As soon as he arrived he promptly turned around. He couldn’t do it. So, he drove to a family-friend’s house and pleaded with them to take our dogs in. After quite literally picking my begging father off of the ground, they agreed. My dad feared that Mookie (a mutt we rescued from our neighbor who was beating him) and Pushkin (a toy poodle who followed my brother home from the park and never left) did not have a good chance of making it out of the pound alive. He knew he might never know their actual fate; the mere possibility  of their  untimely demise was too much for him to handle.

Looking back, over twenty years later, I now realize that the “pound” in our town was a dead end for most dogs. “Pound” sounds like a pretty innocent word, but it is short for “impoundment”: placing private property into the hands of the state for them to do with as they will. Today, the terminology has changed: we tend to refer to these places as Kill Shelters or Open Admission Shelters. But the idea is still the same: the “property” is taken in and the state does with”it” as they see fit.

In the US, if a dog (or cat, bird, rabbit, what have you) is found as a stray, or is relinquished by an owner, or is abandoned due to death or any other reason, there are a few types of organization that he can be taken to. The two most common options: Open-Admission Shelters (AKA Kill Shelters) and Limited-Admission Shelters (AKA No-Kill Shelters).

Here are the big differences between these organizations.

1. Open-Admission/Kill Shelters

When I first got involved in animal rescue and I heard the term “Kill Shelter” I was utterly confused. Why would there be a shelter if you’re just going to kill the animal? I imagined a dark and dirty warehouse full of caged cats and dogs who were not taken care of; I imagined apathetic employees. Later, when I became better educated on the matter, I understood that there is a necessity for such shelters, and I grew to admire the people who work there.

The reason Open Admission Shelters are so commonly referred to as Kill Shelters is because, unfortunately, animals at these facilities are euthanized at a much higher rate than those in Limited-Admission (No Kill) Shelters.

Open Admission Shelters are just that. They are open to every animal that is brought in. Usually each city has an Open Admission Shelter in order to have a place to take abandoned animals, regardless of their health or temperament and regardless of the space or funding provided. These shelters are critical to keeping the members of the community (two- and four-legged alike) safe. If we, as people, didn’t have a place to bring homeless animals, there’d be an increase of frightened animals roaming the streets. They would essentially be in survival mode, which would create an unsafe community for the people living there–it’s a lose-lose situation.

These face malnutrition and disease; they reproduce, populating an already overcrowded community. Having a central place to tend to stray or unwanted animals is in the best interest of all involved, even if it might mean that they don’t all make it into happy forever homes. It’s unfortunate, but its true. The best we can do is make sure the Open Admission Shelters are as well-funded and well-kept as possible.

According to NYC’s Animal Care and Control’s website, out of the 34,768 cats and dogs that were taken in in 2010 9,373 were euthanized. Both of those numbers are staggeringly high, and everyone agrees these numbers have to change. But with no other choice, Open Admission Shelters are sometimes the only place to turn.

Another reason Open Admission shelters are given a bad wrap is because funding is so limited, or is non-existent. In New York, for example, the NYC ACC falls under the jurisdiction of the Department of Health, which is much more concerned about spending its money on dealing with the health millions of New Yorkers than it is with maintaining a few tens of thousands of cats or dogs. And putting down the unwanted might indeed be the cheapest and fastest way to protect the health of the humans that the DOH has to deal with. Space is often the biggest issue: Animals with curable ailments and zero behavior problems are often euthanized simply because there just isn’t enough room, and sacrifices have to be made so that the next batch of animals has a place to sleep that night.

You’ll find similar situations in many different cities, and this means a chronic case of shelters being understaffed. Those who are there are overworked, underpaid and usually have few qualifications to be dealing with animal behavior or health. These shelters are also very sad places to be in which makes volunteers almost as scarce as funding. It’s a vicious cycle, with many kinks, but until we get the animal population under control (do the Bob Barker! Spay and neuter!) we should do what we can to support our Open Admission Shelters. They should also be one of the first places you call or visit when you decide to get a pet. Even if you don’t take one of the “death row” animals on the euthanasia shortlist, the dog or cat you pull is creating an empty spot that may then be occupied by an animal who otherwise wouldn’t have lived to see the next day.

