Are film-makers wary of alienating increasingly sensitive audiences by offing a pooch? Or is humanity now just too soft to deal with the trauma of a Turner & Hooch?

There was a time, not so long ago, when watching a film was a clearcut experience. There would be a good guy and a bad guy, and you would know who the bad guy was because they would shoot a dog in the face.

It happened more times than you might expect. Mad Max 2, dog gets shot. Revenge, dog gets shot. Turner & Hooch, dog gets shot. Red, dog gets shot. Man with the Gun, dog gets shot. Badlands, dog gets shot. Dog Soldiers, you’ll never guess.

He had tetanus and I was brokenhearted when it seemed as if he wouldn’t pull through. But he worked hard, made a full recovery and helped to change someone’s life

When I first met Orlando, he was about eight weeks old. I’m a puppy raiser for the charity Guide Dogs; the puppies come to live with us in Swanley, Kent, until they are 12 to 18 months old. I started training him, but one day, I noticed he was shaking his head, which can mean there is something wrong with a dog’s ears. We took him to the vet and, on the second visit, we were told to rush him straight to the Royal Veterinary hospital because he had tetanus.

Dogs aren’t vaccinated against tetanus because it is so rare, and I don’t think I realised how unwell Orlando was. For the first week it was terrifying. He became completely paralysed and I was awake every night expecting a call to say that he had died. He was too sick to carry on training as a guide dog. He had to learn how to eat, walk and do almost everything again.

Official guidance says ammonia in animal urine should be watered down to stop it corroding bark

A neighbourhood in Vienna has introduced guidelines for dog walking, including the use of bottled tap water to rinse away urine and protect vulnerable trees.

Neubau, an up-and-coming, densely populated district dotted with cafes and galleries, rolled out the Schönes Gassi (nice dog walk) campaign this week.

People often forget social rules when dogs are involved, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But you’ll have to say something if you want things to change

• Read more Leading questions

A good friend of mine stays with me regularly when she comes into town. She brings her husband and two dogs that don’t get along with my dog. They’ve “used the bathroom” in our house before. I try to be nice and help clean or pretend it doesn’t bother me so that they feel comfortable. But when she asks for a weekend to come back with everyone, I kind of dread it. I enjoy seeing her and she’s a great friend. I think our friendship would be better if she stayed somewhere else, but I would feel bad if she stayed in a hotel and I don’t think she’d visit as often. She cleans up after the dogs and whatnot, but I like my home to be my safe haven. This friend doesn’t handle confrontation well, but is understanding. What can I do to handle this?

Eleanor says: It sounds as though you’re in the jam we all get into when we try to smooth things over: you can have the social ease of pretending something is fine; or the outcome from confessing it isn’t, but not both simultaneously.

Dogs have long been more popular, but for the first time more households own kittens than puppies. Some believe it’s all down to economics

Name: The kitten index.

Age: The debate has probably raged since animals have been domesticated.

A beloved family pet, she is also the best employee ever, brilliant at her rescue work. If everyone could be more like Poppy, the world would be a better place

When we picked up a nine-week-old black labrador from a couple just outside Callander, Scotland, I had no idea that she would soon be an employee of mine. Poppy became the family fur baby and we realised early on how clever and empathic she is. I work as a Special Operations Response Team paramedic and we decided to involve her in my search work in 2021 when she was only a year old because we knew it would play to her strengths. She took to it immediately.

Poppy and our team of dogs look for missing people. My colleagues and I then provide any medical assistance needed. She is trained to search without needing to smell someone’s scent from an item such as clothing. During training, we hide our volunteers along the riverbank, in the woods, beside lochs and canals, and set the dogs off. They have to find the people and come back. Poppy’s curious nature has served her well. She loves the undergrowth, sniffing about and finding things.

The 18 winning images from the annual contest that seeks to showcase the world’s most exceptional dog photographs while highlighting their subjects’ diversity and charm. These photos were selected from about 1,900 entries that came from 50 countries across the globe

• Scaring monkeys? Detecting bedbugs? Meet the elite working dogs – in pictures

It seemed like a good idea to get a puppy with my partner, but then he left me. Single life was hard at first but my disobedient dog made me laugh again

In the spring of 2024, my boyfriend and I lay in bed scrolling through photos of puppies. What about this one? Or that one? We had only been dating for six months or so, but had become besotted quickly, making long-term plans and talking about our future.

Then I found the one: a scruffy, small terrier with black and brown markings on his back that looked like the world map and eyes like Galaxy Minstrels. We named him Dennis to connect him to my mum’s terrier, Beano, because she was ill at the time and I’d failed to provide her with a grandchild. A puppy was the consolation present.

