DOG OWNERSHIP

John McKee had sons of his own, and I have a loving father, but when my wife and I moved next door to John almost 20 years ago, something other than blood brought us to those roles like two puzzle pieces that had gone missing but unexpectedly made their way into each others waiting spaces. It satisfied in the way that only completing a puzzle could. Pick a day, and you might have seen…

Your dogs heart disease has progressed to the point that there are no more medicines to try, no higher dosages to give, no more procedures to perform. Or her liver failure has reached a tipping point; the toxins are building up faster in her body than they can be cleared. Or her dementia has crossed a certain line - she interacts with you much less frequently and now spends a lot of her time…

Because euthanasia is an option when it comes to our dogs, chances are high that euthanasia is in your dogs future. Very few dogs succumb painlessly in their sleep, and most people actively choose to take a dog out of her suffering rather than wait for a painful death to come naturally. But where will the euthanasia occur? …

Regular readers of this page are by now fairly well acquainted with my canine family members, border collie Franklin and shiba inu Rosie. What you may not be aware of is that they not only number among my loved ones but also are my office mates. While I frequently interview veterinarians on the campus of Tufts Cummings School and watch them performing ultrasounds of dogs and overseeing pets on dialysis machines and other apparatus…

n One of the perks of working for Ben & Jerrys, the gourmet ice cream company with corporate headquarters in Vermont, is the three free pints of ice cream, frozen yogurt, or sherbet that employees may take each day. But for some Ben & Jerry staffers, an even bigger perk is being allowed to bring their dog to the office. …

For situations in which a dog needs to be on a lead, he says, you need [more of] a solid bridge between you and the dog for proper control at all times, adding, if your dog can go 15 or 20 feet in front of you and 15 or 20 feet behind, theres not a lot of leadership from you. Youre handing over to your dog an unusual dose of freedom. Thats okay if youre walking down a hedgerow looking for rabbits. But when youre out in public, a retractable lead surrenders control to the dog, giving him too much autonomy to make bad decisions.

Some say that peoples desire for purebred dogs leads to the creation of puppy mills, large commercial breeding operations with too many bitches and too many puppies to be handled humanely, all for the purpose of producing particular breeds of dogs for those who want, say, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel or other type of dog unmixed with any other breed. The upshot: puppies who are treated like merchandise rather than as the sentient beings…

As for the whole idea that you cannot breed dogs until the shelters are empty, its a non-starter, AKC judge Charlotte McGowen says. Rescue dogs are big business in themselves. She comments, you get a rescue dog and are [told] thatll be $500, please. Tuftss Jerold Bell, DVM, corroborates her thinking. America wants puppies, but there arent enough of them, he says. Thats what helps keep puppy mills in business. As for all those strays out…

Say American Kennel Club, and many people automatically think of terms like pedigree dogs and breed purity, and they dont like the sound of them. They smack of elitism and purposeful exclusion, conjuring up images of perfectly coiffed people showing perfectly coiffed Afghans and Irish setters at the Westminster Dog Show - the sort who wouldnt consort with the hoi polloi and who wouldnt let their dogs cavort with a mutt. Detractors say, too,…

The future is here, in South Korea specifically, at a company called the Sooam Biotech Research Foundation. The firm just finished holding a contest in Great Britain, offering to clone at a steep discount the beloved dog of whoever writes the best essay and submits the best photos and videotape to demonstrate that the exact genes of their canine companion should live on in another animal. The usual price for dog cloning at Sooam…

One of the first things my wife and I did after our son was born was have a will made up. It made perfect sense. Who was going to take care of him if we died or became incapacitated before he became of age? Who was going to watch over the money we left him? The chances of our dying prematurely were slim, but we needed to have everything in order in case tragedy struck.Why didnt we think to make the same kind of provisions for our dog?

Have you made arrangements for your dogs welfare in the event that you can no longer take care of him? Sometimes pets are discovered in a persons home days after a tragedy such as an illness or accident that sends the owner to the hospital, or after the persons death, says the Humane Society of the United States. The reason, presumably, is that because dogs and other companion animals have shorter life-spans than their human caregivers, we expect them to go first and dont make arrangements for their well-being should we suddenly become unavailable.