Who's A Good Dog Winnipeg

08/19/2025

We have beautiful Clarke staying with us for a few days. A naturally gifted canine athlete, we are working on a couple of dog sports skills with her! 🩵

Check out AsmaraPolcyn’s video.

08/12/2025

Your local X-Treme Dogs team will be performing a few shows at BarkFest this year! 🩷

08/08/2025

When it’s been hot and dry for days, a rinse cycle really hits the spot 🩵🩵

08/03/2025

I once stitched up a dog’s throat with fishing line in the back of a pickup, while its owner held a flashlight in his mouth and cried like a child.

That was in ’79, maybe ’80. Just outside a little town near the Tennessee border. No clinic, no clean table, no anesthetic except moonshine. But the dog lived, and that man still sends me a Christmas card every year, even though the dog’s long gone and so is his wife.

I’ve been a vet for forty years. That’s four decades of blood under my nails and fur on my clothes. It used to be you fixed what you could with what you had — not what you could bill. Now I spend half my days explaining insurance codes and financing plans while someone’s beagle bleeds out in the next room.

I used to think this job was about saving lives. Now I know it’s about holding on to the pieces when they fall apart.

I started in ’85. Fresh out of the University of Georgia, still had hair, still had hope. My first clinic was a brick building off a gravel road with a roof that leaked when it rained. The phone was rotary, the fridge rattled, and the heater worked only when it damn well pleased. But folks came. Farmers, factory workers, retirees, even the occasional trucker with a pit bull riding shotgun.

They didn’t ask for much.

A shot here. A stitch there. Euthanasia when it was time — and we always knew when it was time. There was no debate, no guilt-shaming on social media, no “alternative protocols.” Just the quiet understanding between a person and their dog that the suffering had become too much. And they trusted me to carry the weight.

Some days I’d drive out in my old Chevy to a barn where a horse lay with a broken leg, or to a porch where an old hound hadn’t eaten in three days. I’d sit beside the owner, pass them the tissue, and wait. I never rushed it. Because back then, we held them as they left. Now people sign papers and ask if they can just “pick up the ashes next week.”

I remember the first time I had to put down a dog. A German shepherd named Rex. He’d been hit by a combine. The farmer, Walter Jennings, was a World War II vet, tough as barbed wire and twice as sharp. But when I told him Rex was beyond saving, his knees buckled. Right there in my exam room.

He didn’t say a word. Just nodded. And then — I’ll never forget this — he kissed Rex’s snout and whispered, “You done good, boy.” Then he turned to me and said, “Do it quick. Don’t make him wait.”

I did.

Later that night, I couldn’t sleep. I sat on my front porch with a cigarette and stared at the stars until the sunrise. That’s when I realized this job wasn’t just about animals. It was about people. About the love they poured into something that would never live as long as they did.

Now it’s 2025. My hair’s white — what’s left of it. My hands don’t always cooperate. There’s a tremor that wasn’t there last spring. The clinic is still there, but now it’s got sleek white walls, subscription software, and some 28-year-old marketing guy telling me to film TikToks with my patients. I told him I’d rather neuter myself.

We used to use instinct. Now it’s all algorithms and liability forms.

A woman came in last week with a bulldog in respiratory failure. I said we’d need to intubate and keep him overnight. She pulled out her phone and asked if she could get a second opinion from an influencer she follows online. I just nodded. What else can you do?

Sometimes I think about retiring. Hell, I almost did during COVID. That was a nightmare — parking lot pickups, barking from behind closed doors, masks hiding the tears. Saying goodbye through car windows. No one got to hold them as they left.

That broke something in me.

But then I see a kid come in with a box full of kittens he found in his grandpa’s barn, and his eyes light up when I let him feed one. Or I patch up a golden retriever who got too close to a barbed fence, and the owner brings me a pecan pie the next day. Or an old man calls me just to say thank you — not for the treatment, but because I sat with him after his dog died and didn’t say a damn thing, just let the silence do the healing.

That’s why I stay.