2. Limited Admission/No-Kill Shelter

At some shelters, animals must be accepted by the In-Take department which usually means the animal is temperment tested to make sure he is “adoptable.” Once the animal is accepted into the shelter he is guaranteed to live there for as long as it takes to find him a home.

Just as before, there are pros and cons to this shelter model. The pros are obvious – the animal is given time to find his new forever home. If you have to give up a loved pet, this is your better option. As discussed before, in an Open Admission Shelter, a dog is given a handful of days during which he may be adopted or found by his old owners, and then is euthanized, when that time is up. There are too many cases of dogs who just needed a few more days for the right family to come through the shelter. With Limited Admission Shelters every dog is given those extra days.

Though giving a dog all the time in the world to find his new forever home is a pro, it can turn into a con rather quickly. Dogs usually deteriorate mentally, physically and emotionally in a shelter environment. Depending on the dog’s personality it can take weeks or sometimes just days for the shelter environment to wear on a dog. Keeping a dog like this in a shelter for “as long as it takes” may be a fate worse than death. While some of these dogs do just fine and/or recover nicely once placed in a home, others are just not up for task. This controversial question always comes into play when discussing these two shelter models: Which is the humane solution? Allow a dog to live and be given as many changes as it takes, or make a dog live through hell with no happy ending in sight? I don’t know the answer. I am an eternal optimist in every area of my life. I used to believe that every dog deserved as much time as it took to find his Forever Home. However, now that I’ve immersed myself in the field of dog behavior and care, I am not sure that statement is true. I think, like everything in life, there is no one standard answer that can apply to every single situation.

Perhaps one dog will do fine for weeks in the shelter while the other will fall apart and turn into a completely different dog. I think we have to look at each individual dog and assess carefully.

If you are considering adding a dog to your family please visit your local shelter. The Open Admission/Kill Shelter in NYC is Animal Care and Control. Limited Admission/No Kill Shelters in the are include Bideawee, North Shore Animal League, Animal Haven, and Dog Habitat.

Doggie Barrel Bag Holder

Well, you could clip this barrel baggie holder on your dogs leash, but that would be boring. Attach it under his collar because you know want your dog to look like one of those Saint Bernard’s chugging a tiny barrel of whiskey to some dude trapped under an avalanche. Another idea: Forget the bags and put whiskey in it.  Yes, it’ll probably drip out. But that’ll just give you another reason to drink during your walk.

Flush Puppies

Never mind that the name sounds like some (or every show) on the Cartoon Network. The name is literal: these babies go down the toilet, man. (The poop bags, not the puppies). Pull the knobby thing on the porcelain throne and say goodbye. The waste bags are made from Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA) – a water soluble, eco-friendly, “green” alternative to plastic.  Sounds efficient, doesn’t it? Might be more useful for those indoor canine surprise poop deliveries, though. I can’t really picture anyone carrying poop all the way home just to flush it down the drain.

Shit Happens

If you’re a canine lover then you know the old adage is true: shit happens. If you’re a dog, it happens at least twice a day. These bags are tagged with a variety of expressions to fit your every whimsical mood. I like a dog waste bag that makes a statement– one that tells the world who you are, and what you stand for, like a tattoo only cheaper, biodegradable, and disposable. And warm to the touch.

Mutt Mitts

These are shaped like oven mitts because, let’s face it, sometimes grappling with dog waste requires the use of our God given opposable thumbs. If dogs had them, they’d be picking up their own poop. But they don’t. So, the task is left to us. Now, however, our thumbs may be free to fully participate, rather than being sequestered inside the rest of the bag with those lowly other digits. Also: They’re built to be biodegrade. Thumbs up to that.

Poopy Packs

Argyle always makes me feel a wee bit Scottish. I love me a nice pair of woolen argyle socks and argyle dog poop bags too. Thank you Poopy Packs for making the world understand that plaid, argyle and polka dots should be swathing everyone and everything. Including shit. Especially shit.

