My Border Collie Daisy is a consummate counter surfer; she hangs 10 with the best. The trainer in me sighs and acknowledges that I was not successful in getting the behavior to cease over 10 years (so she’s now had a decade of practice). The student of canine ethology in me watches in fascination at the opportunistic seeking and realizes this descendent of wolves has not succumbed to learned helplessness. The dog mom in me says “You go, girl!” and is filled with joy that this dog who was diagnosed with cancer over two years ago is feeling this feisty and that her spirit – and appetite – hasn’t been dampened by treatment.

Many years ago I had adopted a Border Collie-mix who arrived trained to leave a room whenever anyone sat down to eat (I was in awe and somehow naively managed to maintain that behavior). When she reached her elder years, the action wasn’t always as automatic and we would gently remind her to go to the next room. One day, during a visit with family, we prepared to sit down to a meal and began to ask the old girl to leave the dining room when a relative piped up and asked, “Isn’t she old enough not to have to do that anymore?” We were all happy to have her stay underneath the table where we could easily hand her snacks.

It’s not that I don’t believe we shouldn’t encourage our dogs to mind their manners, but I admit that I am fascinated by the times they decide not to. And maybe even more fascinating is why we might decide to let them have a free pass.

A good friend and fellow trainer worked for years to reduce her dog’s excited barking. That boy had a joyful bark and you always knew he was happy to see you. And then, suddenly, he rarely barked. His hearing had faded fairly quickly with age and things were suddenly a lot quieter, for him and everyone else. My friend found she missed his exuberant conversations (as we all did) and so, when he occasionally found his voice, she’d smile and let him sing out.

Sometimes stress can cause anxious behaviors and our dogs will find comforting ways to relieve the anxiety. A herding dog I know chews on sofa cushions; his mom shrugs and is thankful that shabby chic is in fashion. At other times, a behavior is so ingrained that it transfers in ways we might not imagine when originally training. Woody, for example, was paper-trained as a puppy and so later he was always given a free pass when he peed on the newspapers that had been left on the floor for recycling.

My sister has a Beagle … enough said? I’ll just add that his nickname is C Monster. She’s in school full-time and that means she studies a lot; she admits to allowing him to sneak up onto the sofa to sleep (and thus stay out of trouble) so she can hit the books – even though he’s not supposed to be on the furniture unless invited. Also, she has yet to try to tackle modifying his digging behavior; instead she secretly lets him dig to his nose’s content and then fills the holes before her husband comes home (hmmmm…not sure how secret this is now).

Another trainer friend of mine has a Belgian Malinois who opens doors. He rationalizes it by saying she always asks first (I wonder if she waits for a response?). This is the same dog who jumps up on top of the crate sometimes when he cues her to “crate up.” She knows what he is requesting, but she has him wondering admirably: Is she trying to demonstrate to him that she can distinguish that the cue can have two different meanings? After all she knows what “crate” is as well as the action word “up” and interpretation can be dependent on perspective – and what she is feeling like doing at the moment!

Fortunately many of us see things from our dogs’ point of view and embrace those perspectives. I’ll confess: my dogs are lifetime members of the permanent hall pass club. Good thing I have a get out of jail free card.

Try to remember that you have to help your dog understand your cues.

I was volunteering at the shelter last Saturday, and in the course of the day, I showed several dogs and puppies to several different potential adopters. It struck me at some point that almost every person who takes a strange dog or pup out into a “get acquainted” room or grassy run will almost immediately tell the dog (or pup!) to “Sit! Sit! SIT! Siiiiiitt?” It’s as if they always assume the canine knows what “sit” means and is being willful in not responding.

It’s SO difficult for people to understand that dogs don’t know what we’re saying – and it speaks to our comfort and familiarity with them that we wouldn’t expect a chicken or a turtle or a camel to “Sit! Sit! SIT!” upon hearing the words. You wouldn’t approach a person in Laos and say, “Excuse me, can you tell me what time it is?” And yet, just about everyone seems to expect EVERY dog or puppy to instinctively understand and respond to spoken English.

What if someone – a human, or an animal of another species, even! — approached you and began barking, “Fwick! Fwick! FWICK!” and then appeared to get sort of angry because you just looked at them puzzled? Would you want to continue to try to figure out what this other animal wanted? *I* wouldn’t!

