Happy Chonksgiving from all of us! I plan to write some posts soon about what it's like to foster tiny puppies for our local animal shelter and the kinds of supplies you'll need in bulk to survive, if you want to add a similar volunteer gig to your life. But, I'm getting ready to take an extra-long Thanksgiving break (Nov 19-28), so instead please enjoy pix and videos of our latest foster babies that we're calling TATO (like mashed potatoes) and GRAVY. They are just 2 from a litter of 9 puppies born at our shelter. We went for sanity over heroics and offered to foster just 2 of them. #ChonkyPuppies

I started ordering groceries online for parking-lot pick up long before the pandemic. Most of the time, the staff shoppers at our local grocery store do a good job getting me everything on the list. Sometimes, though, I get weird substitutions and don't realize it until I get home. It's a 45-minute drive each way from our place to the store, so going back to correct weird or missing items is a real pain. So, I make do or try to find something to do with what I get. Guess who ended up with pounds and pounds of LIVER recently? Rather that just giving the dogs cooked liver as a treat, I made up a liver dog treat recipe. Just winged it, and they turned out pretty well. See what you think. 

I recently ditched my affiliate relationship with a major / famous pet site that's owned by a huge pet products mega company -- both because I literally never earned a dime because their terms sucked so much and because I realized they sell (and lately promote a lot) shock collars (some of which now masquerade as GSP devices and dog activity trackers to mask their other purpose -- to train dogs using pain). So, if you're looking for new places to shop online, please consider K9Cuisine.com whom I have new affiliate relationship. Ditch the megastores. Support small biz.

Through my long-time work as a journalist, I get access to stats and other information not always available to other dog folks. When I see something of interest (or that scares me), I'm going to start telling you about it. Here's how the trend toward people preferring smaller dogs may affect you.