Because despite all the changes — the apps, the forms, the lawsuits, the Google-diagnosing clients — one thing hasn’t changed.

People still love their animals like family.

And when that love is deep enough, it comes out in quiet ways. A trembling hand on a fur-covered flank. A whispered goodbye. A wallet emptied without question. A grown man breaking down in my office because his dog won’t live to see the fall.

No matter the year, the tech, the trends — that never changes.

A few months ago, a man walked in carrying a shoebox. Said he found a kitten near the railroad tracks. Mangled leg, fleas, ribs like piano keys. He looked like hell himself. Told me he’d just gotten out of prison, didn’t have a dime, but could I do anything?

I looked in that box. That kitten opened its eyes and meowed like it knew me. I nodded and said, “Leave him here. Come back Friday.”

We splinted the leg, fed him warm milk every two hours, named him Boomer. That man showed up Friday with a half-eaten apple pie and tears in his eyes. Said no one ever gave him something back without asking what he had first.

I told him animals don’t care what you did. Just how you hold them now.

Forty years.

Thousands of lives.

Some saved. Some not.

But all of them mattered.

I keep a drawer in my desk. Locked. No one touches it. Inside are old photos, thank-you notes, collars, and nametags. A milk bone from a border collie named Scout who saved a boy from drowning. A clay paw print from a cat that used to sleep on a gas station counter. A crayon drawing from a girl who said I was her hero because I helped her hamster breathe again.

I take it out sometimes, late at night, when the clinic’s dark and my hands are still.

And I remember.

I remember what it was like before all the screens. Before the apps. Before the clickbait cures and the credit checks.

Back when being a vet meant driving through mud at midnight because a cow was calving wrong and you were the only one they trusted.

Back when we stitched with fishing line and hope.

Back when we held them as they left — and we held their people, too.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life, it’s this:

You don’t get to save them all.

But you damn sure better try.

And when it’s time to say goodbye, you stay. You don’t flinch. You don’t rush. You kneel down, look them in the eyes, and you stay until their last breath leaves the room.

That’s the part no one trains you for. Not in vet school. Not in textbooks.

That’s the part that makes you human.

And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

07/29/2025

I watched a thick-coated large dog running in harness on pavement with their owner at 32C plus the humidity the other day. I felt safe enough to stop them and talk to them, so I did.

There is just so much disinformation about heat injury in Dogs circulating… please share this post with your dog talk community and hopefully help prevent another tragedy.

Healthy dogs die because they were too high for too long, NOT because they were cooled down too quickly. Read more:

Emergency Cooling of Canine Heat Casualties: critical thinking

There has been lots of information going around on cooling hot dogs, some really good, some really bad!
With some of the new updated information (which isn't actually new) from professionals on the advised best methods of rapid cooling including cold-water immersion for young/healthy dogs, or evaporative cooling for older/unwell dogs there has been the usual comments on this being dangerous even though the available evidence and experience says otherwise.

Comments I've seen in the last 2 weeks include...

"I put cold-water on my dog once because he was overheating and he died, my vet said this was the wrong thing to do as it caused him to go into shock", "never put cold water on a hot dog it causes the blood vessels to constrict and has the opposite effect", "the race vets (leading ones at that) all say this is dangerous and is forbidden at international races".

In dogs, there are various reasons you hear (even from some vets) why you shouldn't use cold water, such as "Shock" or "Cold Water Shock" being the most common from pet owners, trainers, and sport dog owners etc. Cold-water causes peripheral vasoconstriction and slows down cooling being the most common from some vets. And sometimes DIC (a blood clotting disorder) which is caused by the heat damage, NOT cooling.

Let's take the following scenario...

A heatstroking dog arrives at an emergency vet clinic where the team are waiting, upon arrival they immediately begin rapid cooling measures with cold water to bring the dog's temperature down fast, but the dog dies.

Did the dog die because the water used for cooling was too cold and the dog's temperature was dropped too fast?

Some would say yes, but some people tend to lack the ability to critically evaluate a situation and see beyond what is right in front of them, it is extremely unlikely and association does not mean causation, before you come anywhere near that conclusion you have to look a little deeper and ask a few important questions such as...

