Dog Tidbits

When Lisa came home one evening and got out of her car, a puppy came up to her by the garage, tail wagging — but also stood off a bit. The dog was thin, as if she hadn’t eaten in a long time. Lisa loves dogs. So she scooched down, called to this one, and held her hand out, but the puppy backed away and wouldn’t let Lisa come near.

The puppy had no dog collar or tag. We live in a rural area in McDonald, Tennessee, with woods in front and in back that are filled with deer, turkeys, and rabbits. We’d never seen this little puppy before and didn’t know our neighbors and had never seen this particular… Continue reading | 1 Comment

Have you ever wondered why dogs eat poop and cat litter? I never did before. All the time Faith has been with us, she’s never exhibited any interest in either poop or cat litter. But then we adopted Mac — who went after our cat’s poop and kitty litter the first chance he got. It grossed both Lisa and me out — especially when he wanted to lick us after eating it. Yuck!

But it turns out that dogs eating poop and cat litter is as normal — and as tasty — to some dogs as eating ham and cheese sandwiches is to us humans.

Why Dogs Eat Poop

All the time we’ve had our fearful dog Faith, we’ve never had any snow to speak of — until a couple of weekends ago. That was the weekend that the two lost Labs came onto our front porch and stayed with us for the weekend.

Like many fearful dogs, Faith has a number of hang-ups, which we call the “secret rules that govern her life.” One rule is that nothing should be out of place. If something is, Faith is afraid to go near it. So you can imagine her reaction that Saturday morning when I opened the living room door onto the deck to let her and Mac out to pee and we found the deck… Continue reading

A couple of months ago I read an article in the New York Times about menu psychology. The article talked about how menu engineers and menu consultants have been helping chain restaurants revamp their menus to attract more diners. One marketing technique the article mentioned was using descriptive labels, which can increase sales by up to 27%.

Dr. Brian Wansink, who’s the director of Cornell University’s Food and Brand Lab, came up with four categories of descriptive menu labels:
. . . geographic labels like “Southwestern Tex-Mex salad,” nostalgia labels like “ye old potato bread,” sensory labels like “buttery plump pasta” and brand names.
The article went on to mention that some chains… Continue reading

I think most of us would agree that it’s important for our dog to have a dog collar tag in case she should stray or get lost. Today, the dog microchip has become a popular way to identify your dog as well. In fact, some people use dog microchips instead of dog collar tags. But I think it’s important that a dog have both a dog collar tag and a dog microchip.

Why do I think it’s important? Because one-third of all pets will become lost during their lives. And — according to one statistic I saw — 95% of those lost pets will remain lost. That second statistic might be excessively high, but even a 50% rate of nonrecovery is too high.

My belief in the importance… Continue reading