As anyone who's been paying attention knows, one of my strangest quirks is that I feed my dogs real food: cooked meat, starches, vegetables and fruits, unadulterated by anything that came from a lab bench. This has worked exceptionally well in the past and it continues to do so:

• Ruby and Cassie maintain their normal weight. Neither dog is overweight or underweight.

• Their…

Welp, it turns out to have been a good thing that I hired my old landscaper Richard to build a little fence between the swimming pool and the back door (and the doggy door, conveniently).

Yesterday Ruby the Corgi Pup went into a corgi-baying frenzy in the back yard:

arfarfarfarfarfaROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Holy mackerel! Did one of the meth-heads hop over the back wall? Whaaaa?…

Hooorah! Ruby the Corgi Pup has got the idea about walking nicely on a lead. What a clever little dog she is!

The adventures in medical science -- nine months' worth -- put the eefus on my puppy-raising schemes. It was all I could do to resist having to return her to the breeder, much less walk her every day to get her properly leash-trained.

When she was pretty little, I realized that she did better with a harness than with a collar, and so when we've…