1. How long was the dog above a critical temperature?
2. How long before the owner realised the dog was in trouble and sought help or began cooling measures?
3. Did the owner apply any active cooling measures before transport? What did they do? How long for?
4. If they did cool did they monitor temperature and stop cooling measures at a safe temp?
5. Is the owner telling the truth? Most vets will agree pet owners don't always tell the truth in these cases for various reasons, guilt, or being judged maybe?
6. Is that particular owner able to critically evaluate the situation?

All these things matter because it is generally well accepted in human and veterinary medicine that it is the length of time above a dangerous temperature that determines the chance of survival, and that temperature is different for different dogs.

Veterinary professionals also talk a lot about evidence based medicine, yet there has only been one study ever that compared the temperature of the water or the use of ice for external cooling in dogs, and it showed that ice water and cold water cooling were the fastest and most effective method of cooling. The concept that ice or cold water causes vasoconstriction and slows the cooling process has never been scientifically validated.

People worry about cooling when their first concern should be that the HEAT is the immediate life threat and you need to get it down to a safe temperature fast, and the earlier you recognise the signs and start cooling measures the better the chance of survival.

Vets generally work in a clinic or hospital, they see patients after the event, when what often determines outcome is what you do in the field at point of injury, it used to be the accepted practice to get to a vet fast, now it's becoming more widely accepted to cool before transport because again it is length of time they are above a critical temperature.

Added to this a lot of what has been taught, and is still being taught in veterinary medicine including first aid is all based on clinical medicine, not field medicine which is a completely different environment and although not always a huge deal clinical medicine doesn't always translate well to the field setting. There is not and has never been any formal training in prehospital care in the veterinary industry, it doesn't exist (unlike human medicine).
However over the last decade or so and mostly in the US there has been a lot of work to establish guidelines and training, with the Veterinary Committee on Trauma (VetCOT) publishing their best practice recommendations in 2016, Hot Dogs UK refer to these guidelines in their article.

A lot of the k9 field medicine (including heat injury prevention and management) comes down from the military who for obvious reasons have a lot of experience in this area.

To quote one working dog Vet...

“We know with Heat Related Illness fatality rates are high, and what you do in the field makes a difference, not how fast you transport to a vet, you eventually have to get them there, but what you do in the field, how fast you cool those dogs down will make or break the life of your Canine, and we're still seeing too many preventable deaths.”

The bottom line is healthy dogs don't die because they were cooled down, they die because they were too hot for too long, and dogs that have been too hot for too long tend to die no matter how you treat them, so then the cooling process often gets the blame (especially when cold water and rapid cooling are involved) when they were going to die anyway because the damage has already been done.

Those that understand this, that work with working dogs in hot environments, that have treated hundreds of these cases in the field, rapidly cool these dogs as fast as possible with whatever they have available, with cold water if they have it, and they save these dogs when they catch it early.

It's probably a luxury if you have multiple cooling methods to choose from so just use what you have to cool the dog as fast as possible while ideally monitoring temperature which is another important point, you can cool too far if you continue to cool past the point the dog's temperature has reached a safe temperature, and because temperature continues to drop for a short time after you stop active cooling measures (plus re**al temp lags behind core temp during rapid temperature changes) it is advised to stop cooling just above normal resting temp, the exact number varies depending on the source but in the range of 103–104°F (39.5–40°C) re**al temp, monitoring is important and doesn't get much attention, the dog should be continually monitored during transport but most pet owners etc. are probably unlikely to have a thermometer (you should have 1 or 2 in your first aid kit) and in that case you have to rely on the person's ability and experience understanding the signs and reading the dog which is not ideal, but in such a case even 10mins of any rapid cooling method before transport will give the dog a better chance. So cooling too far is another reason cooling methods get the blame.

Added to this it is very difficult to change some people's heat philosophy when these outdated ideas have been around a long time, takes a lot of strength of character for some to admit there might be a better way, but it is going in the right direction, albeit slowly, and because of the hard work of some professionals.

