Amazon Daily

When children return to school, the stress on every family member can be huge--including the family dog. This abrupt change in routine can seriously affect our canine companions, who are creatures of habit. But with a little understanding and preparation before the first day of class, families can avoid many of the back-to-school behavior problems their dogs might exhibit.

Part II: Boredom
Dogs sleep a great deal during the day, but when they wake up, they want something to do. It doesn’t take much to entertain a dog, even when you’re not at home.

Scatter food: Dogs are natural foragers who love to look for food on the ground--and will literally spend hours doing so. Scatter a variety of foods (such as bits of raw vegetables and/or dog kibble) around the yard when you leave. (Note that some foods attract wasps. Avoid meats and sweet-tasting foods like apples.) You might even try hiding some treats so your dog spends time looking for them. And always provide lots of fresh, clean water to keep your dog well hydrated.

Build a digging pit: Dogs love to dig, so rather than trying to eliminate this natural instinct, control where they dig by building them their own special place. Build a digging pit (as you would a sandbox for a child), and teach your dog that it belongs to him. Bury his favorite chew toy or bits of cheese in the digging pit and when he digs them up, praise him lavishly. Very soon he will learn where to dig--and, more importantly, where not to dig.

Toys: Dogs love toys, but they can quickly get bored with them or destroy them. First, buy high-quality, virtually indestructible toys that your dog will always enjoy, such as those that hold treats like the Buster Cube and KONG. Second, every few days, rotate what toys are available to him. This gives your dog something new and fun to hold his interest.

--Carol Wood, Bark Busters
---------------------
Carol Wood is a dog behavioral therapist and trainer for Bark Busters Home Dog Training and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

The summer musical sensation Camp Rock releases today and we've got some exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of the teen heartthrobs, The Jonas Brothers, tellings us what it takes to be a rock star.

Both the DVD and Blu-ray version release today -- Angela

Too tired to fry up hamburger meat for dinner? Want 50 slices of bacon ASAP? Thanks to Gizmodo's "Ten Gadgets For Guys Who Hate To Cook (But Love to Eat)," you can find such gems as Cheeseburger in a Can, a tin of pre-cooked bacon, a steak toaster, an automated donut-maker, and a portable microwave (it plugs into your car's cigarette lighter, natch).

--AndreaLeigh

Introduction: This is Cara. She also goes by the names "Ratbag", "Little Monster", "Big Eejit" and "Softie". My partner and I planned for at least a year before we got Cara, it took us almost that long to find a really good breeder. We had a lot of help from the folks on the Yuku Family Dog Forum; they helped us figure out what to look for in a breeder and they also helped us by checking out the websites of potentials and looking both the positive and negative. We also did a lot of reading before we got Cara so we could be as prepared as possible. I found "My Smart Puppy" to be the best book out of a large selection we bought and to this day I am still regularly referring to it, both for our training and to help friends. Cara has a big brother, a Russian Blue cat by the name of Tindy. They get along really well and love to wrestle, it looks scary to visitors but they know each other's limits! Cara is an amazing dog, better than we ever wished for. She is constantly surprising us with how smart she is and though we never think it can happen, each day we love her just a liitle bit more.

Home: Wanaka, New Zealand

Age: Ten months

Breed: Cara is a purebred American Staffordshire Terrier also known as an AmStaff.

Personality: Cara is a big softie. To some she looks tough and scary but we know better. Cara lives for cuddles, she likes nothing better than napping snuggled up against or on top of someone she loves. She is also really smart and loves learning and showing off new tricks.

Likes: Cara likes playing with her Pit Bull friend Bella, dunking her head in the lake but not actually swimming, napping, stuffed kongs and running beside us while we mountain bike. Her favourite thing in the world is meeting new children; her breeders had 7 kids and she's never forgotten them.

Dislikes: Cara really dislikes squeeky windscreen wipers but is slowly getting used to the hoover!

Favorite Toy: Her Black Kongs, Hurley Bone, Nylabone, and especially her Jolly Ball.

Favorite Food: Cara goes crazy for fresh cow femurs.

Trivia: Cara has a favourite blanket to sleep on and has even crawled into a cupboard to nap on it!

