“Recovery Collars” After Surgery–Do They Work?
Skip had surgery last Friday to remove his internal testicle (unilaterally cryptorchid), because of its higher probability of causing testicular cancer. (This issue... neutering or the removal of one testicle, is a huge one, and controversial at that. I started to delve into it as part of today's post, but decided to wait for that discussion when life is a bit more, uh, settled. I simply don't have it in me to be who I want to be right now if the discussion heats up. Let's shelve talking about it for a few weeks, but get back to it soon. Promise.) What I want to talk about today are ways to inhibit or stop dogs from causing injury to previous injuries or surgery sites by licking or Read More
Things We Do To Confuse Dogs
(Excuse me, there's a growth on your head. Is it dangerous?) Recently I read an article in Bark Magazine titled "8 Things We Do That Really Confuse Our Dogs." Written by Melissa Starling and Paul McGreevy, (and originally published in The Conversation), the authors lists several points to which I say Hear Hear! (And some I question; read on.) One of my favorites, because it is not intuitive, is #3: We change our shape and smell. I've written often about this in the past, observing over years that dogs don't seem to get the concept of "removable parts." And why would they? They don't decorate their bodies like some animals, nor do they pull on rabbit fur Read More
What Are You Going to Do With Your One Precious Life?
The title of this week's post is from Mary Oliver's perfect question: "What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" Here's one answer: Become a Size 4, develop washboard abs, win the National Sheepdog Trials, cook perfect dinners that are perfectly healthy, rescue 1oo homeless dogs, and write a new book that wins the National Book Award. And oh yeah, Save the World. Well, maybe not this year. I've thought about my actual answer to my plans for my one wild and precious life a lot lately. Not surprising, given that life has been sucking us all into a black hole of chaos and crises, and I'm not getting any younger or healthier. It is also true that I live in a Read More