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Your dog is scared to death of the vacuum cleaner, but you assume she’ll get over it once she has seen you use it a few times. She won’t. If your dog has a specific fear, the only way to help her get past it is to expose her gradually to whatever she’s afraid of. In the case of a vacuum cleaner, that might mean keeping it out in the open for a while and letting her sniff it when she wants to, then perhaps moving to vacuuming in a room that’s far from where she generally hangs out and keeping the door closed while you do so.
If your pet is afraid of other dogs, walk her where you’re not likely to see any—or at least very few, and at a distance. Arrange a short introduction with a sweet, gentle dog who doesn’t engage in any roughhousing. Throw your dog and the other one treats and speak in encouraging tones, removing your pet from the situation if she gets too upset. Then try again another day.

If your dog keeps shaking her head, take her to the vet. She could be afflicted with anything from an ear infection to a neurological issue. But if she does full-body shakeouts, there’s nothing to be concerned about. It’s just her way of regrouping or transitioning from one activity to another.

Why would a dog yell at the mail carrier day after day, even though the postal worker always comes at the exact same time and does the exact same thing at your front door? Why do some dogs take their food far from their bowl to eat, while others lick you for far longer than can comfortably be tolerated? Truth be told, they have a canine rationale for all their behaviors, and if you know it, you won’t find their actions so strange, or annoying.

Your dog has started drinking more water and begun urinating in the house. You take her to the veterinarian for a workup and discover she has Cushing’s disease. The doctor prescribes the appropriate medication and you administer it faithfully, but your dog continues to urinate indoors, which she has not done since she was a puppy. Was the disease misdiagnosed? Is she on the wrong medication, or the wrong dose?

Stainless steel, glass, ceramic, plastic—does it really matter which material you choose for your dog’s food bowl? Yes. Here’s why.

Q: My dog—a 13-pound terrier mix—loves a particular brand of food, and that’s what I feed her. But this month, I will be traveling with her to Italy for two weeks, and, of course, I cannot feed her the preferred brand for that period.
I’m wondering if freeze-dried food would be a suitable substitute, or if that would be too drastic a change. What might you recommend? Thank you for your consideration.
Gordon Shumaker
Woodbury Minnesota

Q: I appreciated your article last month about not falling while walking your dog. I actually have a problem much closer to home—in my home, in fact. Often (pretty much daily) when I’m walking through the house, my dog (a 10-year-old Maltipoo) cuts right in front of me. Setting aside the issue that he needs to be trained not to do this, do dogs not have a sense of space and their place in it? Could it be that their peripheral vision is lacking? Or might there be some other biological cause? I never move without looking down out of fear of tripping over him.

Imagine if each day you went to open up your favorite websites for news or new ideas, and the same articles kept popping up over and over, except for a couple of short bits off to the side. That’s how it is for a dog who is taken on the same route, or the same couple of routes, for all her walks. When a dog goes outside, she’s not just relieving herself. She’s reading her world—by sight and hearing but mostly through scent. If she pretty much has to keep “reading” the same thing over and over, life can feel awfully tedious. Here’s how to make your dog’s walks more enlivening.

Many dog owners aren’t sure how to determine their dog’s body condition. Even more confusing, a recent Pet Obesity U.S. Prevalence Survey found that more than a third of people with dogs consider their body condition “normal” when their veterinarians actually classified the pets as overweight or obese. So where might this disconnect come from?

• Post Pup-tum Depression?
• Short Takes 
• Excessive Licking in the Summer Could Indicate a Hot Spot
• Dog-Walking Injuries on the Rise
• On Whether to Give a Poor Dog a Bone
• You’ve Told the Vet Your Dog’s Symptoms, But Have You Told Him Your Dog’s Story?>
• You Want to Rent the Apartment, But the Lease Says ‘No Pets Allowed
• Dear Doctor

We’ve all heard of the baby blues—that short-term drop in mood coupled with melancholy soon after a baby’s birth. It turns out that “parents” of new puppies can experience the “baby” blues, too.

Your dog runs over to someone who doesn’t like dogs or worse, jumps on the person. Or he starts bothering another dog. Your instinct might be to yell at your pet to stop and make a lot of fuss with gesticulations. But all of that fanfare is counterproductive; the commotion only begets more commotion.