Blog

  • Food reactions in dogs: where to start

    Food reactions in dogs: where to start

    Parts 1 and 2 of this series were about understanding what food reactions actually are, how to identify them and what is in the food that might be triggering them. This part is about what to do with that understanding when your dog is in front of you and you suspect something might not be… Read more

  • Commercial food and food reactions: what’s actually in that bag

    Commercial food and food reactions: what’s actually in that bag

    When someone says their dog is allergic to chicken, what they almost always mean is that their dog reacted to a food with chicken on the label. Those are not the same observation, and the gap between them is what this article is about. In this second article, I move from the “reaction” part of… Read more

  • Food reactions in dogs: four mechanisms that are not the same thing

    Food reactions in dogs: four mechanisms that are not the same thing

    “Reaction to food” is not one thing. It is an umbrella term covering four fundamentally different mechanisms that produce overlapping symptoms but require different responses. Conflating them does not just lead to wrong conclusions — in some cases it leads to management strategies that actively make things worse. Read more

  • The dog on paper vs. the dog in front of me – are labels destiny?

    The dog on paper vs. the dog in front of me – are labels destiny?

    A few nights ago, I saw a story on Instagram – the person had x-rayed her young dog and the HD score came back as C/D. She was heartbroken. The replies were kind, but they carried a particular heaviness – a feeling that a line had been crossed, that certain lives or activities might no… Read more

  • Dog ethics, unpacked (Part 3)

    Dog ethics, unpacked (Part 3)

    The first two posts in this series were about mechanisms and limits: how breeding decisions shape populations over time, and what genetic testing can and cannot tell us when outcomes are uncertain. This post is about a different kind of question: what kind of future for dogs counts as better? Read more

  • Risk and uncertainty of dog genetics, unpacked (Part 2)

    Risk and uncertainty of dog genetics, unpacked (Part 2)

    Health discussions in dog breeding often sound more decisive than the evidence allows. Genetic information is probabilistic, contextual, and population-dependent, but it is repeatedly treated as categorical, individual, and decisive. Read more