Featured Articles
Issue 6: May 2003
Welcome to our sixth issue of the pets.ca newsletter. We would like to welcome Petcare pet insurance as the featured sponsor this month. Their pet insurance plans will give you peace of mind if ever your cat or dog should …
Dog is a Crotch Sniffer – Pet tip 245
Most dog owners are aware that dog noses are extremely sensitive. This is due to the quantity of olfactory or ‘smell’ receptors in a dog’s nose. Whereas humans have around five million olfactory receptors, dogs have two hundred and twenty million. This makes their noses exponentially more sensitive than a human’s. Most times a dog’s sensitive nose works to our benefit. All kinds of dogs are used as service dogs to help humans find missing people, sniff out explosives, drugs etc. They can smell people coming from quite a distance and alert us to their presence. There are some embarrassing occasions however, when a dog’s nose is just too sensitive from our human perspective. Most notably this occurs when dogs try to sniff humans in their private areas.
This behaviour is a common one in dogs and equally common is the fact that it upsets most dog owners. The reason some dogs sniff at a human’s private parts is the same reason they sniff the private parts of other dogs. We know that when they smell other dogs in this way they can tell the sex, rank (is the dog more dominant or submissive) age and other information about the dog.
Dog Tricks – Dog Training Level 2
Once you’ve mastered basic dog tricks (people call them dog tricks but many of these are part of obedience training) such as “sit” and ‘”lie down” you can easily move onto other dog tricks. Some dog tricks are really just for fun and for bonding with your dog, but other dog tricks are really important. These ‘tricks’ can save your dog from injury or worse.
COME
Another extremely important command is the ‘come’ command. It is most important when you want your dog to come to you in case of an emergency, like before he/she runs onto a dangerous road. You want your dog to come to you under any circumstance, so it is important to associate the ‘come’ command with positive rewards and use it in as many situations as possible. For example, use the command to call the dog while he/she is playing in the dog park. Instead of using the come command only to end the play session, reward the dog and then allow him/her to return to his/her friends. The dog will then realize that by coming to you, his/her play session will not necessarily end.
Indoor Cats
Many people believe it must be a boring life to live indoors all the time, as in the case of indoor cats. However, if you put yourself in your cat’s shoes, imagine what a luxurious life you have. You can …
Invisible Fences and Dogs
With animals, just like with people, there’s a difference between traumatic fears and plain old everyday fears. Traumatic fears in animals are always bad news; they last forever, and they can spread. Even if you do manage to put together …
Dog Constipation – Cat Constipation
Constipation – cat constipated dog constipated – Answered by Dr. Slome
Constipation in cats and dogs – General rules of thumb
Let me start by separating both cat and dog conditions since they are very different even though the symptoms …
Dog Jumps on Counter – Pet tip 204
There’s a really cute anonymous quote that says “never trust a dog to watch your food”. This advice should be well heeded because even though we trust dogs to protect us and warn us when trouble is near, most untrained …
Cat Communication
Cats do not use words and vocabulary like we do, but they still communicate with one another. Imagine a society without words, where you can determine someone’s mood by just looking at them. Where you can have an entire conversation …
Cat Diabetes
In North America, one of the up and coming disease “epidemics” to be noted in people is diabetes (diabetes mellitus). This is a disease that most often affects obese, middle-aged patients. Coincidently, the same phenomenon can be found in our …
