Musing Number One: Pet Food in Grocery Stores

This evening on a trip to the grocery store, something dawned on me. As I was perusing the isles of packaged goods I noticed something. I could find dog food in the same isle that I could find Armor All car cleaner. Kitty litter in the same isle as Bleach. My first feeling on this was astonishment at the idea that I had never realized how incredibly telling that is. We value so little our companion animals, that their food is able to be stocked on the same shelves as hazardous chemicals. Not that I would ever necessarily buy my dog food from the grocery store, but some people must for it to be stocked there, so grocery stores, get a clue. Stock this stuff elsewhere. It doesn’t belong with the cleaners.

Musing Number Two: Yelling at a Dog for Barking

Each morning and each evening I go on a walk with Pepper. He is the Heinz 57 of a dog that I live with. As we stroll down our street, inevitably one of the neighborhood dogs will begin barking. Just as we can expect the greetings from the dogs, so too can we expect some intense yelling from our human neighbors. Though I understand that a sudden dog bark can be startling, and some dogs are prone to barking a lot, there is no reason in my mind to yell at them for doing so. Thinking from the point of view of say, the Dog Whisperer, you’re not establishing yourself as being in control when you show this behavior to your dog. Moreover you are teaching them to not bark when a stranger is in the area. Does that seem like a good thing? Of course there are always going to be extremes, dogs that quite literally bark at the wind, but in these cases, a consisten and calm approach, telling the dog “to be quiet” will more likely show results then lashing out at the dog.