Nationwide Veterinary Analytics released the second of three white papers with important canine cancer risk data in March 2022. Here’s a video talking through the headlines and showing the main charts and much of the same information in text below too. They focused on the 25 top / most popular dog breeds, so many of us don’t get information for our own dog breeds. It’s still really interesting, though. Let’s take a look at what we’ve learned.
One of the things we’re most famous for are FREE audio/video files that make the canine relaxation protocol easier to do. It might look like simply a way to teach dogs to stay, but the RP is much more complicated than that. It’s meant to teach dogs prone to fear, stress, or over-arousal to defer to you and relax no matter what weird stimuli happens (noises, movements, etc.) Hard to believe I never made a canine relaxation protocol demo video before, but here you go. Below is a video of what it looks like when I do it with a behaviorally normal dog. In this case, first Clover and then a short snippet with Mr. Stix.
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.
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.
I promise the silly title is worth it. You see, I’m increasingly amped up about a number of real-life things, but I recently developed a new coping mechanism for worry.
Neutropenia in dogs – Our saga with Clover’s weird white blood cell counts continues, so we saw a board-certified veterinary internal medicine specialist (the same one who helped us with Clover’s non-stop UTIs as a puppy). The headline is that, right now, the neutropenia itself isn’t posing much of a danger (unless her values continue to drop), but the possible causes for the neutropenia fall into scarier territory.
Saturday, May 27, is Clover’s third birthday. Already! So how is a Dog Mom supposed to celebrate our amazing birthday dog? With dog birthday party cupcakes, an exciting new present (woot!), and with another dog birthday video tribute!
April 13, 2017, marks the 10th anniversary of Champion of My Heart. No kidding. Our first blog post went live a decade ago. I’d been mulling the idea for a while, and on a bit of a whim, I tossed up the blog in a single day. So much has changed over the years. Thanks to those who’ve been along for the ride the entire time. Welcome to those who’ve joined us recently. Look how far we’ve come!! Let us know if there are new ideas or resources you’d like us to create.
Question: Why would you routinely do dog blood work on young and seemingly healthy dogs? Answer: Because sometimes you find things and can catch them before the medical issue gets worse. This appears to be the case with Clover. We did routine blood work at the end of February, and we’ve been on a medical mystery tour ever since. She does not seem sick at all, so that keeps our worry on simmer (not boil), but it’s still quite weird.
