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Years ago, a new acquaintance asked me about the bag I wore on a belt around my waist. She saw me taking dog treats out of the bag and feeding them, one after another after another, to my then-young dog, Otto. I was in the process of teaching Otto to ignore squirrels in trees, pigeons in the street, and cats on the edge of the riverside trail we walked each day, and the tactic required a lot of treats. My new friend wanted to know if I always wore the bag; surely, since Otto seemed so well-behaved to her, I didn't need to have it with me all the time? Ah, yes, but would Otto be so well behaved if I had no treats? At that point in time, so early in our relationship – no!

Poor agreement was found between visual breed assignments and DNA results in 14 of the 20 dogs (70 percent). Moreover, there was low inter-rater reliability, meaning that the dog experts did not show a high level of agreement regarding breed assignments to the 20 dogs. More than half of the evaluators agreed on the predominant breed in only seven of the 20 dogs (35 percent). These results provide evidence that physical appearance is not a reliable method for breed identification.

Katie Locks is the owner of Lucky Dogs Training and More in Amelia Court House, Virginia. Since 2004, she has worked with rescues and individuals to strengthen the bond with dogs through training. She trains for the Southside SPCA as well as Lab Rescue of the Labrador Retriever Club of the Potomac, is a mentor trainer for Animal Behavior College, and is the lead trainer for Pixie's Pen Pals, a prison dog program.

It's one of the best feelings in the whole world -- those first few hours with your new puppy when everything is perfect and anything is possible. It doesn't take long, however, for that bubble to burst. It could be the very first day, when you step in that pile of puppy poo on your Persian carpet, or find deep puppy tooth gouges in your treasured pair of Jimmy Choo shoes.

I often dog-sit for friends and relatives. It's easy for me, because I have all sorts of dog gear, food, treats, and chews laying around. Also, my own home and the house down the block where I have my office are both securely fenced (and well-outfitted with crates and dog beds of various sizes). Plus, if the dogs are fidgety and in need of exercise and stimulation, I can grab my camera, load the dogs into my car, and head out to a nearby open space area to run them on trails or allow them to swim in the river – and any good pictures I get, or interesting experiences I have with the dogs, are helpful to my job!

it became evident that the dog was not comfortable with the child. Because I strongly feel that dogs who live with kids ought to be especially forgiving of human behavior and sincerely like kids

Last month, in this space, I mentioned a big Labrador I was working with at my local shelter. (That’s him on the back cover, only it doesn’t look like him, because he’s squinting in happiness with his giant rawhide bone, and he has nice big eyes, not piggy squinty eyes. But anyway.) The handsome boy, estimated at about 18 months old, came into the shelter as a stray, picked up by animal control. He lingered in the isolation ward for a couple of weeks; despite his good looks and sweet disposition, no one came looking for him.

Time flies when you love dogs, and not in a good way. Otto, the canine love of my life, turns five years old this month. Of course, since he was a stray and I adopted him from my local shelter, I don’t know his exact age; he was estimated to be about 7 months old when I adopted him in June 2008. So we assigned him the birthday of November 1, 2007 – which would make him 5. Where has the time gone?

Bravo!, maker of top-quality frozen raw diets, recently introduced a line of freeze-dried meat treats that meet all of our selection criteria. They come in four varieties: all-beef “hot dogs,” turkey, buffalo, and “Trail Mix,” which contains those three plus tiny cubes of freeze-dried cheese. We like the latter best, because the variety seems to hold our dogs’ attention longer. Bravo! uses only domestic sources of responsibly raised meats.

so he's trying it again.üIs this dog dominant or acting like an "alpha dog"? No; he's been trained to jump up and bite on cue."

This past week, I’ve been working around the clock to get the July issue done. In the process Otto has been seriously neglected in the areas of exercise and focused attention. I skipped our Thursday night agility class. I took him for only one short walk, from our home to my office (about two blocks!) and back. (This only made matters worse, because I didn’t let him stay with me at the office for long; he’s so obsessed with wanting to kitten-watch that he whines and paces when I close the door between him and the foster kittens.

Aggression. It's a natural, normal dog behavior, but it's also a scary word that evokes images of maulings and dog-related fatalities. The term aggression" actually encompasses a long continuum of behaviors