Fear Free Happy Homes
Reading Time: 5 minutes Daphne Tanouye, VMD, had a successful house call practice in Maryland. Then the pandemic came. “Over the summer we started seeing patients outside. For dogs, it worked out fine, they did well, but for cats it didn’t really work,” she says. “We did that for a few months, and I realized that the pandemic probably […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes When Olivia Emenaker decided to train her Basset Hound, Dublin, to alert her before she had a seizure, it was partly because he seemed to already have a talent for it on his own. At the time, she was living with her mother, because her seizures made it unsafe for her to live on her […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes Now that vaccination rates are rising, you may be starting to think about having visitors come to your home again. This may be a big surprise for your recently acquired dog. “It’s the classic pandemic puppy story,” says Beth Harpaz. “My husband and I wanted a dog to bring some joy into our boring pandemic […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes In some ways, the fact that pain will affect how a living creature behaves is obvious. If I have a bad headache, I’ll stop writing this article and go lie down. If my dog steps on something sharp, she’ll stop walking and hold up her paw. But even for an experienced pet owner, it can […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes If you’ve never had a pet reptile before, the leopard gecko is a good place to start. These little lizards are charming and easier to care for than many other species. “Leopard geckos are beautiful, with lovely colors and markings, huge bright eyes and sweet faces. They are delightful to watch, curiously exploring their environment […]
Reading Time: 5 minutes Animal wellbeing, both physical and mental, is a priority for modern zoos, and that involves a lot more than you might realize. It starts before an animal even arrives, with the design of the exhibit where they’re going to live. A Healthy Mind in a Healthy Body To start, an exhibit needs to provide a […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes When cats spray urine in the home, humans consider it a problem behavior, but for cats, spraying is a normal means of communication. Domestic and wild cats use spraying to mark their territory. “It’s found throughout the feline kingdom,” says Mikel Delgado, Ph.D., of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “It’s a way to […]
Reading Time: 6 minutes Connecting with your dog is more than attaching the leash and going for a walk together. Attention must be paid. When I first got my Pug, she was reactive to everything: dogs, people, cars, the sound of birds. She’s better now, but one thing she still barks at is kind of funny: people who are […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes At the start of the pandemic, concern was sometimes expressed that dogs would be disturbed because people were now wearing face masks. Personally, I was skeptical, from the evidence of my own highly reactive Pug. She’s attentive to small details – one thing she’ll always object to is a person who is looking at their […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Confession: I once bought a pet completely on impulse. I knew that wasn’t how you were supposed to do it, but I just handed over the money and took him home. That’s how irresistibly cute chinchillas are. I’d owned rodents before, so I knew some of the basics, but I quickly discovered that a chinchilla […]