Pitt and loyal hound Odin get stuck in remote Alaska in this serviceable adventure with hints of Jack London and Marley & Me

One man and his dog have an amazing adventure in this survivalist drama starring Brad Pitt, from screenwriter Cameron Alexander and director David Ayer, for which the first and last words of the title have been carefully chosen to signal a mix of sentimentality and thrills. It’s an entertaining anthro-canine-mance, with man and dog relating to each other on a deep level … kind of like Owen Wilson in Marley & Me, only without Jennifer Aniston, or Bernie Winters and Schnorbitz, only without the devastating melancholy.

Pitt, who last worked with Ayer on the second world war action thriller Fury, plays a US military special forces veteran called Belmont, tough, self-reliant and laconically good-humoured in the classic Pitt manner, now spending his retirement roaming the breathtaking remote landscape of Alaska in his seaplane. He is accompanied by his beloved service dog Odin, or Odey (played by four different German shepherds), who saw action with Belmont in various fuzzily imagined flashback combat sequences. Odin took retirement with Belmont and is now his best and only pal. Whether or not Belmont ever had a human partner is never revealed.

We got her as a puppy and she became particularly close to Adam – a blessing when he went into cardiac arrest in the middle of the night

My husband, Adam, and I had always planned to have a big family and that journey began when we got our dog, Polly, five years ago. I’ve loved golden retrievers since I was a child because I grew up with one. We got Polly as a puppy and she was everything we’d hoped for: loving and smart.

She immediately connected with both of us, but became inseparable from Adam. They would go for morning runs together; Polly could always be found wagging her tail by his side. This bond proved to be lifesaving.

In new film The Heart of the Beast, the A-lister’s bond with his loyal mutt proves crucial. In Spike Jonze’s new advert, Pitt is rather more subservient

Brad Pitt has a new movie out this month, The Heart of the Beast, about an emotionally damaged man who forms a life-saving bond with a dog. If that sounds familiar, maybe it is because you have seen The Call of the Wild. Or maybe it is because you have seen A Dog’s Way Home. Or maybe it is because you have seen Dog. Or, look, you get the idea.

But perhaps Brad Pitt knows that getting people to see something as unimaginative as The Heart of the Beast is an uphill struggle, because that would explain why he has just made an advert that looks and feels much more like the Brad Pitt dog movie that deserves to be made. In short, it is an advert where Brad Pitt gets loudly disparaged by a number of dogs for an extended period of time.

John Fabiano has travelled the globe photographing dogs with jobs – from Italian truffle sniffers and Greenlandic sled dogs to Perla the hotel receptionist in Cologne

After a burglary, my parents decided we needed extra security. Jerry was the answer – and this hungry, handsome hound helped us all in countless ways

Jerry came into our lives because a burglar had broken in. My mum had woken in the middle of the night to find an intruder in our kitchen. He scarpered, but the psychological damage was done. Two days later, my dad came home with the cutest little rescue puppy, with traces of beagle and labrador in him. He was two months old, had a black, brown and white coat, and big, bashful eyes. We called him Jerry because we had a cat called Tom. “I’m not sure how he’ll protect us,” I said. “He will,” my dad replied.

Jerry was very laid-back and Zen. He became part of the family straight away. He also became the therapy dog we hadn’t realised we needed. With two teenagers in the house (me and my older brother) and a hyperactive younger brother, someone was always in a strop and needing to let off steam by taking him out for a walk. Each time, Jerry obliged. I’d bore him with my latest teen-romance trauma; he was a very good listener. Sometimes, he’d have five walks a day, with both of my parents taking their turn. He certainly got his steps in.

Scientists say research suggests blinking may have acquired a social relevance in interactions between dogs and people

Stare into a dog’s eyes and you may encounter a bemused expression. But researchers have found that dogs blink more often when they see their owners doing so, suggesting there may be more to the mutual gaze than meets the eye.

Scientists have previously found that dogs turn on the puppy eyes when humans look at them, and that their brains can distinguish happy human faces from other expressions – even telling apart fearful faces from those that are angry or sad.

He has chased a deer across a dual carriageway, eaten an entire tray of chocolate brownies and jumped head first into a canal. But despite all the worry he brings us, he is extraordinarily lovable

Ernie found his way into our hearts and home about nine years ago, when he strategically crawled into my lap during a family visit to meet a litter of puppies. While all the other beagle puppies ran wild, Ernie sat comfortably on me with his long, soft ears dangling down. We chose him because of his placid nature and named him Ernie after my mum’s late dad, who coincidentally also had short legs and a bit of a round belly.

After a few weeks we realised that Ernie was anything but placid. His gentle temperament quickly morphed into an unruly and persistent need to find his way into danger.

In the week that Years recalled all of its fresh meals, concerns grow about a potential link to dogs’ health conditions

“It’s been horrible – Chester developed sudden red and gunky eyes in May,” said Elizabeth, whose six-year-old cavachon “can’t open his eyes” on many days.

The 29-year-old civil servant is one of a number of people who contacted the Guardian because they are concerned about a potential link between a recalled dog food and their pet’s eye condition.

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.