Bags On Board Design and Print Dispenser

Dog waste doesn’t have to be all about feces. No! Poop should also be about tuning into your creative side and expressing your spiritual
message. To that end, think of this bag dispenser as your blank canvas. Just get online (bet you’re already online!), design something with rainbows and unicorns or dogicorns, and print. Like above, you can put your dog’s face on the dispenser. Kind of like putting your face on your toilet paper roll. Please hold a moment –must go file a patent.

Poop Monster

See that? The bag’s sticking out and it looks like a funny face. Ha ha ha ha! Get it?! Um, I don’t. Still–C-U-T-E! Thank you, Etsy, for letting me know that somewhere, in some studio apartment, someone is devoting their lives to making hand-stitched fuzzy poop bags. I’m sure that person is desperately hoping to give us a moment of joy as we catch sight of the silly faces as we bend down to pick up our pup’s morning present. Made of  very plush felt, these are poop bags that you’ll want to cuddle up next to on those chilly nights when the moon is full and you’re watching Marley and Me for the 100th time. So much nicer than snuggling with your old beau–a plastic bone-shaped poop bag dispenser. Let’s never speak of him again.

Baxter Deluxe Pooper Scooper

From the brain of MFA student Jose Fresneda,this design is an homage to the luxurious Louis Vuitton brand. It is made of chipboard, which makes it recyclable. Says Fresneda: “I wanted to do something not only functional but also some kind of a statement about our social responsibilities with the environment. Realizing that sometimes the most effective way of connecting with an audience is by creating some sort of fashion icon, I decided to create a luxury line of pooper scoopers.” Unfortunately, the Baxter Deluxe is not for sale. The dispenser was only a homework assignment gone terribly right, and LV has yet to get their act together and grab onto this sucker. Write your congressman or something. Bo Obama, are you reading this? Do something! Or should I say: doo something!

BK Atelier Bag Holder

Made from animal friendly Faux python leather (Yay vegans! Yay cows! Yay non-dead snakes!) and offered in a variety of colors (including black, sand, and cognac),  this bag dispenser looks more like a clutch fancy people take to the opera than the dog park. Or maybe, just maybe you take the BK Atelier bag dispenser AND the dog to the opera. Maybe that was their plan all along! Why are dogs kept out of opera! Discrimination? Let’s change this. We’ve  overcome the gay marriage stigma… Is this the next frontier?

Parachute Dog Waste Bag

The Parachute Dog waste bag gives you what Pro-Lifers are against: choice, dammit! Pop it open and you’ve got the option to scoop up your dog’s daily business by hand. The old grab and go. But you don’t need your dog to poop in order to enjoy this purchase: you can also  use it as a doggie water bowl.

Her Royal Lizness has always been pretty prim and private. But when it comes to her dog obsession, she’s relatively loud and proud. Her pack accompanies her nearly everywhere; it’s been reported that she takes her breakfast with them each morning (they on the floor, she at the table…one would hope) and that she keeps miniature dog figurines in her purse as good luck charms. Several of her biographers have noted that injustices involving poor treatment of her dogs result in much more emotion from her than any matter of national importance. Biographer Ben Pimlot quotes a royal insider as saying, “She has a temper…throwing a book on the floor, that kind of thing. She might ring up and say something like, ‘Oh, the stupid vet didn’t completely get the thorn out of the dog’s foot!’ But if you told her the Japanese had invaded Cornwall, she’d just say, ‘I must let the Lord Lieutenant know.’”

Even before she took the throne sixty years ago, the Queen’s breed of choice was the Welsh Corgi (and the so-called Dorgie, a breed name she coined–a cross between a Corgi and a Dachshund). The Corgi was at its height of popularity when Elizabeth was in her teens. Her father George VI, bought one called Dookie, and shortly after that got Jane, who had puppies: Crackers and Carol. He gifted Princess Elizabeth her first Corgi, Susan, as an eighteenth birthday present in 1944. Elizabeth became queen, and Susan became a matriarch in her own right: Elizabeth has owned ten generations of her descendants, some of whom (Monty, Willow and Holly) are still occupying Windsor Castle.