--Spanno
---------------------
If you'd like your pet featured on Wag Reflex, email us (wagreflex@amazon.com) with the bolded topics and a 500-pixel-wide JPEG of your pet.

Seeds of Change is a cool new anthology edited by John Joseph Adams and featuring work by Jay Lake, Tobias Buckell, and many others. A compact, small-sized hardcover from Prime Books, it's a work of art just in the design alone. The stories, which deal with social and environmental issues, are thought-provoking and strong. Recently, I asked Adams to give me a list of things readers can do in connection with the anthology, which is itself a call for being proactive in helping with some of the most pressing problems facing us on a global level. Here's his response...

John Joseph Adams: In the introduction to my anthology, I said: "It is my hope that reading these stories inspires some to plant their own seeds of  change—that when we see something wrong, we'll do something about it, whether that means writing to your representative in congress or researching a cure for a disease or simply speaking out against inequality and prejudice. We're all in this together—and the first step toward change can begin with any one of us."

So, obviously one of the main ideas behind the book was that science fiction can be a mode of social change. With that in mind, I'd like to offer up five ways--not necessarily the top five ways--you can plant seeds of change of your very own.

(1) Donate. We live in a land of privilege, but some of us are more privileged than others. If you can afford to spare the money, consider donating to a charitable organization. Uncle Sam will thank you come tax time, but do it for the karma, not the tax write-offs. Not sure who to donate money to? Check out Network for Good, which acts as a charitable clearinghouse, allowing you to discover and donate to a number of different charities and track your contributions.

(2) Volunteer. If you can't afford to donate money, or just want to do more than that, try donating your time. Charitable organizations of all kinds are always in need of volunteers to help make their organizations work. Not sure how to get involved? Check out VolunteerMatch.org, which helps match up volunteers with charitable organizations that need their assistance. (Network for Good can also help you find volunteering opportunities.)

(3) Recycle. Mother Earth has given us a lot; recycling is one of the ways we can give back. To learn more about recycling, environmentalism, and the different ways you can lessen your own environmental footprint, visit Earth911.org.

(4) Vote. One of our greatest freedoms is to be allowed a voice and to know that it will be heard; vote today to ensure a better tomorrow. If you're not already registered to vote, visit RocktheVote.com.

(5) Listen. Because that's the most important step.

Center stage in rising star Tobias Buckell's new novel Sly Mongoose is the unpredictable planet Chilo. As the press release informs us, "Welcome to Chilo, a planet with corrosive rain, crushing pressure, and deadly heat. Fortunately, fourteen-year-old Timas lives in one of the domed cities that float 100,000 feet above the surface, circling near the edge of a monstrous perpetual storm. Above the acidic clouds the temperature and pressure are normal. But to make a living, Timas like many other young men, is lowered to the surface in an armored suit to scavenge what he can. Timas’s life is turned upside down when a strange man crash lands on the city. The newcomer is fleeing an alien intelligence intent on invading the planet and discovering the secret hidden deep inside the perpetual storm—a secret that could lead to interplanetary war." And from there, things just get worse.

Still, in its day, Chilo must've had a few years when it was a vacation hot spot... No? Well, er, maybe it was at least "a nice place to raise a family," as they say.

Not convinced? Maybe this will help. Buckell, who was recently tagged to write the next Halo novel, has provided Omnivoracious with this compelling top five list from the Chilo Chamber of Commerce...

TOP 5 REASONS TO GROW UP ON THE PLANET CHILO

1) Forced anorexia means never having to clean your plate
2) Sulfuric acid rain is just nifty, as long as you wear your protective armor
3) Everything you say and do is seen by a technocracy, smile for the camera
4) Group mind zombies don't need to eat your brains
5) Caribbean cyborgs sometimes drop from the sky and hit your floating city

New York Times:

• Sunday Book Review cover: Walter Kirn on How Fiction Works by James Wood: "The heroes of this great artistic labor tend to be semimonastic intro­verts who, like Wood’s beloved Henry James and Gustave Flaubert, toil with the doors shut and locked, in soundproof splendid isolation, attentive to the subtle frictions among nouns and adjectival phrases.... For the vicarish Wood, sequestered in his chamber, part of the fiction writer’s true vocation appears to be acoustic regulation — the engineering of a mental space in which literary whispers can be heard.... For someone who professes to understand the fine machinations of characterization, Wood seems oblivious to the eminently resistible prose style of his donnish, finicky persona."
• Kakutani on The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank: "Less humorous and far more hectoring than '[What's the Matter with] Kansas,' this volume quickly devolves into a highly partisan, Manichaean-minded screed against conservatives and private-sector economics.... Mr. Frank comes across in these pages as a sort of parody of the liberal right-wingers love to hate — as someone in love with big government for the sake of big government and opposed to all manner of capitalism and entrepreneurial initiative." Meanwhile, on Sunday, Michael Lind notes "Frank’s portrait of the conservative movement ... sacrifices complexity to caricature," but says, "With rare exceptions like John Kenneth Galbraith, conservatives ... have been the best satirists. In Thomas Frank, the American left has found its own Juvenal."
• Sophie Gee on The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson: "The lovers in 'The Gargoyle' have the intimacy of roommates who hook up when they get drunk, not a time-defying passion. Their thoughts, feelings, conversations and affections are so unformed, so hampered by sentiment and under­powered awkwardness that the courage, endurance and under­standing ascribed to them seem silly. Davidson’s lovers are dysfunctional and quirky, qualities that can look a bit like profundity from a distance, but they don’t have emotional or imaginative depth or range, which at the end of the day are the only things that can make a love story deep and wide-ranging."
• Douglas Wolk on Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko: "The portrait that emerges here is of an artist whose principles have ossified into bitter perversity.... Ditko isn’t easy to love. As vivid as his work is, it’s never been pretty, and he’s never returned to his most famous creations for a victory lap or courted attention beyond acknowledgment of his work. The raw, nightmarish visions of his art are all he offers, and all he’s ever needed to offer."

Washington Post:

• John A. Nagl on The Strongest Tribe by Bing West: "West has made 15 reporting trips to Iraq over the last six years and is almost as personally invested in the current conflict as he was in Vietnam; this book, his third on Iraq, is his attempt to ensure that the 'endgame' in Iraq turns out better than in his last war. It is increasingly possible to believe that it will."

Los Angeles Times:

• Erica Schickel on Waiter Rant by "The Waiter": "'Waiter Rant' has all the fixings for fun.... He delivers a smorgasbord of objectionable personalities and high-stress situations, always serving from the left, rendering his stories impeccably but perhaps a little stiffly. Everybody gets their due: his temperamental, paranoid bosses; the noble, illegal busboys; the slacker co-waiters. But Dublanica's true bile is reserved for customers: the rude, the ridiculous, the entitled, the drunk, the horny, the stoned and, worst of all, the Foodies. 'The Food Network,' he writes, 'is, quite simply, the Death Star of American cooking.'"
• Richard Eder on How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken by Daniel Mendelsohn: "Sharp as he can be in his judgments, he is equally sharp in identifying the virtues of what he doesn't like. He gives a spacious view of the countryside, whatever the particular road he hews through it. He takes his subjects seriously, but not himself. Like Snow White, you might say, he whistles while he works."

New York Sun:

• Laura Collins-Hughes on The Suicide Index by Joan WIckersham: "I read 'The Suicide Index' with a rapacity bordering on need, with tears in my chest and in my eyes. Occasionally I had to put it down and leave the room. More often, I devoured it.... The book is the product of a loving daughter's grief, and part of her process of grieving. But it is also the measured, elegant, gripping work of a professional writer who has set her powers of observation to work on her own family — her parents and grandparents, her uncle, her sister, her husband, her son — and on herself."

Globe & Mail:

• Caitlin Sweet on Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer: "The story's emotional intensity is relentless, and all of it — light or dark — is rendered at the same fever pitch. The most consuming love — until tomorrow, when it'll get even better. The most consuming pain — until tomorrow, when it'll get even worse. Bella, whose human self is bumbling, always blushing and a terrible driver, becomes the strongest, most beautiful, most confident vampire ever. Jacob, who begins the tale impatient and cranky, also ends up in a new, exalted state.... It might be unreasonable to expect a young-adult vampire romance novel to be anything other than hyper-intense. But what it left me with was this thought: Readers are permitted to be breathless, but stories aren't."