It doesn't matter what you learned from your very experienced breeder, other mushers, what you learned from an expert Vet years ago, or what a Vet learned in Vet school 20 or 30 years ago, things move on, if you are not constantly evaluating what you learn, looking to improve, gain new ideas, move forward, keep learning and improving instead of looking in the past then whatever field you are in you will never improve and be any better than you are at this moment.

Those at the top of their game in any field don't get there by doing the same old thing because "that's the way we've always done it" or "that's what I learned years ago", they're constantly learning, looking for new ideas and ways to improve to be the best they can be and improve outcomes, learning from others, if some people didn't have that mindset we would still be in the dark ages, and there are some good people out there to learn from.

There is a lot of debate and argument in this area making it more complicated than it needs to be when the simple message is...

The key to field treatment is simply to cool the dog down as fast as possible using whatever methods are available!

Further information:

MYTH BUSTING – COOLING HOT DOGS with the UK Veterinary research team
https://heatstroke.dog/2023/07/20/myth-busting-cooling-hot-dogs/?fbclid=IwAR07ChOSq-PTfc-DN_B_aePTMzKGq06I7GGuzw3-QBmskg3MipglcSys2Js

ARE YOU READY TO BEAT THE HEAT? COOLING HOT DOGS – MORE MYTH BUSTING
https://heatstroke.dog/2024/04/12/are-you-ready-to-beat-the-heat-cooling-hot-dogs-more-myth-busting/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1sud0ZKqfM3PF0_xcaQRgdXzmHKfFT5nkuHsZTOq6UYGpjbryDpPmfzbA_aem_RZ7l8lh3RN0PoPvFQMltTA

Royal Veterinary College
https://www.rvc.ac.uk/vetcompass/news/the-rvc-urges-owners-of-hot-dogs-to-cool-first-transport-second?fbclid=IwAR023ZAXQm_1n9FQwo8aVCP2SZdxdmBhXMgwH-e_m3iaX2OHyK0nujbO_Ws

Cooling methods used in dogs with heat-related illness under UK primary veterinary care 2016-2018
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=108153058936611&id=100092257509484

Rethinking Heat Injury in the SOF Multipurpose Canine:
A Critical Review.
Janice L. Baker, DVM; Paul J. Hollier, DVM; Laura Miller; Ward A. Lacy
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227176693_Rethinking_Heat_Injury_in_the_SOF_Multipurpose_Canine_A_Critical_Review

Heat Injury in Working Dogs Webinar with Dr. Janice Baker
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=108093635609220&id=100092257509484

● Heat Page: Contents
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BojisnpPE/

07/15/2025

These are beloved, lifelong pets who are now  entering our overburdened shelter system because their families are facing deportation. Heartbreaking 💔

An in has received whose owners have been , reports.NBC LA article: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/lo...

04/11/2025

Do you like being petted on the head?

Dogs tell us all the time that they don’t want to be petted on the head -in most contexts-, even by the people they know best. And yet there we go, being human again. The funny thing is most humans don’t love being petted on the head either. Your dog will tell you very clearly what kind of interaction they would prefer- you just need to listen.

INAPPROPRIATE TOUCHING

I'm reading an amazing book called Amphibious Soul by Craig Foster, the Academy award winning documentary film maker of "My Octopus Teacher".

If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it, it is simply profound.

In the book he says "As a rule, I never touch an animal unless they touch me first".

In my work building relationship with horses, I do this too. Most times a horse will touch you with their nose/muzzle first, and matching that greeting (versus labelling the horse as a biter) is a game changer.

But there's a phenomenon I have noticed going on with people trying to build relationship with their horses that I have labelled "inappropriate touching", and it looks a bit like the photo below.

This picture was taken at a horse expo in Pennsylvania recently, where I worked with a demo horse who has a "biting issue". He would reaching out in a way that his owner was termed as nipping, whereas I interpreted as him saying hello, similar to reaching out to shake hands with someone.