Princess Elizabeth and her father's dog, Jane

But the Royal Mum isn’t just a dog owner: She’s apparently a gifted dog trainer. The Daily Mail reports that she is wise to how to effectively use positive reinforcement training to get her brood to follow her rulings. Her reward of choice? A healthy treat that I often recommend my clients use: carrots.

Her number one horse trainer, Monty Roberts, tells the Mail:

“If we’re having a meeting about the horses and the dogs come in, she can just talk to them and they do whatever she wants.

“She can tell one to go out, one to come in, all go out, all come in. Philip’s good with them too. They really have a special affinity with animals.

Queen Elizabeth trains her Corgis in 1987

“I sometimes help with the corgis but, let me tell you, she can do phenomenal things with those dogs.“When she comes in from a ride, they line up for her in the Royal Mews and she feeds them carrots. They actually line up, even though some of them belong to other people – they’re not all hers.“I said, ‘Your Majesty, you must be soaking them in bacon grease – dogs don’t eat carrots.’And she said, “Watch this,” and then she names them, Fred, Joe whatever.

“And they line up, bam, bam, bam, bam, and she says, ‘Now, don’t be rude now. Are you ready?’ Then she feeds them in a line. One day, it might be four or six – one day my wife Pat saw ten.”

Stories of his abilities have an awed quality. James Hogg (1770-1835), the Scottish writer who called himself the Ettrick Shepherd, wrote in Blackwood Magazine in 1818 of his own “Colley,” Sirrah, a dog of uncertain parentage, “almost black,” who had an uncanny aptitude for sheep-herding. When a big flock of lambs sped off in three directions to get lost in the hills in the dark, Sirrah went after them, collected them all in one place, and guarded them overnight in a ravine. Hogg also recounted the stales of Sparkey, a shaggy, white collie who could find sheep that were buried in snow – 300 of them at once. Hogg’s favorite collie was Hector, a small red dog, who liked to sing hymns.

The Ettrick Shepherd

During roughly the same period, English veterinarian William Youatt, in The Dog(1845), recounted this tale: While trying to collect his flock, a shepherd lost his four-year-old child and his collie in the Scottish mists. Despondent after a long and fruitless search, he went back to his cottage. The following day the dog came home for his food, a “piece of cake,” then left. This went on for four days until the somewhat dense shepherd decided to follow the dog and found him in a deep gorge, guarding the child,  who was eating the cake. Few other dog breeds were so consistently the subject of these kinds of legends.

Through breeding collies, humans had a major hand in creating animals so in tune with our own.  To the people of the time, a collies’ wisdom was about way more than just a novelty or demonstration of admirable sacrificial selflessness: the collie was economically indispensable because of its gift for controlling sheep. Sheep were, of course,  big business during the Industrial Revolution. Their wool fed the mills that were springing up everywhere, and without sheepdogs, human labor sources would have been severely strained. Hogg claimed that one shepherd and a dog could do the work of twenty shepherds without dogs. In 1859, an American writer, Eliot G. Storke, rated the sheepdog as more valuable than any other: “on a stock farm [he] will save fifty times his cost and keeping every year.”

"Two Collies" from an 1870 painting.

The origin of the word “collie” is not definitely known, but it probably comes from a word for black (or coal), perhaps because collies herded black-faced sheep. Before the middle of the nineteenth century, in Scotland and England, almost any dog that was good at herding and guarding sheep  would be called a collie. His looks didn’t matter. The working collies Queen Victoria brought back from Scotland as pets in 1860 varied greatly in appearance – in fact, one resembled a Labrador Retriever. The Globe Encyclopedia of universal information (1876-1879), defined the collie as “a Scottish shepherd’s dog” and added that it was “an ornamental as well as a useful dog . . . much sought after in London as a pet.”

It was right about then that collies were acquiring pedigrees, and one branch of those pedigreed dogs was the Rough Collie (Lassie’s variety), which, along with the Smooth Collie, were called simply Collie with a capital C by the American Kennel Club. The Collie was created for uniform and pleasing looks as well as herding ability. Old Cockie, born in 1867, is considered the first true-to-type Collie and, according to some, by 1886, the breed was “fixed” – complete with its fluffy ruff, extravagantly feathered tail, and long narrow head, which from then until now has been the subject of controversy: has it diminished the dog’s IQ?

