The US pet care industry is a $40 billion a year industry which is growing rapidly with 10% a year. Last year, Americans spend $38,5 billion on their pets, which is an 83 percent increase as compared to the spending pattern last decade. Pet pampering, pet humanization, demand for convenience, one person households, working couples without kids, elderly persons living alone,…. all these trends contribute to having more dogs in the nation and spending more money on them.

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Dogs are surprisingly complex creatures.

Some official estimates of the number of breeds reaches as high as 800 in Western countries alone. Even given that distinguishing one breed from another can be carried to absurd extremes, the variety is astonishing from a human perspective, who have, perhaps, a dozen ‘breeds’.

Complicating the picture still further is the well-known fact that dogs have descended from wolves but began domestic interaction with humans over 10,000 years ago. As a consequence, there are behaviors that develop regardless of circumstances and some that are as unique as the human the dog is paired with. Still, some common traits stand out.

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Everyone was talking about the big storm that hit the west coast yesterday. Of course on the local LA news they make even a shower sound like the “End Of The World” (said with really big reverb and echo), so I took it all in stride. I had a good play in the morning and I didn’t see any storm at all.

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It sounds like science fiction but it’s true: A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die. Can it happen to dogs too.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it’s killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

“This is definitely something we need to track,” said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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