Millions of small black flies have taken over mountains and hiking trails. "I thought it was horrible," says Pernille Frøskeland.

An unidentified was found on the nose of a dog in the backyard of a home in south Anchorage. Neither the family nor their pet had been traveling recently. The identification of the tick species is pending.

The community of Gambell fought a distemper outbreak among its dog population this spring and managed to squash the epidemic in its early onset. Distemper is a deadly disease that can afflict dogs and wildlife alike and also has been documented in the North Atlantic to jump from dogs to marine mammals like seals.

Coyotes, first documented in Anchorage around 1900, are not often seen in Anchorage. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game estimates coyote population abundance using the Trapper Questionnaire reports, and consider the Kenai Peninsula, Copper River Valley and Mat-Su Valley to have the highest coyote population densities.

"It seemed like a normal day. It just showed up," says Torolv Røberg about the weather phenomenon. The dust devil was at least 100 meters high.

A recent spate of attacks on humans and pets by foxes in Topsham may be in part due to a new strain of rabies. As of April 18, there have been five such attacks in Topsham this year. State Veterinarian Michele Walsh theorizes a rabies strain more associated with raccoons has begun infecting gray foxes.

An unknown substance near the Chilkoot River made dogs sick twice this month. The pet owners had to make their animals vomit and the dogs needed

Three foxes from three Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta communities have tested positive for rabies in recent weeks.

After he lost the trail, Jeff King stopped his dog team and draped his sleeping bag over his head to block the battering wind and blowing snow. He was somewhere between the villages of Ambler and Shungnak in the Kobuk 440 Sled Dog Race. Conditions ranged from howling to furious. King lay down with his team. He cuddled a dog named Twister and tried to sleep. That’s when a flaw in the plan rattled his bones. The work of getting there had caused him to sweat, dampness worsened by blowing snow that found its way inside his clothing.

Nome and the surrounding area, including St. Lawrence Island, is fighting rabies almost as hard as it is fighting COVID-19. Because of the high level of rabies infection Fish and Game requested assistance from the National Rabies Management Response Program. Their job is to manage a wildlife disease outbreak. Several technicians and a rabies biologist are in Nome reducing the number of foxes.

Knut-André Haugen found two dead swans with their heads under their wings outside Fredrikstad. Now the Norwegian Food Safety Authority suspects further spread of bird flu.

The head of Alaska’s Wildlife Disease and Health Surveillance Program confirms that the City of Nome has a higher than normal case count of rabies in the red fox population. Usually in winter, most of the cases come from Prudhoe Bay and Utqiagvik. This winter most of the cases are from Nome, as well as from Kivalina and other villages around Kotzebue.

The wildcat showed no hesitancy in actively interacting with people or traffic an ENR spokesperson said. It was likely the animal involved in other interactions with pets.

On Monday, Shania Tymchatyn saved one of her dogs from a lynx, and Yellowknife kennel owner Trevor Lizotte says one of the big cats attacked his dog team last week.

A pack of stray blue dogs, likely covered in chemical waste, was spotted on the road near the Russian town of Dzerzhinsk. The dogs may have been exposed to chemicals at a nearby abandoned factory that produced plexiglass and hydrocyanic acid, giving their fur the eye-catching blue color.

Twice in the last couple of weeks, dog have been attacked by lynx. Biologist Tom Jung says climate change may be a factor, affecting the amount of food available. Snowshoe hares in Yukon are now in about the third year of decline.

The highly contagious infection can lead to pneumonia and hits puppies, older dogs and dogs with health problems the hardest. Vaccination against kennel cough protects for about year.

Two women in Beaver Creek, say they jumped on a lynx to pull it away from a dog it attacked. The lynx, its mouth latched onto the dog's face, would not let go.

Although bears may hibernate for different lengths of time during winter, winter bear activity is an uncommon sight for Alaska Peninsula residents.

The Society of B.C. Veterinarians has noticed more dogs are catching kennel cough this year than in previous years, and they think it might be due to the coronavirus pandemic.