Today Border Collies, Collies’ close relatives, rank above all other breeds  in intelligence according to the  ability to learn and obey commands, while Collies don’t appear in the top ten. However, Collies are far from stupid (by those standards set by humans, that is), ranking 16^th of 79. (Number 79 is the Afghan Hound– don’t tell them!)

"Halbury Jean" b. 1924, often referred to as "the mother of the U.S.Collie".

Of course, we’re the ones ranking intelligence, and our criteria is uncertain: such ranking always reflects our notion of what canine intelligence is. Is there not a tendency to give a high rank to those dogs bred to act in ways we judge to be intelligent? For instance, a dog-created IQ test might be based on the ability to outwit prey rather than follow human commands to herd it. But there’s no doubt that we’ve created a breed capable of learning with an uncommon alacrity:  witness, for example, the plethora of YouTube clips of collies who’ve learned to discern verbal cues of more than a hundred objects.

The American Collie Club, formed in 1886, set standards for the breed; Collies have been on the registered breed list for the American Kennel Club since the nineteenth century. Other breeds descended from the original collies include the Shetland Sheep Dog and Border Collie, who, ironically, looks more like its progenitor and more often plays its role as a working herder of sheep than the Capital-C Collie. It was not until 1995 that Border Collies became an A.K.C registered breed. The reason? Border Collie fanciers wanted to breed dogs for performance rather than to physical standards. Today, some fanciers of Collies, Border Collies, and other herding breeds pay to train themselves and their dogs to herd sheep for no purpose other than recreation. Dog clubs and the American Kennel Club sponsor herding-instinct testing and herding competitions in which both pet dogs and working dogs participate.

Lassie on set, 1965

The Collie, of course, could not have maintained its mythic status without being canonized (canine-ized?) by writers. Albert Payson Terhune’s best-selling Lad: A Dog, the first of his many books about collies, helped to popularize the breed. He himself raised Collies on his estate at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. The famous Lassie, who inspired the movie Lassie Come Home (1943) and the television series (1954-1973), was the main character in the Eric Knight’s novel of the same name. Pal, the original dog who played her, was a male, as were all the other Lassies (descendants of his). (Males’ coats are thicker and looked better on screen).

According to the American Kennel Club, the Collie was the third most popular dog from 1947-1949, largely because of Lassie. Its popularity has decreased, but it still has several footholds in the USA’s top 50 breeds–in 2008, it ranked 38^th, while its relative, the Shetland Sheepdog was 20^th, and The Border Collie was 45^th.

Photography was not part of Emily Tanen’s job description at the Manhattan branch of Animal Care and Control of New York City. But soon after she started working there in August 2009, she began taking photos of animals who were scheduled to be euthanized.

Her photos, she said, were an effort to attract the interest of adopters and rescue groups.

She mostly photographed pit bulls: Freckles, black with pink skin around her eyes, wearing a striped scarf; Spot, a white puppy, getting his chest scratched; and Harlem, skinny and brindled, paws draped over a volunteer’s elbow.

But her photos violated the group’s strict policy on taking images of animals, which dictates who can take photos, how the animals can be photographed and how the images can be used. One rule prohibits showing humans in the photos.

As a result, Ms. Tanen said, she was fired last May.

“I knew they hated me,” she said. “But I thought that even if I was a pain, they’d suck it up. Because I was doing a really good job.”

Ms. Tanen said rescue groups often told her that her photos persuaded them to take animals they otherwise might not have. “I still remember Domino’s photo — the first pit bull we pulled from Manhattan,” said Jay Lombard, a founder of Dog Habitat Rescue in Brooklyn. “He was within 12 hours of being destroyed when Emily snapped a photo of him and attached it to an e-mail. That image hit me hard and I couldn’t turn away.”

Care and Control officials would not comment on Ms. Tanen’s departure, saying that they do not discuss personnel matters.

