Dog Musings

Dog Musings

NW News Clover’s First Try at a NW2 Title

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.

Read More NW News Clover’s First Try at a NW2 Title
Dog Musings

Champion of My Heart Site 15th Anniversary

Honestly, I cannot fathom that our Champion of My Heart site is celebrating 15 years. This little indie site keeps on chugging along. Forget so-called DOG YEARS. That’s way more than an EON AGO in publishing. The first post went live on April 13, 2007, which was a Friday the 13th. It’s funny looking back at early content. Apparently, I had more time for my craft and was much more lyrical back then. Lately, I focus on providing interesting and practical information about dogs and veterinary topics, with the occasional more personal post about my current generation of dogs. Take a look back (and ahead) with me, won’t you?

Read More Champion of My Heart Site 15th Anniversary
Dog Musings | Hot News | Newsworthy

That New Canine Cancer Risk Data

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.

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Audio Files | Dog Musings | Dog Training | Dog Training Resources

Canine Relaxation Protocol Demo

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.

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Dog Life | Dog Musings | Puppy Pix

Happy Chonksgiving With Foster Puppies

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

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Dog Musings

Liver Dog Treat Recipe

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.

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Dog Musings

Trend Toward Smaller Dogs | Top 5 Ways It May Affect You

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.

Read More Trend Toward Smaller Dogs | Top 5 Ways It May Affect You
Dog Gripe | Dog Musings | Entirely Off Topic | The Story of Clover

Your Earlobes Aren’t Worried – A Tip From the Anxiety Trenches

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.

Read More Your Earlobes Aren’t Worried – A Tip From the Anxiety Trenches
Dog Gripe | Dog Life | Dog Musings | Newsworthy | The Story of Clover

Neutropenia in Dogs – A Clover Mystery

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.

Read More Neutropenia in Dogs – A Clover Mystery
Dog Life | Dog Musings | Dog Photo | Dog Product Review | Dog Video | Dog Video Gallery | Sponsored Post | The Story of Clover

Dog Birthday Party Clover’s Big 03

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!

Read More Dog Birthday Party Clover’s Big 03

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