February 2019 - You love your dog and don’t mind giving him table scraps here and there. But it has gotten to the point that every time you sit down to eat, he’s there — begging, nudging, drooling, and beseeching with wide eyes for some of your meal. How has something that you thought was cute and tried to be nice about — and loving about — turned into such a persistent, annoying problem?
It seems like your dog is trying to get back at you. But being naughty may mean she's afraid to be left alone.
She’s perfectly house trained as long as you’re home but relieves herself on the floor when you’re not there, making you pay for leaving her alone. Or she pulls all the trash out of the garbage can and strews it throughout the house. Rest assured she’s not being vindictive. She’s feeling panicked.
With the state of Florida banning greyhound racing by the end of 2020 in a historic November vote, that means only six dog tracks will be left in a smattering of other states: Arkansas, Alabama, Iowa, Texas, and West Virginia. It’s a boon for the greyhounds, as dog racing is not a sport. It’s a gambling industry that treats the dogs like dice, which is to say, as if they weren’t sentient beings. They’re kept in small cages up to 23 hours a day, with their welfare consistently coming after earnings; a dog dies on the track every three days in Florida alone.
You may be negating the benefits if you're feeding her the wrong treats.
Tufts veterinary nutritionist Cailin Heinze, VMD, is only too familiar with scenarios like the following: “We had this little dog who needed surgery to remove bladder stones made of calcium oxalate,” she says. “After that, she was prescribed a diet that would make the stones less likely to recur. Even so, the stones kept coming back. She had to undergo two more operations to remove more stones. We asked the owner what was going on. ‘Well, I’m feeding the diet you recommended,’ he said.
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