Most modern trainers know that the fastest, easiest way to teach a dog (or other animal) to perform a behavior on cue is to:

1. Figure out how to elicit the behavior (or “catch” the animal doing it) and immediately reward the animal with something significantly enjoyable (treat, toy, praise, petting . . . anything as long as it’s demonstrably enjoyable.

2. Start using the desired cue for the behavior at the same time the animal performs the behavior.

3. Then, start using the cue FIRST, and then waiting for a few seconds, to see if the animal makes the connection between the cue and the desired behavior.

This approach doesn’t assume that the animal can understand English or is hard of hearing. This is a systematic approach that builds a behavior in a certain fashion – and you’d be amazed at how fast dogs will learn new behaviors once they learn the pattern of new behavior acquisition. After they’ve learned two or three behaviors that you have built the same way – elicit, reward; pair with a cue, reward; use cue first, wait, reward – they are eager to “offer” new behaviors, in hopes of finding more and new ways to get you to reward them, and they pay keener attention to anything you are doing that may turn out to be a cue. Because cues turn into “shortcuts” – or early clues as to the behavior you’re waiting to reward.

As soon as you can reliably elicit the behavior from the animal, start using the word, sound, or gesture that you want to be the cue for the behavior at the same time the animal performs the behavior. Remember, it’s NOT a “cue” yet; at this point, it’s just something the animal will begin to associate with the behavior (and the resulting reward). You are simply pairing the signal with the behavior, so the animal will begin to associate the signal with the behavior. That’s all! So don’t repeat yourself or say it louder if you don’t get a response.)

Then, start using the cue FIRST, and then waiting for a few seconds, to see if the animal makes the connection between the cue and the desired behavior. Use the cue just ONCE, and WAIT for a few seconds. You should see the wheels start to spin in the dog’s head. “Why is he looking at me? What does he want? How can I get him to give me the treat THIS time?” If, in the early stages, the dog guesses right, and does the behavior from the cue alone (as opposed to doing it in response to whatever you were doing to elicit it before, such as using a food lure or positioning your body in a certain way (such as leaning in toward the dog to get him to lean backward into a sit), then reward him with a nice jackpot of treats.

But what if he doesn’t respond to the signal that you want to be the cue or “command” for the behavior? Don’t panic. He just hasn’t made the connection yet. Give the cue – once – and wait a few seconds, then elicit the behavior as you were before, and as he does the behavior, at the SAME TIME, use the cue again. Do this a few times before trying again with the cue first.

It should be obvious that untrained dogs don’t know what “Sit!” means – so it’s pointless to say it, repeat it, or shout it at them.

But what if your “trained” dog, who “knows what ‘Sit!’ means!” behaves as if she DIDN’T know what it means? It’s likely that you are giving her the cue in a context that she isn’t familiar with, or in the face of more distrations than she can handle. Think about it like this: You’ve taught a kindergartner how to add one plus one and other very simple math problems. Could she complete them in the middle of a street fair? Could she tell you the answer quickly if she was riding a tricycle at the same time? She probably could – with practice. If you want your dog to be able to respond properly to the “Sit!” cue when you are out on walks, for example, you have to start practicing (with rewards!) on small, quiet walks, and slowly build up to practicing on walks in distracting, hectic, loud environments. If you want your dog to be able to respond with a sit as a barely-restrained leash-aggressive dog goes by, or when an ambulance is going by with the siren on, you have to practice in those environments! Because as much as we like to think otherwise, dogs do NOT understand our speech and desires in the way we understand other English-speaking humans.

Duncan wakes me this morning as he usually does: with a jump onto the bed and a cool damp nose gently touching my cheek. I respond as I usually do: “Okay, give me a minute.” I wrestle to open my still sleep-induced eyes and start to get out of bed.  I glance at the clock – because that’s what morning does – makes one acutely aware of time. But wait! It’s only 1:28! I tell Duncan, “No way!” and pull the covers back up. He seems to accept this and goes back to sleep himself.

Duncan is a 10-year-old rangy 60-pound B&W Border Collie.  We’ve known each other since he was 5 1/2 weeks old. I think I know him pretty well, but that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped listening to him.

