Dog Culture

One taste of the wild, competitive sport of flyball and you’re hooked. Dogs utterly fascinated with balls race off-leash over a 51-foot course, along the way hurdling four jumps that are 10 feet apart. The size of the shortest dog on the team determines the jump height for that entire team. At the end of the course, the dog uses his or her feet to hit “the box”—a device that fires a tennis ball—then catches the ball and flies back over the jumps to the finish line. As the first runner crosses the line, the second dog in the four-dog team takes off. To make it even more exciting, these dogs are racing alongside another team of ball-hungry athletic canines.

Bobble around Beantown with your best buddy; meander in Brookline, stroll around Beacon Hill and sidestep the Big Dig in The Hub of the Universe.

As with so many ground-breaking ideas, necessity proved the mother of invention. As a new mom, Ottosson suddenly found herself with less time to interact meaningfully with her dogs. She knew that consistently challenging her dogs was integral to their development, not to mention her relationship with them, so she created Ottosson's Zoo Active Products, a line of games that ask your dog to combine wits, motor skills, and memory to get a treat. Forget mindless chewing and squeaking‚ these are toys that require your dog to think.

If you saw a biker dude walking a Rottweiler with a spiked leather collar, or a Coco Chanel clone with a perfectly clipped Poodle on a Shantung silk leash, you would have little difficulty seeing how those dogs were a good reflection of their owners. But what about your own dog? What kind of portrait of you does your canine companion paint? You may not have thought about it, but the fact is that everything about your dog-its breed, size, personality, training, diet, grooming, and so on-reveals a great deal about you, for better or for worse.

Explore Old Town, the Pearl District and Downtown for a full day of doggie eats, sleeps, shops and spots in this laid-back west coast mecca.

Your breed revealed!

Owners bring their dogs here to test the dogs' instinctual behaviour on scent trails and in underground tunnels leading to quarry. They want to see if little Angus and Heidi can still do what their doggie ancestors were bred to do as early as 55 B.C.: go to ground and get rid of fox, badger, river otters, and other vermin that were wreaking havoc on their owners' land. Dogs that do well here can go on to participate in Earthdog Tests, Canadian Kennel Club (CKC)-sanctioned, non-competitive events leading to the titles Junior Earthdog, Senior Earthdog, and Master Earthdog. British Columbia held the first Canadian Earthdog Tests in 2002 and the Sea to Sky Earthdog Club now sponsors two sets of testing events each year.

Chances are, the answer is yes.

Many of the uninitiated scoff at the thought of dancing with dogs and yes, there is undeniably an element of the ridiculous to the sport, what with the inter-species dance team, tux-and-tailstype matching outfits and song choices like "Putting on the Ritz," but, as any attendee will attest, there is something both compelling and strangely moving about the performances-not to mention supremely entertaining.

Let's face it, modern dog owners are just as guilty as first-time parents when it comes to rambling on and on about their "kids." And while a good poop horror story makes for conversational common ground at any canine-centric soiree, why not show your range? The following cocktail party cheat-sheet highlights dogs that have made a significant impact on our common culture. A few minutes studying this list and you'll soon prove that it's possible to impress even the finest pedigreed pooch (and his/her sexy owner) with your best trick: speak!