Categories
Activities & Enrichment Dogs Life at Home Training & Grooming

Does Your Dog Want to be a Therapy Dog?

Article

Reading Time: 4 minutes Making therapy visits can be great enrichment for the right dog and make you feel good about giving back to the community. But it’s important that therapy pets love their work, and for some dogs it may be too stressful. If you’re considering getting into this, make sure your dog will be an enthusiastic partner. […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home

Cat Play the Right Way: 7 Mistakes to Avoid

Article

Reading Time: 5 minutes Nature designed cats to be efficient little predators and to hunt even when they’re not hungry (because who knows when the next meal will scamper by?). Play is the indoor cat’s version of hunting. It’s an expression of a host of hardwired feline behaviors. Cats who do not use their minds and bodies in natural […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Dogs Life at Home Other Training & Grooming

7 Ways to Create Harmony in a Millennial Pet Household

Article

Reading Time: 3 minutes Lots of factors set millennials apart from previous generations. For starters, they like to share things like houses and apartments. They are also adopting pets as family members before considering marriage and human children. This means that several pets can find themselves co-habiting too. Here’s what to consider to ensure that individual pets get along […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Better Together? A Kitten Combo is Fun and Smart

Article

Reading Time: 3 minutes Thinking about a kitten? Consider adopting two. Acquiring a pair of kittens is good for their physical and emotional health and fun for their humans. Here’s what to know. Anne is a curious caramel tiger kitten, who chirps sweetly to herself as she goes about her day, jumping in and out of laps, proudly carrying […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Remedial Kitty Socialization: Smoothing Rough Edges

Article

Reading Time: 4 minutes If kittens don’t receive appropriate handling and socialization early in life, they can develop undesirable habits. Here’s how to help tame their behavior. Mollie was turned in to the shelter when she was approximately 4 weeks old, a singleton with no mom in sight. She languished in a cage until we saw her photo posted, […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Dogs Fears & Anxieties Life at Home Training & Grooming

Should You Ignore Your Dog When Leaving the House?

Article

Reading Time: 3 minutes A new study casts doubt on a mainstay of teaching dogs to stay home alone. Here’s what it found. Everyone’s heard the advice: ignore your dog when leaving the house and returning. The claim is that long goodbyes and excited reunions might cause separation anxiety, but if you don’t make a fuss, the dog will […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Life at Home

How to Feed a Cat–Naturally

Article

Reading Time: 4 minutes How cats eat plays a pivotal role in their day-to-day satisfaction with life. Here’s what to know about letting them eat the way nature intended. The cat hears the rustle of grass and the ultrasonic squeak that tells her there’s a mouse nearby. Her ears swivel to home in on the location of her prey. […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Dogs Fears & Anxieties New Pets Training & Grooming

Fear, stress, and puppy brain development: what to know

Article

Reading Time: 4 minutes The dog brain is very different from that of wild dogs, so that in some ways puppies are born ready to fit into the human world. But the puppy brain still has a lot of developing to do after birth, and understanding that process is important to raising confident, well-adjusted dogs. It’s now generally believed […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Cats Dogs Fears & Anxieties New Pets Shelters & Fostering

Reading to shelter pets can lower stress, improve adoption chances

Article

Reading Time: 4 minutes Who doesn’t love being told a story? Dogs and cats are no different. Here’s how shelter reading plans can improve pets’ chances of adoption. Imagine you are housed in a shelter, suffering loud noises from other anxious animals and smelling scents that definitely aren’t from a home. You enjoy little social interaction and are confined […]

Categories
Activities & Enrichment Dogs Life at Home New Pets Training & Grooming

Gotcha! Why grabbing your puppy’s collar needs to be fun

Article

Reading Time: 2 minutes Sometimes you need to catch your puppy by the collar if he’s eating something dangerous or about to take a flying leap and you need to stop him quick. Here’s how to successfully teach him to like having his collar handled so he doesn’t respond aggressively during these incidents. “Time out!” I called. Seven people […]