About eight months ago, Duncan began waking me up between 4:00-5:00 AM every morning.  At first I thought he needed to go out to eliminate, and that he would do, because he is such a good boy. We’d go back to bed, but he couldn’t settle down. I’d cue him to “Go settle” and he would harrumph, move to the foot of the bed and wait 10 minutes. He had figured out that 10 minutes was the length of time on the snooze button – I had my very own organic alarm clock. The only problem was that it was programmed to go off at his set time, not mine.

It was one of those bleary-eyed mornings that I decided to go ahead with feeding him and his sister. After gobbling up their breakfast, I asked if they wanted to go back to bed. I know I did, it was 4:00AM! They scampered up the stairs and plopped themselves back on the bed. I crawled in between the 110 pounds of fur and the three of us were snoozing happily in minutes.

Before I realized it, Duncan had me trained in a new routine: he will softly nudge me awake some time between 3:00-5:00 am, at which point I get up with both dogs, take them outside, feed them and we all return to bed. (This process takes all of eleven minutes.)

When I shared this behavior with fellow trainer friends, they looked at me like I was nuts. Actually, it wasn’t just trainers; everyone I told thought I was nuts to be getting up to feed my dogs at those hours. And I may well be, but at least I understand why.

For those of you with herding dogs, you know that these dogs can power nap and the lack of daylight is of no obstacle when there is a job to be done. This particular job just happened to entail getting fed. I came to realize that Duncan was telling me he really needed to eat at this time. As soon as that need is met, he is as happy as a Border Collie with a ball.

I did try experimenting with feeding him very late at night, first at 10 PM, then 11 PM, then midnight; I gave him snacks before bed. I tried ignoring. I tried extinguishing the behavior. I even thought the routine might be disrupted when he went to stay with his dad while I spent three weeks in Africa. I had to wonder if it was just the relationship between a girl and her dog. I was secretly pleased when my ex-husband told me Duncan was waking him early every morning. It wasn’t me after all!

Our dogs are governed by our routines of when we get up, when we leave, when we have time to take them out to play. Duncan waits at home for me to return. He can’t come and go as he pleases. He can’t decide to go for a walk by himself. He can’t decide it’s time to go visit his buddies. He’s completely dependent on me to decide when he gets to do what. And then what if I’m typing away at the computer like I am now? He patiently waits for me to finish my thoughts because he trusts that I will try to fulfill his needs. Even if that means getting up at 3 AM.

Our dogs have only us. And we control almost every aspect of their lives. Duncan does have control over one thing: telling me what he needs.

We have the opportunity to listen. What does your dog tell you?

Follow proper guidelines to create a healthy diet for your dog, just as you do for your family.

For the past few months, I’ve been writing critiques of home-prepared diets for the Whole Dog Journal. My original intention was simply to review the diets and offer comments about what they might be missing or how they could be improved, but I ended up doing a full nutritional analysis of each diet to try to figure out why the dogs eating these diets were having problems, or to better understand a very complex diet.

My goal was two-fold: to find out how each diet compared to National Research Council (NRC) guidelines, which would be helpful to those experienced in feeding a homemade diet, and to help newbies get started with the recipes provided.

I was taken aback, then, when I received an email from someone who said that after reading the most recent critique, “It completely convinced me that I cannot home cook for my dog because I would be hopelessly lost and inept. . . . Variety was the point, but by the time a pet’s diet is so precisely fine tuned, you don’t leave much room for variation because it would throw everything off.” This was not my intention, and it made me stop and think about what I was doing.

In the past, my advice has always been to feed a wide variety of healthy foods in appropriate proportions rather than using spreadsheets to do nutritional analyses, but after completing a series of reviews on over 30 books about homemade diets (WDJ December 2010, January 2011, and March 2011), I was shocked at the bad advice I found in the majority of the books. Few of the cooked diets described in the books included calcium or organ meats, while those advocating raw diets were sometimes limited to almost nothing but raw meaty bones. I was also surprised to discover that when people did analyze diets similar to what I recommend and feed to my own dogs, they did not meet NRC guidelines.

That started me on an ongoing quest to better understand what might be missing from various types of homemade diets. Over the last year, I’ve been working with spreadsheets to determine exactly what NRC recommends (the numbers are not as straightforward as you might think), and which foods and supplements supply each nutrient. It’s a lot of work, and I’m far from done, but I’ve learned a lot.

I still feel bad about making someone feel that feeding a home-prepared diet to her dog is too complicated, when that’s not my belief. Yes, you need to follow certain guidelines, and it is important to make sure that some food groups and supplements (primarily calcium and vitamin E) are provided, but you don’t need to follow a recipe exactly, nor do I think this is an ideal way to feed your dog.

