Pushy friend wants her to rescue a sato, but she’s having doubts

• Reprints

Updated: November 11, 2011 3:36PM

Q. I told a couple of friends that I was looking for a dog and one of them keeps pushing me to adopt a Puerto Rican street dog (sato) from a no-kill shelter. He says this is the only ethical way to get a rescue dog. I have stopped by the shelter a couple of times to look at these strays and I have come away empty.

The satos I’ve seen appear to be high-maintenance and high-risk. I doubt I could handle one. And to be frank, I didn’t like the looks. I like the smaller, shaggier types. My friend insists I can learn to love a sato. For me, it would be a steep learning curve. He has two. What’s your opinion?

A. You can’t hurry love; you’ll just have to wait — for a dog you can bring home. Your friend means well but he should leave you alone about your choice of domestic animal partner. Politely, you can ask him to cease the next time he meddles.

You can’t bring home a dog to do the politically correct thing. And you can’t hope you might love it someday. You might be waiting a long time. You must bring home a dog because you have more belief than doubt in your ability to take care of it responsibly. If a sato is not the dog for you, there are plenty of other mutts in the sea. Jump in and find one to love, following your own instincts and not bowing to anyone else’s belief system.

Q. A few years ago, we rescued a senior female boxer with mast cell cancer. Sadly, we learned about boxers and their high rate of cancer firsthand. We did everything we could to extend her life, which included not fertilizing or adding other chemicals to our lawn.

Since then, we’ve rescued two more dogs (another boxer and a Boston terrier) and we’ve not used any lawn products of any kind. As a result our yard looks like hell. Our neighborhood is full of cute homes with tidy, small lawns. We look like we are farming clover. Can you recommend a pet-friendly fertilizer or lawn treatment before we get tossed out of the neighborhood?

A. If Dog Lady were Lawn Lady, she would recommend only organic treatments because chemicals hurt humans too. And green space can thrive with earthy treatments.

Consider Black KowManure Compost. On the Lowe’s Web site (Lowes.com), a bag of this stuff retails at $6 for enough fertilizer to cover 10 square feet. Manure, as you know, is dung, repurposed as Mother Nature’s nurturer. Read the reviews and most users had good results with Black Kow, reporting lush grass and abundant produce. Also, the most prevalent comment praised the lack of offensive smell.

We are now into the months when clover growing stops. Still, there’s no reason you can’t put down some fertilizer before the hard frost and snow grip the ground. With an organic stimulus, your grass will weather the winter and please the neighbors next year.

Visit askdoglady.com to ask a question or make a comment.