Ms. Tanen, 30, had previously worked at a no-kill shelter in Miami and operates her own small nonprofit rescue group. She was hired to be a liaison between Care and Control and the roughly 150 rescue groups that take animals from city shelters.

When she started working at Care and Control, Ms. Tanen said, she believed that the animals were photographed poorly and that the images failed to convey the warmth of a potential pet.

With her art background from her studies, Ms. Tanen decided she could do a better job with her $1,500 Nikon.

As at most city shelters, Care and Control’s charges arrive from the street, or are brought in by owners unwilling or unable to keep them. Others are abandoned or seized from abusive homes. The luckiest — the healthiest ones with the least significant behavioral issues — are deemed eligible for adoption. Some appeared on the group’s Web site.

“AC&C works hard to find loving and permanent homes to as many animals as possible each year,” said Richard Gentles, a spokesman for Care and Control.

Of the nearly 31,500 animals, mostly cats and dogs, taken in by Animal Care and Control between September 2010 and last month, 65 percent were adopted and 25 percent were euthanized, according to data from the group’s Web site. (Many of the rest were returned to their owners.)

Mr. Gentles said the group does devote time and care to the photographs.

“We have a strong volunteer group that does a great job taking photos and writing bios for the animals every day,” he said.

“He is in training right now, he has some issues,” I told them. “If you lean in too close he might freak out and bite you.”

Of course, I don’t think they believed me. I’m sure they thought I was overreacting because Boogie was so sweet and calm and cute.

Boogie was very good. He came instantly to me whenever I called him (away from the store people). When I was at the counter paying for stuff, the store owner appeared and gushed over him. I told her not to get too close and she said “That’s OK, I am just giving him treats”. Boogie sat very politely, receiving his treats.

But, before I could say anything, she bent down, grabbed his head and kissed him. Not okay. Boogie let out a huge yelp and lunged. The woman backed off instantly. Everyone stood there in shock, and the other staff reiterated to the owner what I had told them earlier.

Nobody was hurt or upset.  Boogie was fine; he came to me and stayed by my side. But I wanted to say “That was a dumb thing to do”or  “I told you so.” Instead,  I decided to just shut up and leave. They will know better next time.

It wasn’t Boogie’s fault. If there’s blame to be placed, it should be on those who aren’t versed in how to properly greet a dog. So, I present:

This post originally appeared on BoogieBT.Wordpress.com. Lili Chin’s poster of how to greet a dog can be purchased at Zazzle.

In a recent issue of National Geographic, celebrity dog “whisperer” Cesar Millan disparaged the White House’s treatment of its resident dogs. “When you see the president of the United States coming out of Air Force One, you always see the dog in front. When the president goes inside the White House, you see the dog going in first,” he said, referencing his assertion that, in the wild, leader wolves never let subordinates go before them, and that humans must do the same in order to control domesticated canines.

One wonders what Millan will say if America elects a president who has a history of strapping his Irish setter to a car roof. That certainly sounds like a way to exert authority.

On family trips in the early 1980s, Mitt Romney routinely put his dog Seamus in an enclosed, vented crate strapped to the roof of the family car. Once, the dog got sick — but dogs get sick inside cars, too.

A recent Public Policy Polling found that more than a third of respondents said the incident made them less likely to vote for Romney. But I find the whole thing trivial, and certainly more forgivable than some widely condoned forms of animal cruelty, like dog racing, which was legal in Massachusetts during Romney’s gubernatorial term.

The Romneys at least had their hearts in the right place: They’ve argued that Seamus liked his crate and was happier traveling on vacation with his family than he would’ve been alone at a kennel. When it comes to transporting dogs in cars, few of the methods used in the 20th century would be considered humane by today’s standards. The car seat barriers, restraints, and booster seats for dogs that are sold today were not widely available in the 1980s. At that time, Massachusetts didn’t yet require seat belts for humans.

Animal welfare is subjective. When I questioned Scott Crider, founder of the Dogs Against Romney Facebook group, he admitted he’d never spent much time considering the widespread use of things I consider unnecessarily cruel, like electric shock collars or keeping dogs chained outside.

I believe that for all of our best intentions as dog owners, America is home to a lot of unhappy dogs.

