Author: John McCormick

Two Puppy St. Weilers Play Rough We’re Beckett and Takeko, two blogging Saint-Weiler dogs ,,, When adults, we’ll be big and sleep like giant redwood logs.   We get to run when our owners go outside for a jog. Our owners think we’re as cute as English hedgehogs. We hope they don’t make us drink any sailors’ grog …   They won’t think we’re so cute when we’re lost in dense fog - or perhaps in a big city that’s congested with smog and full of noisy cars that cause a giant traffic clog. Or we jump headfirst into...

Studies of various dogs’ facial expressions and how they change in carefully staged conditions have shown that when they see a human they raise their eyebrows. More importantly, if their little eye spies their owner instead of some other human the dog will do something that shows what they are thinking is really true love. That thing, saved for their owner is that they will tend to raise the left eyebrow more than the right. Of course that only counts if they have eyebrows and you can see them. On some large breeds like this Great Dane they mostly...

We all like to believe our beloved companion dog is only separated from human friends by lack of an opposable thumbs and inability to form words but if you believe in heaven do you also believe your dog will be there with you? (In my case it would involve about 25 or more dogs (“about” because I’m not dead yet).) Well it may interest you to learn that you aren’t alone, even Popes have differing opinions But is this dog praying for something in its Kong? Or is she saying grace? Have recent Popes really said all dogs go...

The canis lupus familiaris (domesticated dog) species fascinates humans, as well it should. There is considerable evidence that without tame dogs to help humans would probably never have moved from hunter/gatherers to herders and farmers. Communication helped that to happen. Horses are great transportation but aren’t very smart; they also don’t bond with people enough that they naturally watch for dangers posed to their owners. Horse owners may disagree but I’ve been a horse breeder and they simply aren’t as smart or not smart in the same way as a dog. Dogs, on the other hand, naturally guard us...

Do you know people who speak very little and you know, from talking with them, that they don‘t read newspapers or magazines, and probably don’t even watch TV news? They may well be what is called functionally illiterate. Would it surprise you to know your dog could learn more words than many eighth graders? In my personal experience I had a Great Dane service dog that reliably understood between 20 and 30 command words WITHOUT any particular emphasis on learning them - she essentially just picked them up the way a human child does. For example, she easily understood...