I’ve never analyzed the homemade raw diet that I feed Ella, my 8-year-old Norwich Terrier. Why? Because I feed so much variety that it would be just about impossible to do. I rotate between certain types of meals on a regular basis, making sure that she gets a wide variety of foods from all food groups with appropriate amounts of organ meat, raw meaty bones, vegetables, etc., and I work hard at controlling the fat content, since she has a tendency to gain weight, but I don’t follow a recipe and I don’t feed the same foods all the time. I do give her a multivitamin and mineral supplement, rotating between those as well.

Instead of my usual diet critique in the July issue of WDJ, I will offer dietary guidelines that can be used to create a home-prepared raw or cooked diet for healthy dogs. In the future, I’ll think carefully about how I approach these critiques so that I don’t continue sounding like it takes a degree in nutrition to feed your dog, any more than it does to feed your family.

In an exceptionally ill-considered decision, on April 26, 2012, the Maryland Court of Appeals (highest court in the state) delivered a finding that not only held a landlord liable for a 2007 incident in which his tenant’s dog, an American Pitbull Terrier, escaped from a pen and mauled a child, but also declared that “a pit bull or any dog with pit bull ancestry shall be deemed hence forth vicious and inherently dangerous as a matter of law.”

While not banning pit bulls entirely (and not offering any answer to the question of how to conclusively determine if a dog actually is a pit bull or pit  bull mix), the ruling has massive significance for all “big-headed dogs” in the State of Maryland. Not just the dogs themselves, but also their owners, and any humans involved with them in any capacity. Shelters and rescue groups are scrambling for legal opinions and advice on how to deal with the pit-type dogs already in their custody, as well as any that may seek refuge in the future. Pet sitters, veterinarians, trainers, groomers, pet-assisted therapy programs and other pet care professionals, in addition to landlords and owners, now face a huge liability burden if they provide services to pit bulls – or anything even remotely suspected of being a pit bull. Insurance companies, already touchy about pits and other breeds regarded as risky, now have a solid legal reason to refuse to provide homeowners insurance to Maryland owners of pit or suspected pit-type dogs.

The fallout is likely to be significant. The court’s findings even went so far as to hold anyone responsible who “knew or should have known” that the dog was a pit bull or pit mix, and offered services anyway. Not that they can’t rent, or provide services, but if they do and the dog bites someone they can be held strictly liable. Landlords and insurances companies aren’t likely to risk that. Pet care professionals may be more willing to take the risk, but with the “should have known” language, won’t be able to pretend, as has often been done in the past, that the dog is just a “terrier mix.” It’s probable that a lot of Maryland’s pit bull and pit-type dogs will die, as renters are turned away, homeowners face threats of canceled insurance, “no-kill” shelters refuse to accept them and full-service shelters decide they cannot bear the liability risk and on the advice of their attorneys, reluctantly choose to euthanize.

As this was a court decision, not legislation, it slipped under the radar of every group that watches the legislative process to combat breed-specific location. Animal advocates are now scrabbling for a legislative fix to this disaster that would take precedence over this otherwise binding decision that threatens doom for thousands of well-loved dogs in Maryland. Meanwhile, until clearer heads prevail, owners of pit-type dogs, or dogs who might be identified as pit-type dogs, might do well to avoid visiting, or even traveling through, this Mid-Atlantic state.

I haven’t spent a day in my local shelter for six weeks or more. I’ve been super busy, and then I fostered a really cute, really unsocialized dog for a while, which took up most of any extra time I had for a few weeks.

Saturdays are usually a big adoption day at the shelter, and there is only one other volunteer who helps with adoptions on Saturdays. When I heard that she wasn’t going to be at the shelter, I decided I’d better go, even though I had several invitations for fun events and a ton of work to do.

I walked into the shelter at 11:30; it opens at 11 on Saturdays but I was running late — plus I needed to buy some dog treats on the way. When I walked in, the shelter’s head veterinary technician caught my eye. “Can you go hang out with the lady with the Golden out in the outdoor runs?” she asked. “I’ll be out there in a few minutes.” No clue as to why she wants me out there, but I’m here to help.