As an animal trainer who uses non-aversive, science-based methods to manipulate dog behavior, I am dismayed by the number of people I see using force, pushing, and yelling in attempts to control dogs; I’m saddened that more people use the harsh methods of an unschooled television personality than follow the animal training advice of revered scientists like B.F. Skinner and Ivan Pavlov. Are they misinformed? Maybe. Do they have different ideas than I do about what constitutes animal cruelty? Sure. But I’d still classify most of them as loving dog owners. And I’d put the Romneys in that category.

Were he to take the highest office, Romney would be joining a long line of presidents who’ve made arguably questionable decisions regarding the First Dogs.

For example, the White House released an Easter video of President Obama’s dog, Bo, wearing bunny ears. Bo doesn’t look too bothered by the get-up he was forced to wear, but one could argue that the stunt was Obama implicitly encouraging the current fad of putting dogs in clothing and elaborate costumes. Each Halloween, I watch parades of pups who often look terrified about the massive bumblebees and tutus that have suddenly enveloped them. For all they know, they’re doomed to wear Princess Leia buns for eternity. A tortuous fate, indeed.

One of the more famous dog-lovers-in-chief was Lyndon B. Johnson, who tried to sneak one of his five dogs into his daughter’s wedding. But he also was widely lambasted for lifting his beagles, Her and Him, off the ground by their ears.

Bill Clinton’s chocolate Lab, Buddy, was acquired just before Lewinsky-gate; the dog worked hard to boost his owner’s approval ratings and was often present during photo opportunities. However, the Clintons proved neglectful dog owners: in 2002 Buddy was run over by a car outside his family’s Chappaqua home, a tragedy that could have been averted by a humane dog management device: a fence. He was the second family dog to have been killed by a car.

Then there are those past presidents whose treatment of dogs seemed to trump their ethical treatment of humans.

According to psychologist Stanley Coren in his book “The Pawprints of History,” John F. Kennedy’s groundskeepers feared they’d lose their jobs if they reported bites incurred by his beloved Welsh terrier, Charlie. Herbert Hoover punished his staff for being too nice to his German shepherd — he worried that the dog liked them more than him. And Franklin D. Roosevelt was several times accused of using Treasury money to transport his dogs on planes.

Exactly how winding is the road that leads from the exemplary treatment of pets to the proper treatment of other humans? It’s crooked enough that one hopes we never end up with anyone emulating the 20th-century leader who may have been most concerned with animal rights — one who didn’t eat meat, discouraged tail docking, wanted fish anesthetized before slaughter, and outlawed the poor treatment of animals in movies. That famous dog lover? Adolf Hitler.

That’s why many dog owners are now using Skype to check up on their pups throughout the day. With a simple change in your account settings, you can make it so that calls are answered automatically, and you can see how your dog is doing in an instant. A perusal of Youtube nets quite a few videos of people Skyping with their dogs. In most, the human is saying something like “You want to go for walkies?” while the dog  tilts his head from side to side in confusion, then heads to the door. They’re very litteral beings. Or the dog hears a familiar voice and cries. This usually makes the human laugh, which is understandable–but kind of cruel! Some of the cutest posted videos are actually of dogs talking to other animals on Skype. Well, not talking really.

Here, two dogs realize they have nothing to say to each other:

Witness a dog investigate a kitten far, far away.

My dog is currently at my Mom’s house in DC for a little vacation, and I miss him terribly. So I decided to attempt a Skype session with him to see how he would react.

When I called his name, he started looking around for me. Well, I hope it was for me, but how could I know for sure? I’m sure he heard his name. He didn’t focus on the screen at all and only approached the computer when I said his name loudly. The truth is, dogs probably can’t quite see images on a computer or TV screen–at least not the way that humans can. And Skype does not convey they kind olfactory bouquet that a person does. The computer probably smells more like Foxconn than me. When will they make an OS that incorporates Smell-O-Vision? I need to ask Siri.

So Weezy probably didn’t get much out of the Skype session. But I think I might just have to keep the video chats going until he and I are reunited: I’m quite certain the interaction helped one of us quite a bit.