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While your senior dog is unlikely to forget where he left his glasses, he can still have the occasional senior moment. Like forgetting the way home on your daily walk together. He could be suffering from canine cognitive dysfunction (CCD), the doggy version of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in humans. AD affects one in three human seniors. About 40% of companion dogs aged 12 or older develop CCD. But for dogs, as with humans, there’s currently no cure. Ropesalazine could change that.

As studies, go, the results were mixed.The researchers had two objectives. The first: determine if a contraceptive vaccine would be effective in preventing feral cats from breeding in the wild. The second, and possibly more ambitious: establish a humane paradigm shift in feline research.

It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s how high he can lift his leg. And if he can lift it high enough, there may not be a fight at all. At least, that’s the hypothesis posed by authors of a new study on scent marking by male dogs. Researchers at Cornell University say smaller dogs lift their legs higher when they urinate, possibly to exaggerate their body size.

Farmer: What's that, Lassie? Lassie: Woof, woof, woof! Farmer: Timmy fell down the well?! Lassie: Woof! Farmer: That’s the third time this month, right? Lassie: Woof, woof, woof, woof, woof. Woof, woof, woof, woof. Farmer: I agree. Let him get himself out. —A well-known joke dating back to the classic 1950s show, Lassie. That joke is a part of pop culture, but ironically, the only character on Lassie who ever fell down a well and had to be rescued was . . . well, Lassie.

We’re going to have to find a new cliché to describe people who don’t get along. A new study from the University of Lincoln in Lincoln, the United Kingdom, explores the relationships between cats and dogs who live together in the same home. And in most cases, cats and dogs living under the same roof got along just fine . . . as long as nobody ticked off the cat.

A new study on Brucellosis in dogs by researchers at Texas A&M University has troubling implications for people, particularly children, seniors, the immunosuppressed, and pregnant women. Maybe especially for pregnant women.

Indigenous North American peoples endured horrible suffering and devastating loss at the hands of European settlers who began arriving in the New World in the early fifteenth century. Indigenous North American dogs may have had it nearly as bad. According to new research, ancient dogs, who arrived in the Americas alongside humans more than 10,000 years ago, were almost completely wiped out by European colonization.

Dogs know when you’re angry, but they’re not so good at knowing when you’re happy. In fact, when dogs see you smile, they may misinterpret it as aggression: new research indicates that dogs understand people’s facial expressions much better than previously thought. They just don’t always read them accurately.

Feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is the most common type of heart disease and one of the most common causes of death in cats, but detecting it can be tricky because many cats who have HCM are asymptomatic. HCM causes the muscular walls of a cat’s heart to thicken, decreasing the efficiency of the heart and sometimes creating symptoms in other parts of the body. And although veterinarians have known about HCM for nearly 50 years, almost nothing was known about its epidemiology. Until now.

Canine influenza virus (CIV) is a highly contagious viral infection that not only affects dogs, but cats as well. And new research says humans could one day be at risk, too. According to a new study published in the journal mBio, scientists have discovered that domestic dogs are harboring flu viruses that have the potential to jump to humans. That’s a scenario previously thought highly improbable, if not impossible: no cases of a human catching canine influenza have ever been recorded.