Question: My husband and I have a 10-week old yellow lab named Avery.  We brought her home 3 weeks ago, at the age of 7 weeks, and have been using the methods we learned from your book, Perfect Puppy in 7 Days, to teach her to say please and to sit for everything. It is going well, and Avery is becoming a good puppy…not perfect!  She likes to bite us A LOT. We try to give her something else and reward her for not biting, or for stopping, but she still likes to do it!  That will just take time, I

“We were on a cruise in Juneau when we got the report,” says the client sitting across from me. “The surgeon had to open his intestines in three places and they found part of a sock and a shoe. Three feet of the intestines was severely swollen and the intestines were close to busting open.” Dan explained that the surgery had gone well but this time Barnaby was septic, meaning that his illness had caused bacteria to spill into the blood causing a system-wide infection. “We immediately flew home to see him. He was emaciated and his prognosis was bad.

It seems like every few months a study comes out touting the benefits of pet ownership. According to the claims, stroking pets lowers our blood pressure, dog companions increase our exercise, and going to the dog park improves our sociability. But what most studies fail to reveal is the dark, dirty secret that up to 16% of dog owners don’t want you to know: THEIR dogs eat poop…a lot! Yes, according to a study presented at the annual ACVB/AVSAB Behavior Symposium in San Diego last month, 16% of dogs are serious stool eaters. That means they have been seen doing it 5

It’s fun to take your pooch to the park for off-leash play and dogs can look like they are having fun, but are they always learning the right things? One owner of a Bulldog knows all to well that the answer is no. “Max took a while to warm up to new people and dogs,” she says. “Then we left him with the breeder where he got to run around with other Bulldogs in what the breeder said was normal rough bulldog play. When we got him back he was suddenly barking and lunging people he would have just stayed

Anyone who frequents the dog park and knows about dog behavior probably has a few horror stories to share and I am no exception. A couple of years ago, I was at my neighborhood park, which is a private multi-use park for dogs and people. It was an off-hour so it was just me, my dog, Jonesy, and my foster dog, a little Corgi with a history of some fear and reactivity to unfamiliar dogs. Jonesy was off-leash and the Corgi was on a long line. Generally, when I’m just with Jonesy, who is reactive towards unfamiliar dogs, especially those

Everyone knows that if you have a dog you’ll take it on walks. But did you know you could also take your cat on walks? Taking a cat on walks works best if you’ve socialized the cat at a young age to new environments so he’s comfortable in the places you plan to take him. Of course, you’ll also want to train your cat or kitten to love wearing a harness.