Joan Merriam

3 days ago | whole-dog-journal.com | Joan Merriam

You can find them from Portland to Poughkeepsie, from Boston to Blackwater…in fact, you’ll find them almost every state in the nation. Despite their sweet-sounding name, they’re one of the most noxious and detested plants in North America: the foxtail. They can also be deadly to your dog. First, let’s get some nomenclature out of the way. Foxtails are a weedy grass in the grass family of Poaceae, which includes everything from wild rice to bluegrass to sugarcane.

6 days ago | theunion.com | Joan Merriam

Your dog is gleefully running back and forth along the trail, when suddenly you hear a scream of pain and he stops cold, holding his back leg off the ground. Your mind starts racing as you head toward him: has he stepped on something like a piece of glass? Has he been bitten by a snake? No, chances are that he’s injured his cranial cruciate ligament, his CCL. But what is the CCL?

1 week ago | chicoer.com | Joan Merriam

In my last column, I talked about cranial cruciate ligament injuries: what they are and how they happen. So, let’s say the worst has happened and your dog injures her CCL. Your veterinarian says that the best treatment option is surgery … but what does this surgery entail? There are four basic types of CCL surgery: Tibial Plateau Leveling Osteotomy, Extracapsular Repair, Tibial Tuberosity Advancement and Lateral Fabellotibial Suture.

3 weeks ago | chicoer.com | Joan Merriam

Your dog is gleefully running back and forth along the trail, when suddenly you hear a scream of pain and he stops cold, holding his back leg off the ground. Your mind starts racing as you head toward him: has he stepped on something like a piece of glass? Has he been bitten by a snake? No, chances are that he’s injured his cranial cruciate ligament, his CCL. But what is the CCL?

1 month ago | whole-dog-journal.com | Joan Merriam |Joan Merriam lives

Archeologists have found skeletons of livestock guardian dogs lying side-by-side with sheep and goats in sites dating back 6000 years. Their images appear in pictographs found in the ruins of Babylon and Nineveh in ancient Mesopotamia, and in third to second millennium B.C.E. petroglyphs in central Kazakhstan.