Times Literary Supplement:

• Donald Rayfield on The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus by Charles King: " It is a bold historian who writes a history of the Caucasus, as events of the past week have made all too clear.... King ends with a vague hope that Europe’s 'inexorable march' towards liberal values can proceed in the Caucasus, but not much of the evidence supports him. For over a thousand years the Georgians and Armenians have appealed to Europe for support as fellow Christians, as Europeans by culture, if not by geography, and after being strung along by Crusaders, by Louis XIV, by various Popes, by Presidents Wilson, Roosevelt and both Bushes, can still not believe that the answer they get will always be a perfunctory apology that deeper interests of state force the West to take sides with its major trading partners, not its cultural and spiritual brothers. Ghost of freedom, indeed."

The New Yorker:

• Joan Acocella on Giordano Bruno by Ingrid Rowland: "Rowland is well aware of the gaps in her portrait of Bruno’s life, and she tries to fill them with other material. For his years in the monastery, she again has almost no facts to go on, so, once she deposits him there, she switches gears and offers a series of history-of-ideas chapters—on Neoplatonism, on Kabbalah, and so forth—in order to let us know what intellectual trends might have influenced him at that time. She is a lively writer, and these chapters are interesting. Still, we’re sitting there wondering, How’s he doing in the monastery?"

--Tom

I've been enjoying the Olympics... commercials. Especially the Visa ones ("Go World") narrated by Morgan Freeman. As I was commenting on how well his voice fits to narrate over Michael Phelps' slo-mo swimming, much like Patrick Dempsey's for State Farm Insurance or Jeff Bridges for Duracell, my husband replied, simply, that "Morgan Freeman is the voice of God."

As in what? I asked. When he played God in Bruce Almighty? Many actors have played God (and non-actors like Alanis Morissette) before. But he just meant that if the heavens were to open up and a voice were to speak, to him it would sound like Freeman, as opposed to that of, say, James Earl Jones, whose boom always makes me think of either Mufasa's command from the sky in The Lion King (which he voiced) more than Darth Vader's.

Which got me thinking: If you were to cast anybody to be the voice of God (however you think it should sound), whose would you pick? I vote for Freeman and also like the idea of Patrick Stewart's voice thundering above, but that may be too traditional. But I think someone like Zach Braff's may be a wee too upbeat. (Perhaps St. Peter in a quirky mood.) -- Ellen

As kids head back to school, Bark Busters offers suggestions to help families avoid behavior problems with their dogs that often accompany this time of transition. By providing training and the right combination of food, shelter and entertainment, families can help their canine companions adapt to a new schedule.

When children return to school, the stress on every family member can be huge--including the family dog. This abrupt change in routine can seriously affect our canine companions, who are creatures of habit. But with a little understanding and preparation before the first day of class, families can avoid many of the back-to-school behavior problems their dogs might exhibit.

Part I: Separation Anxiety
With parents at work and no children to play with during the day, dogs left alone can become stressed, often resulting in destructive behaviors and endless barking. Following these guidelines can help reduce the potential stress of separation and help return dogs to normal in a few weeks.

Start early: At least a week before your children go back to school, get your dog used to being alone. Begin by separating your dog from the kids and the rest of the family. For example, if you frequently take your dog with you to the store, leave him at home.

Pay less attention to him: Dogs may be the center of attention when the children are home. You need to change this scenario before the children return to school so that your family dog can adjust more quickly to the quiet time. Pay less attention to your dog for increasing amounts of time about a week before school and extend the amount during the days that follow.

When you leave: As you and the family leave your home, don’t confuse your dog by saying in a sweet voice, “Don’t worry--we’ll be home soon. Be a good boy.” If he is feeling concerned that you are leaving, your happy, high-pitched voice can make him think it’s okay to feel this way. Dogs are pack animals and, as such, they expect their leaders to be strong when they leave the pack. Therefore, ignore your dog for about 10 minutes before you leave.

--Carol Wood, Bark Busters
---------------------
Carol Wood is a dog behavioral therapist and trainer for Bark Busters Home Dog Training and a regular contributor to Wag Reflex.

It all makes sense. I mean, if you'r