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Many women have said that during their pregnancies, their dog became more clingy, or more protective, or simply more attentive, as if they knew. Some women have claimed the dogs behavior changed even before a positive pregnancy test. Is that possible?

You get lost, you make your way back with a general sense of direction combined with I recognize that house…I remember passing this post office. And then, of course, theres the map app on your phone, which can guide you anywhere. Your dog gets lost, sometimes many miles from home, and she finds her way back, too. How?

Do dogs ever get C-sections?

I know youre not supposed to give your dog raw food because it can contain live bacteria that can make your pet sick, and cooking will kill all the harmful germs. But what about a raw bone?

Noise levels in shelters can easily exceed 100 decibels (think jack hammer or power lawn mower), and 6 months of exposure to that amount of noise results in hearing loss for dogs. Shelter dogs are also often confined to small spaces and dont get to interact much either with other dogs or with people, leaving them socially isolated. They sleep less in shelters, too, about 11 hours a day, according to one study, compared with 14 hours a day in a household environment.

Dogs barking at the mailman are fairly common, but some 6,000 attacks on letter carriers occur each year, according to the U.S. Postal Service, and some are quite serious. Among the cities with the greatest number of attacks: Houston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and Minneapolis. But attacks occur all over the country, involving not just bites but also knocking letter carriers to the ground, sometimes necessitating emergency room visits.

Want to learn about the new frontiers in DNA tests for dogs? Or how dogs can increase support and motivation for increased physical activity - and increased health? Or even about non-dog animal matters, like how people and cheetahs can be expected to share the same landscape? And would you like to learn about all these things for free? Well, you can.

Labrador retrievers have remained the most popular dog breed for almost three decades, but Lab lovers who opt for chocolate rather than black or yellow Labs may be in for more veterinary bills - and heartache. A study of some 2,000 Labs published in Canine Genetics and Epidemiology shows that chocolate Labs are two times as likely to get dermatological problems in the form of hot spots. They are also more likely to end up with otitis externa - the canine version of swimmers ear. They die younger, too - at an average age of 10.7 years as opposed to 12 years for the other two colors.

As the popularity of raw-meat diets for dogs has increased, so have their levels of dangerous bacteria. When researchers in the Netherlands tested 60 raw-meat products intended for dogs, more than half of them had levels of bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter that exceeded the maximum threshold set by the European Union. The products were made in Scandinavia, Germany, and the United Kingdom, all of which have hygiene standards comparable to ours. E coli, found in about a third of the samples, can cause serious illnesses, and even death in some cases.

Apparently youve subscribed to the right publication for information on how best to take care of your pet. Your Dog has won an award from the Dog Writers Association of America in the category of best newsletter or newspaper devoted entirely to animals.

The results are in for which state has the highest proportion of households with dogs - and the winner is Idaho, with 58 percent of homes having at least one, says the American Veterinary Medical Association.

More than 400,000 people die each year from malaria, with some 2,000 diagnoses annually in the U.S. And the situation is about to get worse. A mosquito-born disease, malaria is once again on the uptick. The reason, in part, is that tests designed to detect malaria early are no longer working as well because mutant malaria parasites are not producing the specific protein those tests were designed to detect. But dogs might be able to do what the tests cannot.