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There’s whitish or clear gook in the inner corner of your dog’s eye. Should you be concerned? Nope. It’s a normal dog thing. Just put warm water on a cotton ball and wipe the lower lid to remove it.

• Dogs Get White Coat Hypertension, Too
• Short Takes
• Yes, 10 Percent of Your Dog’s Total Calories as Treats, But What’s 10 Percent?
• New Guidelines for Helping an Itchy Dog
• But Wasn’t the Dog Dumped Because He Didn’t Make a Good Pet? 
• When a Dog is Born with a Hole by His Heart
• How to Keep a Dog from Climbing the Canine Ladder of Aggression
• Dear Doctor

High blood pressure readings at the veterinarian’s office can lead to an expensive workup that includes various blood screenings and other tests. After all, canine high blood pressure can be a sign of kidney disease and other serious conditions. But what if your dog simply has white coat hypertension — blood pressure that’s too high at the doctor’s office because of anxiety about being there but perfectly fine at other times?

More than 50 percent of dogs in the U.S. are estimated to be overweight. Part of the reason may be a psychological problem — yours. In many households, people turn food into currency for love. They fear that withholding as much food or as many treats as their dog wants will fray the bond they have with their pet. It won’t — if you show your pet love in all the other important ways.

Different breeds of dogs dig for different reasons. Terriers, originally bred to dig for varmints that burrow into the ground, might dig fast and furiously in the dirt — or bed linens — to work through their hereditary instinct. They’re figuratively engaging in the so-called appetitive phase of preda-
tory behavior.

The COVID pandemic led to more Zooming and FaceTiming, including for veterinary care. And it may be easy to assume that most people have come to prefer such virtual vet visits because it’s more convenient than taking your dog to the doctor. But they don’t.

You may have heard that treats should make up no more than 10 percent of your dog’s calories. But if you don’t know how many calories your dog should be consuming in the first place, that advice isn’t so handy-dandy. Fortunately, there’s a formula for the right number of daily calories overall, at least if your dog weighs between 5 and 55 pounds: 30 x ideal weight (in kilograms) + 70.

A healthy dog scratches himself so little that you don’t even really notice it, and he certainly doesn’t spend time biting or licking his coat. More than a few seconds of scratching here or there over the course of a day (or rolling against a surface to relieve itchiness), and there’s a good chance something is wrong.

People often think that if a dog has wound up at a shelter after living in someone else’s home, it’s because he didn’t make a good pet. Maybe he kept soiling the carpet, they assume, or was aggressive, or just didn’t know how to get along with people. Or maybe he’s a wallet emptier due to ongoing health problems. In other words, the dog is believed to be damaged goods. But that’s very often not the case.

When a developing puppy is growing inside his mother, he does not need to breathe. The oxygen he requires to mature in utero comes not from his lungs but from the umbilical cord. Thus, after coursing through the body, blood does not travel through the fetus’s lungs to pick up oxygen for another pump out to the body by the heart. The lungs remain deflated, and blood bypasses them through a kind of shunt called the ductus arteriosus.

Dogs don’t act aggressively to strut their stuff or show who’s dominant. That’s a human thing. Canine aggression is a response to what a dog perceives as a threat. With aggressive behavior, the dog is trying to deflect the threat and restore harmony. Dogs so want harmony, in fact, that most of the rungs on the Canine Ladder of Aggression, a graphic devised by British veterinary surgeon and behaviorist Kendal Shepherd, BVSc, are not acts of aggression at all but signs of appeasement. They include such behaviors as yawning, nose licking, and turning away. They all mean “I’m uncomfortable; you’re making me anxious. Can you please stop doing the thing that’s making me feel stressed and unsafe?”

Q: I have three senior dogs who have always been together sharing everything. At some point, one will die or, more likely, need to be put down. What is the best way of letting the other two know that one has passed and will not be coming home? If the dog has to be euthanized at the vet’s office, should I bring all three with me so that the others know their friend has passed?