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We haven't reviewed dehydrated diets for quite some time – long enough that there have been quite a few additions to the pool of companies who make and sell this type of dog food. It's increasingly popular, for a lot of reasons.

Shelter volunteer Katherine Kekel stood at the end of a long hallway and struggled to keep a grip on Tia, a pit bull-mix, as the dog strained at her harness. Unable to contain the dog any longer, Katherine let go. The well-muscled dog sprinted down the hallway, put on the brakes, and made a sharp right turn into a small room. The hunt was on! Tia was playing K9 Nose Work® at the Cherokee County Animal Shelter (CCAS) in Canton, Georgia. Her prey? A cotton swab scented with birch essential oil.

I was recently in the San Francisco Bay area for a few days, attending a couple of dog-related events. I stayed at some friends’ house – the same friends who adopted Mickey, a dog who had lingered in my local shelter for months without finding a home.

the smart companies have found ways to offer products with the kind of ingredients that discerning pet owners want to see on the label. It's doubly smart

No one likes to think about having major surgery. The thought of being temporarily disabled is scary enough, but when you factor in caring for your dog or dogs by yourself afterward, the fears multiply. Don’t worry! The following tips will help you navigate your recovery with ease while taking care of your canine companions. (The tips can easily be applied to caring for other pets as well.)

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?

As much as we worry if we’re doing the best for our dogs, any veterinarian can tell you that many of the problems they see are accidents, predictable and completely preventable., Around any holiday, that’s even more true, when people get busy, routines get changed and visitors come to call. All the changes put both people and dogs at higher risk of accident or illness.

Volunteering at my local shelter this past weekend, I was photographing a cute senior Chihuahua (in an effort to better represent him on the shelter website) when I noticed something on his tummy. At first I thought it was discolored for a health reason. But when another volunteer and I rolled him over for a closer look, I could see that he was tattooed. As we stretched him in such a way to reveal the whole tattoo, I was in the process of telling my fellow volunteer that this was once a common practice – that before identification microchips became common, dogs were sometimes tattooed with the owner’s driver’s license number or phone number. But then we decoded the message. It looked like this...

In the editorial of the August issue (now online and in your mailboxes soon), I updated the story of Mickey, an-odd-but-cute looking, high-energy dog who had somehow spent almost a year at my local shelter without finding a permanent home. (He was adopted once, for a little more than two months, but was returned because the family’s original dog was picking on him unmercifully.) I first wrote about Mickey in this space in May, when I started working with him prior to an all-weekend Adopt-A-Thon. I taught him to sit – and in that one simple process, he learned to pay attention to humans, control his own behavior, and offer that “good manners” basic whenever someone paid attention to him. Unfortunately, he didn’t get adopted that weekend…or for the next two months.

Recently we enjoyed meeting our new brother in law, and providing day care for his 4-year-old Border Collie, Sis. Arriving from northern Idaho, he was totally unprepared for the reality of traveling with a dog during a northern California heat wave. We were more than happy to offer our home and shady fenced yard to Sis so her owners could sightsee without endangering her in a hot car.

On March 30, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it had rejected a petition from environmentalists that would have banned bisphenol A (BPA) from all food and drink packaging. The scientific evidence at this time, said the FDA, does not suggest that the “very low levels of human exposure to BPA” afforded through our diets are unsafe. “The agency has performed extensive research on BPA, has reviewed hundreds of other studies, and is continuing to address questions and potential concerns raised by certain studies,” the news release continued. “The agency takes all concerns about BPA seriously and is evaluating them as part of the agency’s ongoing oversight of food safety.”

I've fostered a dog or puppy from the shelter six or seven times since I've had Otto – and he's been a huge help in the fostering process. He models good behavior. He responds immediately to cues and in the process, shows the other dogs how to earn rewards. He comes immediately when called, in such an enthusiastic manner, that the other dog comes running toward me, too, just to see what the excitement is all about (and then of course everyone gets treats, which helps install the roots of a nice recall in the foster dog, too). Otto puts up with their playful behavior, plays a bit with them himself, but also enforces polite canine behavior. He won't, for example, tolerate a puppy climbing all over him, jumping on him – or even picking on Tito the Chihuahua. He steps in with authority and firmness and says (with an audible growl and some impressive snarling), No way