“I love animals, but I can’t stand people.”

“I like every single dog and maybe three people.”

“I’ve never met a cat I didn’t like, but there are tons of people I detest.”

I’ve definitely said that I like dogs more than people on many occasions, usually in response to an animal abuse or welfare situation. And, truth be told, I’d much rather spend my time at home with my dogs and cats than out in a crowd of people.

But here is the reality, the hard truth of the matter: You cannot care about animals without caring about people, too.

We simply can’t have animal welfare without human welfare.

With assistance programs being gutted across the US on a near-daily basis, gas prices skyrocketing, grocery bills soaring, housing becoming unattainable, and so on… people are finding themselves in difficult situations.

Imagine the choices:

If you can’t afford to feed your kids, what are you going to do with your dog? If you don’t speak English well and your vet no longer provides a translator, or you can’t afford your car and can’t take your cat to the vet on the bus, or the spay-neuter assistance program you relied on got cut, or you get laid off and need to pay rent and your cat becomes sick, and on and on… put yourself in the shoes of someone facing these situations. (Read this post and the comments section to really get a sense of the realities here.)

How do we definite “welfare”?

Welfare, to me, means health, happiness, and well being. It means we are all well.

There are supposed to be safety nets in place to provide for the well being of people and pets. But those are disappearing rapidly, and–at least here in the US–the people who rely on them are being vilified.

By saying human welfare must come first, I am not suggesting animal welfare should be sidelined until all human problems are solved. What I am saying is that the failing social safety nets will fail people first… and that will trickle down to fail our animals.

There’s the age-old argument: Why should we care about animals when people are starving?

Can’t we care about both? We absolutely can, and we absolutely should. And, also, we can’t deny that the humans are the responsible party when it comes to animal welfare. We make the decisions and provide the care for our animals. So, again, people need to be cared for so that we can care for our animals.

Poverty is not a crime.

Experiencing hardship is not a moral failing.

If we gatekeep pet ownership only for those with perfect financial stability, how many millions of animals would be euthanized tomorrow for lack of a home?

Without human welfare, animal welfare suffers.

“You shouldn’t have a pet if you can’t afford to keep one.”

Okay, sure, but what if you lose your job or fall seriously ill or get into an accident or any number of other things that can befall a human living in late-stage capitalism.

The social systems that help people keep their pets are being gutted. So, how about, instead of vilifying people who fall on hard times, we champion elected officials who understand the importance of social services? How about we donate our time and money to clinics and shelters that make pet care accessible? How about we turn our attention to the human end of the leash with as much care, compassion, and empathy as the canine end?

Recently, someone on my local Nextdoor app posted that she was devastated to have to re-home her dog. She explained that she lost her home and her job back to back and found a new job and apartment in another town. She would be working long hours, taking the bus, and simply couldn’t afford to maintain her pet in the way he deserved. There were more than 80 comments blasting her for this.

“I would sleep in my car before I gave up my dog.”

They assume everyone has a car to sleep in, or that “sleeping in a car” is a stable, safe environment for a dog (or a person). And that there’s somewhere legal to park that car.

Again, imagine if we had as much empathy for this woman making a devastating choice as we do for her dog? We all want what is best for the dog. Sometimes, the most pro-dog thing a person can do is recognize they can no longer provide the safety that the dog deserves.

Sure, deteriorating social systems do not absolve us from personal responsibility. But, in a broken system, animals deserve to be cared for–even if that means re-homing your dog is the hardest but best option. We worry about the dog’s sadness without considering the cycles that led to the person becoming broken in the first place.

Focusing on the human side of the leash IS the best way to help the canine end.

On the flip side

If animal welfare can fail even when human welfare is secured, is human welfare truly the foundation, or is it just one of many variables?

Obviously there’s so much to take into account, and there are lots of people who are financially secure, healthy, and well-housed who still neglect their animals, just like there are people who are none of those things but still treat their animals like royalty. Obviously there’s nuance.

But, I guess my plea today is a call for compassion. For empathy.

We are all struggling in one way or another, even on a good day but most especially right now.

How can you extend some compassion or understanding to those around you? How can you help support animals in your community? And, maybe most importantly, how can you work to ensure that you vote for people who care about people?

What do you think? I’d love to know your thoughts on these big topics in the comments below.

If you’re looking to deepen your bond with your dog, my book For the Love of Dog explores the science and heart behind how we connect with our best friends with stories about me and my dogs Emmett, Lucas, and Cooper.

Click here to grab your copy on Amazon or here for Bookshop.org.

It’s also available on audio if you prefer to read with your ears!

