Insights, tips, and stories to help you better understand and communicate with your dog.
A study published in Biological Psychology on October 24, 2026 found something that feels obvious but turns out to be genuinely interesting when you look at the mechanism: physically touching your dog after a stressful event doesn't just calm you down in that moment. It appears to make you more resilient to the next stressful thing that comes along.
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As of yesterday, the University of Arizona published details of a new cognitive assessment that can detect early-stage dementia in dogs as young as seven or eight, years before the symptoms most owners would recognise actually show up.
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The Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine published research this month that should change how a lot of owners think about their ageing dog's accidents indoors.
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A product designed to keep your dog comfortable on a hot day shouldn't be a neurotoxin risk. And yet, research published in the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association on October 12, 2026 found exactly that: some polyacrylamide-based hydrogel products, including the kind used in popular pet cooling mats and wraps, contain acrylamide, a known neurotoxin.
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Copper hepatopathy kills Labrador Retrievers quietly. By the time most owners notice anything wrong, the liver has often been accumulating copper for years, and some of that damage doesn't reverse.
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A study published on October 7, 2026 in PLOS One put activity trackers on co-sleeping dogs and their owners, and the finding is a bit embarrassing for us. When one party stirred at night, it was more often the human who moved first, with the dog following, not the other way around.
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A paper published in 2020 in Scientific Reports became something of a landmark in dog behaviour circles. It surveyed 13,715 Finnish dogs and found that 72.5% showed at least one problematic behaviour, with fear and aggression cropping up at rates that genuinely alarmed owners and vets alike. That figure got cited everywhere. It shaped how a lot of people talked about whether their dog was "normal".
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Published September 29, 2026
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A study published in Scientific Reports on September 24, 2026 found something that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who's ever had a rough evening on the sofa with a dog pressed against them: dogs pay more attention to human crying than to humming. All dogs. Across the board.
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The top reason dog owners refuse vaccines, according to a study presented at the Fetch National Harbor Veterinary Conference on September 19, 2026, is not cost. Not convenience. Not distrust of vets. It's that owners simply don't believe their dog is at risk.
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A dog in Florida died within hours of swimming in a lake last summer. The cause was cyanobacteria, commonly called blue-green algae, and the owner had no idea the water was dangerous. It looked fine.
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A study published this month in Animal Cognition found that dogs, despite thousands of years of living alongside humans, consistently pay more attention to the sound of another dog than to a human voice. Not a little more. Consistently, behaviourally, measurably more.
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