Dog Musings

A few years ago, I bought and planted a tiny cherry tree and a tiny apple tree behind the house. Gardening of any kind is tough at our altitude and in our dry climate, which is worse than ever with ongoing drought. Weather extremes makes planting trees an act of faith anyway, so to speak. Everything went fine, until it didn’t. Both trees — to differing degrees — got decimated in 2025 by what we think was a pack rat. Heartbreaking. Yet, this week, the cherry tree did something that I think teaches an important lesson, especially at this point in our shared history. Enjoy a bit of a photo essay as a break from all the things.

To be honest, things aren’t going great with Mr. Stix’s massive dermatology problems. It feels like nonstop failure, but that’s just how things like this are. We can keep the worst of it a bit at bay, but we’re never going to fix it for real. That’s partly because throwing everything at it could ultimately shorten his life — which isn’t an option for something that’s awful, but not deadly itself. I try to adjust my expectations and not fixate on it because it’s never going to completely heal, but things got really bad due to an infection a while back. And, now, after many, many weeks of antibiotics, his skin still looks bad. We’re trying to avoid using steroids, even short term. I felt like I got sloppy with some of his doses of supplements for dogs with skin issues, so I had to do a little math and dug into this veterinary paper called “Evidence for Nutraceuticals to Treat Dermatologic Disease in Dogs.” I debated including photos of how bad his skin looks, way at the bottom of this post. Scroll at your own risk.

It’s tempting to give this a title in the form of a question. Like this: Does This New Treatment for Canine Hemangiosarcoma Work? But, that’s become kind of a comical online news click-bait thing. Whenever you see a title like that, just assume the answer is NO. Seriously. The question is provocative. The answer is almost, always no. Instead, let’s look at a couple of papers that describe an experimental treatment for canine hemangiosarcoma, using something called eBAT. One looked somewhat promising. The other, with more rounds of treatments, did not.

Let’s look at why I changed everything, what I added, what I deleted, and what’s still coming thanks to the Champion of My Heart redesign. Probably the best reason for you to love the new look is that I got rid of the ad network. No. More. Ads. That means no more ad income, but I will figure out a way to replace it … somehow … I hope.

By now, most of you know about this puppy rabies situation in Colorado with a Denver-area rescue group called Moms and Mutts that specializes in pregnant and/or nursing momma dogs and their litters. I contacted the state’s public health department to get answers to some of the common questions people ask about this case and why the entire litter of puppies needed to be euthanized and tested for rabies.

Our home state Colorado has seen some bird flu issues recently. Bird flu sweeping through farms with egg-laying hens. Bird flu in dairy cows. Even some cases of bird flu in people and now cats! One other related news item coming out of Japan also caught my eye.

People often seem stunned that our home state of Colorado gets such huge snowstorms when other places in the country already see spring blooming. It’s really quite common, though. Local weather people love to say, “You know, March is our snowiest month!” And, it’s true. The worst was 2003 when we got huge storms back to back and were stuck at home for a week before we dug out by hand. This latest storm wasn’t that bad, but still … bad enough (for more than one reason). Here’s our advice on how to keep dogs safe in snow. Plus, extra photos and videos of the storm. Jump to the very bottom for the bad news.

A new databank of dog genes at UC Davis may provide genetic insights into 3 common (and devastating) cancers in dogs & people.

Why I carry an emergency dog leash pretty much all the time — it’s a good time to get some yourself with fireworks season starting.

Clover and I attended our first NW2 trial at the end of March 2022. Thanks to our early successes in canine nosework, we had high hopes for getting this new title on the first try as well. Alas, I botched one of the first two searches of the day (mostly because of how trauma from the November dog attack started affecting my heart, so I wasn’t feeling well). But, we rallied the entire rest of the day — with Clover getting 4 of the 5 searches, 7 of the 8 hides, so still an incredible success for us. Check out the videos of our searches and other details on how the day went and what I learned from our failure and our successes.