The Pibble Hill kitten room hosted two blind tuxedo kittens over the summer, and it’s been so much fun watching Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire get healthy, grow up, and get adopted!

Meet Elsie and read her story in the Kittens Shouldn’t Be Single Blog.

Our last, and often greatest, gift to our animal companions might just be a peaceful passing – indeed, the word “euthanasia” means “a good death.”

When we think about animals who need help in shelters, most people picture a sad-eyed dog behind bars. But the animals most at risk of dying in shelters worldwide are feline.

In the United States, the ASPCA estimates that 17% of shelter cats are currently being euthanized, compared to 13% of shelter dogs. A lot of this discrepancy is because people don’t come to pick up their cats – perhaps because many cats are loosely owned by the community.

I’ve heard this one probably hundreds of times at this point, from clients, volunteers, shelter workers, adopters… “Won’t playing tug with my dog make him aggressive?”

How often is someone told to “train that dog” when the dog is doing dog things? Dogs are mischievous, thoughtful, creative and determined, they are interested in smells and opportunities that baffle humans and challenge us to live with them. The primary role of dogs in North American homes is as a pet, and this job is one of the most difficult things we could ask a dog to learn to do, yet they do it beautifully. How does this happen, and what are we doing to help our dogs to be even more successful? The answer to these questions lies in having a good understanding of how learning works, and by extension, how training can guide what to do to either optimize the behaviour of the dogs we live with, or to teach them new and useful behaviours.

Rosie was a loving, beautiful dog with doting owners, but in the end, her predatory instinct made her too dangerous for human society. Her attack on another dog was the last straw for her owners, who vowed never to adopt from a shelter again.