One of the great pleasures of a cool summer night is sleeping with the bedroom windows open. The chirping crickets in my yard combined with the distant hum of Interstate 395 make a for a soothing lullaby that puts me right to sleep. Sadly, the recent stretch of humid weather has forced our bedroom into […]

Read more "Things That Go Bark in the Night"

When we go away, leaving the dogs behind, I wonder who misses the other more, us or them? Over the weekend, we went to visit some friends in New Hampshire. On trips like this we generally don’t bring the dogs with us. They get all worked up around new places and new people, so I […]

Read more "Separation Anxiety"

This week, I took one for the team. In the interest of spending less on gas, my wife and I traded cars. Now I’m stuck in a vehicle that is a symbol of everything that I’m against. With my Subaru in need of some major work last summer, I traded it in for a Toyota […]

Read more "My Labrador retriever is smarter than your co-pilot"

I really should be careful about what I teach my dogs. When they were puppies, we enrolled them in basic obedience classes. The idea was to teach them to perform certain behaviors on command. We did this with a food-based system of rewards: I say “sit.” The dog sits. The dog gets food. Simple enough, […]

Read more "The Nobel Prize for Unintended Consequences"

Walking through the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in a state of trance induced by ten hours of air travel, I was more than a little surprised to see a woman playing fetch with her dog in the middle of the terminal. My wife and I were on our way home from a friend’s wedding. We […]

Read more "When Dogs Fly"