It turns out to be one of those happiest of shelter stories. A woman who moved to the area recently came to our shelter because the one in her town (20 miles away) is closed on Saturdays – it was our lucky day. She was looking for a Golden Retriever. We had exactly one on our kennels at the moment – an overweight, white-faced senior dog badly in need of grooming. The vet tech asked the lady if she would consider a senior dog, and the woman immediately said, “I would love a senior dog!” The vet tech put the two of them together, and then immediately got slammed with other pressing matters at the front counter.

I introduced myself to the woman and explained that the tech would be out in a minute, and asked her, “What do you think?” The woman said, “Oh, I’m bringing her home. What a sweetheart! Why on earth is she here? Look at her ears! They are badly infected and need to be cleaned! She is so darling! I can’t believe this dog is at a shelter.” I laughed out loud with joy. This was going to be a great adoption. It turned out that she had Goldens in the past and was looking for an easygoing dog. We chatted while I started pulling off some of the dog’s abundant shedding coat (it’s spring, so I had my Furminator with me). I was happy to see the dog had beautiful, clean, white teeth and healthy gums. Eventually the tech took the dog back to the exam room and cleaned her ears, and a staff member gave the dog a quick bath while the woman filled out the adoption papers.

Four or five people came to pick up dogs or puppies who had been spayed or neutered the day before – dogs they had previously decided to and paid to adopt, but couldn’t take home until they had been altered. Other than that, there were no other adoptions that day –no other potential adopters came through the shelter! Very odd for a Saturday. Maybe it’s the heat. It’s almost 90 degrees out – unusual for April here.

I spent the rest of the day taking dogs to the outside runs, and brushing hair off of the ones who were shedding the most. If I hadn’t hoped to send a few dogs home, I would have enjoyed myself more.

I was dismayed to see two dogs back in the kennels who had been previously adopted. One is a small, mixed breed dog who was in the shelter for about five months before he got adopted, several months ago. I never met his adopter, but I cheered when I heard he had gone home. He’s a cute but unusual-looking dog – long-legged and with a cropped tail, and sort of an odd color, and he’s a very high-energy guy. The shelter calls him a Pug/Chihuahua-mix. But apparently, the family who adopted him has another dog, who spent much of his time intimidating and beating up the new dog, so they brought him back (at least, that’s the story; you never know what’s really happened). Great – difficult to place, still untrained, and now, with baggage!

I felt even less hopeful about the other returnee – a VERY high-energy pit-mix pup, about six months old. The shelter staff notes on the back of her kennel card said, “Reason for return: Too much energy; needs training.” Well no duh. She had “too much energy” when they adopted her a month ago. She’s super cute, but badly behaved and very physical (jumping on you, mouthing you, pawing at you), with a very short attention span (like, a second). She also behaves badly in our kennels, leaping wildly against her cage door and barking when anyone walks by – and if you are walking a dog past her kennel, she adds snarling and snapping at the door in frustration to the repertoire. We know that she just wants to go outside and play and is hideously frustrated by her confinement, but most people just go, “Eeek,” when they walk past. I put her outside in a grassy run loaded with toys – she loves toys – and look for a dog who might be able to put up with her exuberant, rough play style. The vet tech suggested a much larger German Shepherd/Husky-mix with a thick coat she said he is playful and really good-tempered.

He turned out to be the perfect match; when the puppy leaps onto him, grabbing and pawing, he just bashes her to the ground with his big shoulders and hips in a playful manner. Within minutes of getting knocked down again and again in response to her pawing and biting, she abandons the rude play-style and initiates some more socially acceptable games: chase me, let’s play in the wading pool, you can’t catch me, and let’s lie on the ground and chew each other’s faces. I leave them out there together for the rest of the day; it reduced her frustration and got her tired. However, her problems are bigger than that.

The worst thing happened last. I had walked right by a hound-mix all day; when there are more dogs in the kennels than I can possibly take out by myself, I tend to take out the high-energy dogs first. Then I realized I had overlooked this somewhat depressed-looking dog who was also badly in need of bathing. Where I live, we have iron-rich red dirt, which stains any light-colored outdoor dog. This guy was a dirty pink color.  I look at his card. He was adopted from our shelter two years ago, but returned a day or so ago. The “reason for return” on his card? “Moving, can’t keep.” Sigh.