When he reached out I would greet him with a flat hand that he is able to to nuzzle, lick or even scrape his teeth on. After doing this a while his snappy acting motions got less so, and he was no longer needing to say "hey, pay attention" , but was more "hey, how's it going". I was explaining to the audience that I was meeting him in the way that he was meeting me (with his muzzle) and that it's not an invitation to touch other parts (yet).

I then said that it's many people's default to reach up and rub a horse between the eyes, whether that's what they are offering or not, and that if you do, it's inappropriate touching and it gets in the way of connection. It doesn't meet their needs, and is all about yours.

With the horse in the picture, he'd been engaging me with his muzzle, and I said to the audience "watch what happens when I try to rub him between the eyes". As you can see in the photo, he has raised his head up and is clearly indicating "No, not there, on my muzzle".

We had a Connection And Attunement retreat here at the Journey On Ranch a week ago, and I used my wife Robyn to illustrate this point to the participants. I said "imagine I'm at a gathering and meeting Robyn for the first time". We walked up to each other in that way people do when they see someone new and they can tell an introduction is shaping up, Robyn reached out with her hand to say hello and instead of me reaching out to shake her hand, I gently reached up and lightly brushed a wisp of hair from her cheekbone and tucked it behind her ear.

The participants all gasped and the ick factor was high.

Even though it was caring, and gentle, it was inappropriate at that moment.

Now Im not saying you can't rub your horse on the forehead. I'm saying if your horse has a disregulated nervous system around humans because they don't feel seen (and safe), try to meet their needs first, before trying get get yours met.

I recently saw an instagram post from a University in the UK, and the professor was explaining that they were doing studies on horses to determine levels of stress. In the background a horse was standing with his head out over a Dutch door. While he was explaining their investigations on stress, a female student (or maybe another professor, I don't know which) walked up to the horse. The horse reached out with his muzzle to greet her.

She ignored this and reached up to rub the horse between the eyes.

He turned his head 90 degrees to the left to communicate that wasn't what he was offering.

Her hand followed him and kept rubbing.

he then turned his head 180 degrees to the right, saying "No, not like that".

Smiled, gave him another pet between the eyes, and walked of camera.

While the professor was saying that they are doing experiments determining the amounts of stress horses are under, someone in the background was actually creating stress, without either of them even knowing it.

Once you understand how sentient horses are, and how subtle their communication, you can't unsee it.

04/10/2025

Who is Dr. Jim Crosby?

Canine Aggression Consulting LLC. Dr. James Crosby M.S., PhD., CBCC-KA, is a retired Police Lieutenant (Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Jacksonville, FL) and has professionally trained dogs, taught individual and group obedience classes, and addressed canine behavior problems since 1999. He served as Division Management Consultant of Jacksonville Animal Care and Protective Services, the municipal agency responsible for rescue and adoption needs, investigation of animal cruelty, animal fighting, and regulation of Dangerous Dogs for the 964 square miles and nearly 1 million residents of Jacksonville.

Holding a Master of Science in Veterinary Forensic Medicine and a PhD in Veterinary Medical Science, Dr. Crosby is recognized in and out of Court as an expert in the US and Canada on Dangerous Dogs, canine aggression, fatal dog attacks, and related issues. He has personally investigated over 30 fatal dog attacks on humans and, has post-attack, evaluating over 50 dogs that have attacked and killed humans.

Dr. Crosby teaches safe handling and rehabilitation of Dangerous Dogs and Investigation of Fatal and Serious Dog Attacks to police, animal control agencies, and others across the US and Canada. He has been instrumental in a number of successful prosecutions focused on dog related fatalities. Dr. Crosby continues to present training seminars internationally in Italy, Canada, the UK, Warsaw, Poland, in Australia, where he was project Chair for revamping and improving Animal Services for the Australian Capital Territory. During the Fall of 2023 he will be presenting training internationally in Liverpool, England, Dublin, Ireland and Gold Coast Australia. Domestically he will be presenting training in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and South Carolina. Dr. Crosby also maintains on-line training offerings through the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.