The Silent Language: What Learning ASL Taught Me About My Dogs

My dogs are deaf. My daughter is hard-of-hearing, and our family has been working together to learn ASL since she was a baby. So, it made sense to us to adopt deaf dogs so we could integrate our training into our ASL learning. In fact, using ASL for dog training gave us a much more robust vocabulary to work with–if only I could learn to keep my mouth shut!

The Shift from Audio to Visual

Dogs don’t have a spoken language; they have a spatial one. Dogs use their entire body when they communicate. Everything matters: where and how they stand, the position of their ears, how they hold and move their tails, whether their eyes are hard or soft, if they have their mouth open or closed, even if they’re holding their breath or breathing calmly. No one can look only at one thing–say, the tail–and decide how a dog is feeling or what a dog is thinking. It takes the full picture to really get a sense of what’s going on.

In ASL, there are five parameters that are grammatical requirements. Handshape, location, movement, palm orientation, and non-manual markers (like facial expressions) all contribute to forming a sign. Change one and you change the sign. (Ask anyone who’s accidentally signed “make out” when all they wanted was a cup of coffee…)

So, silencing my own verbal commands and focusing on my body posture–not just my hand signals–has made my cues so much clearer to Penny and Stola. Yes, I still vocalize because I’m human and can’t seem to help it, but the shift in focus to my movements has been dramatic.

One way to do this: Film your training sessions! I’ve been filming all of my sessions with Stola and hope to post some on Instagram soon, but it helped me realize I added a little step forward every time I cued “sit.” That’s not what I wanted to do. Same thing with “down.” I discovered that I bent at the waist each time I cued the behavior, and I did not want to anchor in that movement with the hand cue.

“Listening” with Your Eyes

This expression is modified from how we talk about reading paper books versus audiobooks: Are you reading with your eyes or with your ears?

In this case, we “listen” with our eyes to what our dogs are saying to us. Humans are vocal-heavy creatures. I know some dogs are, too, if you take barking, whining, howling, and so on into consideration. But dogs are masters of micro-expressions. The way they move their ears, their eyebrows, their tails–it all tells a story. We need to listen to that story with our eyes.

Learning ASL has helped bring this concept home for me. In ASL, verbs have direction. You make a change in your sign if you’re driving over hills or along a flat road; you change your sign if you’re walking on tiptoes or walking with heavy feet or a skip in your step; you change your sign if you’re singing softly or belting opera. Those movements convey so much meaning:

• A Hip Tilt: A subtle shift signaling they’re about to settle into a nap.
• The Lean: Into me for a pat vs. away to signal they were finished with snuggling.
• Weight Distribution: Front-loading weight to prepare for some zoomies vs. a relaxed, centered stance.

These subtle shifts tell a story if we can listen with our eyes.

Building Shared Communication

Incorporating intentional, clear hand signals has reduced the static in our training. It’s not just about commands; it’s about a deeper, quieter empathy.

Now, we have the advantage of a solid foundation in ASL. When Astrid was maybe nine months old, we started learning ASL with a Deaf mentor, and that one-on-one attention on and off until Astrid turned three gave us an incredible base for using a second language in our home. Since then, over the past three years, we’ve cobbled together classes, YouTube videos, apps, and so on to continue developing our signing skills.

And the dogs are coming along with us. This includes not just the specific signs I’m teaching them as behavior cues (key signs like sit, down, stay, wait, come, and so on) but also the incidental learning that happens as they watch and learn from how we communicate at home. Read more about incidental learning in dogs here.

Whether you choose to learn ASL to communicate with your dog or you decide to use traditional obedience cues, I challenge you to pay attention to all the nonverbal communication passing between you and your dog.

Observe what behaviors of yours make your dog excited, calm, overwhelmed, or even frightened. Build shared communication by listening with your eyes.

What that looks like for us right now: Stola tenses up whenever someone touches her ears. She doesn’t have an ear infection, but in case she ever gets one, this can’t be a disaster. So, I’m observing what kinds of touch she does and doesn’t like and counterconditioning what she doesn’t like. For Penny, her low vision is really impacting her learning speed, so I’m working on observing what lighting conditions help her and what conditions harm her. We know she can’t see well at all in bright light and really struggles when she moves from light to dark or dark to light. I’m experimenting to find the best conditions for her.

Learning ASL (and Deaf culture, too) has changed so much of how I move and operate in the world. Better communication with my dogs is icing on the cake!

If you’re looking to deepen your own bond with your dog through better communication, my book For the Love of Dog explores the science and heart behind how we connect with our best friends with stories about me and my dogs Emmett, Lucas, and Cooper.

Click here to grab your copy on Amazon or here for Bookshop.org.

It’s also available on audio if you prefer to read with your ears!