“Hey buddy; want a bath?” I asked him. He readily came to the cage door, let me slip the lead on, and politely walked outside with me. When I turned him out into a grassy run, he went right out and went potty, numbers 1 and 2, and came right back for some petting. Calm. As I pet him, I notice he has ticks all over him, both implanted and crawling. Ay yi yi. Somehow, that escaped the attention of whoever admitted him.

Since it’s so hot out, I brought the bathing supplies outside and gave him a bath out there in the run. He was a good sport about the whole thing, standing still in the wading pool without a leash, wagging his tail and seeming to soak up the attention. He loved being rubbed dry with a towel, and looked a ton better. But when the vet tech came out to apply a topical flea/tick treatment, things suddenly took a turn for the worse.  He had been calm and friendly the whole time I was working with him, taking treats nicely and wagging his tail. But as the tech started dotting the topical treatment on the back of his neck/shoulder area, suddenly he snarled and snapped at her, grazing her wrist as she quickly pulled away.  “What?” we both exclaim. I walk him away for a minute, and he seemed fine. He wagged his tail again as I petted him and touched the area where the topical was being applied. “Maybe it’s you?” I proposed to the tech. She passed me the tube, and as I moved my hand toward the back of his neck, talking to him like I did through the whole bath — Good boy! Atta boy! You’re a good dog! – he snarled and snapped at me.

The tech looked grim. “You know,” I said, “He’s just warning us. If he had really wanted to bite either one of us, he definitely could have.” She nods assent and said, “Let’s give him a break and we’ll try again.”

Long story short: The dog was willing to go to war to prevent having the pesticide applied. We tried tact and treats; we tried again later with a muzzle. If we reached for his shoulders, he snarled and tried to bite. “I’m sorry,” the vet tech told me. She didn’t explicitly say that his behavior effectively marked him for euthanasia, and I didn’t ask, but I’m pretty certain that was going to be the ruling. There are currently three or four other hound-types currently in the shelter who don’t/haven’t showed signs of a willingness to bite.

In an area like the one where I live, there are precious few shelter volunteers, and I fully understand why, especially after a day like last Saturday. It’s emotionally difficult – and it doesn’t ever seem to get any better. For every victory like the placement a sweet senior Golden, there are probably three or four perfectly good, easy, “no-issue” adult dogs who will stay in the shelter for weeks before they get adopted; and for every easy-to-place puppy, there are probably two behaviorally challenging adult or adolescent dogs who might stay in the shelter for months. And this doesn’t even account for all the dogs with such serious behavior or health issues that they won’t ever get a chance to be seen by the public. In my local shelter, like many others, the reality is often too depressing for many pet lovers to face.

One of my young cats is sick. Last Friday, I noticed he was just being unusually subdued – particularly in relation to his littermate sister, who was bouncing around the kitchen and harassing/trying to engage the dogs in play. I picked up the quiet one-year-old cat and held him a while, feeling him all over for lumps or bumps or wounds of any kind. I didn’t find any, but I did notice that under his longish coat, he was a lot thinner than his short-haired sister. And did he feel a little warm? I called the vet and made an appointment.

Aside from a low fever, the vet couldn’t find anything specific. He took a blood sample and sent it out to test everything and sent me home with some antibiotics to give the cat, on the premise that he had some sort of infection that was causing the fever. Total cost: $230, and we have no idea of what’s wrong, but the test results and the cat’s response to antibiotics should tell us more.

An acquaintance’s dog was diagnosed with cancer only because she insisted on radiographs taken at an annual wellness examination of that seemingly perfectly healthy dog. This dog has been undergoing chemotherapy, which seems to have – at least for now – completely arrested and thwarted the cancer. The dog’s owner can’t say enough nice things about her pets’ health insurance. And I’ve been thinking about that ever since I read about her travails with her dog.

I wouldn’t DREAM of going without health insurance myself, or having a child without health insurance. But while I’ve been thinking about getting health insurance for Otto ever since I got him almost four years ago, I haven’t actually done it yet. With two cats and now apparently two dogs (Otto plus niece’s dog Tito, who doesn’t seem to be going anywhere), a couple of illnesses or accidents and a major health intervention for any of these animals would be quite a burden. On the other hand, it might be quite a burden to insure four animals.

I’m going to get some quotes today – and I’ll share what I’ve found with you later this week.

What about you? Do you have health insurance for some or all of your pets? How many? How much do you pay? Has it been worth it?