daily basis and I had to export the live ones and bury the dead ones. I now partially closed the cat door…

As an animal behaviorist, science and animal behavior are always on my mind; which is why I came up with the idea for this blog in the middle of my deep-water running workout yesterday. I was listening to a podcast of NPR’s Fresh Air, while speeding along at an incredibly slow pace when an interesting question…

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…

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…