Are DNA tests worth the price tag?

That’s the question, isn’t it? They’re pricey, sure, but do they give good information?

In today’s post, I’m going to share our experiences, which started MANY years ago when I tried an early-generation DNA test with Lucas, then another a few years later with Cooper, and now, after more than a decade, another test with Penny.

This is Penny:

And here’s one from a photoshoot we did (I think this one might be my bio pic?) so you can see her relative size and her body shape:

And here’s one more for a different perspective that better shows the speckling on her hind end:

Okay, so hopefully those three pics give you a sense of Penny’s body shape. A few other key points about her physical and behavioral characteristics:

• Penny was born without a fully formed right eye (called “microphthalmia”).
• She was also born deaf.
• Penny came to us through a rescue after having been pulled from an animal hoarding situation.
• She is sweet, gentle, and friendly. She is genuinely the absolute most precious ever.
• Penny LOVES to dig. She digs holes around the yard, and she digs holes in our sheets (sigh), in particular when she tries to bury a chew.
• She’s four years old and weighs about 45 pounds.

Do you have any guesses of Penny’s DNA? I’ll share the results below, of course, but I’d LOVE to know in the comments if you were close or not!

Following these results, I’m going to share my thoughts on the DNA test, the value for the money, and a few things to consider before you invest in a DNA test for your dog.

Were you close?!? She is essentially a hound x bully mix, which is literally my favorite breed mix on the planet. Not that it matters, but it was fun to learn. Now, the nitty-gritty:

How much does a dog DNA test cost?

Real talk: These tests are pricey. I suspect it’s a combo of paying for the advanced technology and the reporting, but there’s no question that it’s a steep price tag for something that is truly unnecessary. If you are wanting to buy one for fun OR if you do have a medical / genetic question you’re trying to answer, it might be worthwhile.

The prices I’m spotting now range from $100 for the most basic test directly from Wisdom Panel and up to $160 for the most advanced. At the time of this writing (March 2026), Amazon has the most advanced option for 20 percent less.

What kind of results do you get from a DNA test for your dog?

First, a note that I learned during our previous tests: only 50 genes out of around 20,000 genes result in a dog’s appearance. So when people get their DNA test results and flip out because their dog looks nothing like the breeds included, remember that is only a tiny portion of your dog’s genetic makeup. In Penny’s case, though, she looks the part.

In addition to the snapshot above–which is, I think, what most people are looking for–with the higher “tiers” of tests, you can get breed traits, behavior insights, and any health markers. I chose the Premium Dog DNA Kit for Penny, and here are a handful of details we learned:

The results included 58 different genetic trait tests. The health tests are fascinating. What I learned: Penny is a carrier of the degenerative myelopathy gene, but since she has only one it is unlikely to ever affect her. PHEW.

Other fun facts: She has a copy of the floppy ears gene.

And her coat color and type is all screwy because she has specific coat color genes (like brown) but they’re overridden by the two copies of the merle gene, which resulted in her white coat, deafness, and vision issues.

Also, she has the genetic variant for “reduced shedding,” so that’s cool!

Pros and Cons of the Widom Panel DNA test for dogs

Where it fell apart for Penny was in the behavior insights.

When I was in college, one of my biological anthropology professors drew this analogy: Nature is like an empty painter’s palette. Nurture is the paint that fills the slots.

So, I take Penny’s results with a massive lump of salt because her first two years of life were spent as one dog of more than 100 in a hoarding situation, not a typical upbringing for a pet dog.

According to her results, it said she’s more likely to cross her paws. Scroll back up and look at that first picture of her in this post!

It also says she’s more likely to get motion sickness (she does not), that she has a typical fear and anxiety response (she does not), and that she is less likely to be friendly toward unfamiliar people (could not be further from the truth).

Interestingly, it also says she’s less likely to pant, which is true. She doesn’t pant much. Of course, she doesn’t exert herself much either, but I suppose if she did…

So, pros: breed makeup and health insights

Cons: the cost and the behavior insights are irrespective of your dog’s lived experiences

TL;DR–Is a dog DNA test worth the hype or the cost?

It depends on your goals. If you just want to see the breed makeup of your pup and you’re mostly doing it out of curiosity or just for fun, go for the basic test.

If you want to discover health insights about your dog’s genetic makeup, get the more advanced test, like we did with Penny.

If you are hoping to find behavioral traits, you’d be better off making your own ethogram for your individual dog, which you can do for free.

Will I test Stola or any other future pups?

If I can find a good deal on the premium test, then it’s likely. I really did appreciate having pages and pages of data about Penny’s genetic health risks. Turns out, she’s clear of all. That doesn’t mean she can’t or won’t develop something down the line, but her genetic predisposition was reassuring–and another reason why I LOVE mixed breed pups for all that genetic diversity!

Have you ever done a dog DNA test on a pup in your care? Were you surprised by the results? Did you find them helpful? I’d love to know in the comments!

Click to get your free guide to working with dogs of all kinds of abilities, like deaf and low-vision Penny!

February can be a difficult month. Depending where in the world you are, it can be dark, dreary, cold, icy, dry, miserable. So, she encourages her readers to think beyond the gloom and focus on what’s keeping you afloat.

Here is what’s saving my life right now, in February 2026. And I’d love to know from you: What’s saving YOUR life right now?

Soup

It seems so small, doesn’t it? A cup of hot soup with a slice of warm sourdough slathered in butter isn’t life changing, is it? Actually, I think it might be.

As I write this, a pot of spaghetti squash soup (that no one in my family will eat because no one likes squash except me) simmers on the stove. Over the weekend, we had a roasted red pepper soup with melty grilled cheeses. Soup warms you up on these cold, dark days. If I have time to make it from scratch, my house fills with delicious smells. I simply love soup and could wax on, but you get the point. You could almost call me a food blogger. You shouldn’t. But you could.

Libby

I hate driving in the snow and ice. And in the dark. Which basically means I hate driving all winter long. I used to avoid reading on a tablet because I really wanted distance from screens after working hours. However, I’ve seen the light. I’m a convert. I love my tablet, and I love reading on my tablet because of Libby, the library app. I can finish a book and instantly check out the next one. It delivers suggestions based on what you like, and it even includes every magazine under the sun. Libby is saving my life because I don’t have to drive to the library and I never have a gap in my reading!

Current reads: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (on audio because it’s read by Lin Manuel-Miranda), the Red Rising trilogy on the recommendation of my favorite teen librarian, and Canine Enrichment for the Real World. Oh, and I just bought in hardback One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This so I can take notes and dig deeper as I read.

My friend, Jodi

Some of you probably know her or have followed pet-friendly DIY’s on her fantastic blog. What you might not know is that she has been my writing partner and accountability buddy since… I can’t even remember when. Many, many years. She keeps me moving forward. She keeps me sane. We share ideas and laughs and tears, and I’m honestly not sure I’d have written anything these past five years of “unprecedented times” without my weekly date with my friend, Jodi. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet, go follow her over on Instagram. Bunnies and birds are waiting to welcome you!

My “journal ecosystem”

I know, I know. We all have too much going on. We do. Our lives are stretched so thin. And while I am someone who actively advocates for less to do, fewer activities, more blank space… reality sets in. Between work and school schedules, there are so many things to juggle. There’s the cyclical stuff: vet visits, dentist appointments, eye exams, physicals, oil changes, dog training classes, swim lessons, karate, and so on. And then there’s the extra stuff that comes with kids with disabilities: developmental pediatrician, OT, PT, eye specialists, neurology, audiology, peds ortho, etc. Plus, of course, the unexpected: the Covid diagnosis followed by the flu, a cold here and there, several snow days, a vomiting cat, a limping puppy, a flat tire, and so on. And I need to buy light bulbs and cat food and order the dogs’ flea and tick meds, scoop the litter boxes, pick up prescriptions, walk the dogs, return a phone call, wash the dishes and the laundry. Are the girls’ library books overdue? When did I last clip Penny’s nails?

I am not special in this. We all have too much on our plates, I know. But if I did not have my planner, I would not get anywhere ever. Nothing would get done. It is my brain on paper.

I use the Hobonichi Cousin, which is ridiculously expensive, but it contains monthly, weekly, and daily pages for the entire year, plus places to track everything and blank pages to store information, doctors’ phone numbers, school info, and so on. Is it excessive? Not for me! I would die without it!

Then I also keep really detailed daily notes in this spiral notebook that I will keep buying over and over. I keep notes on appointments, what I’m reading, what I’m thinking, how I’m feeling, what I need to remember to do at some point, and so on.

My journal and my planner save my life every single day.

Cat Cuddles

I adore my dogs. I love when they squish up against me for warm snuggles, and I love when they climb into my lap for a snooze.

However.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more cup-filling than a purring cat curled up into a cat loaf on your lap. It is soothing, comforting, and simply the best feeling to be the person of a cat.

What’s saving your life right now?

I’d love to hear in the comments below!

I’ve written these posts in 2018 (baby Violet!), 2020 (baby Astrid!), 2021, and 2022. I can’t account for the missing years, but it’s fascinating to me that several of the items each winter are the same: books and the library, food delivery, community.