Q: Sandy is a 1-year-old Lab-boxer mix. Since we got her at 4 months old, she has drooled excessively, then vomited when we travel with her. This is a large problem for us as we take a 4½-5 hour trip to Vermont almost every weekend. We tried Dramamine, Benadryl and Happy Traveler with no success. Finally, our vet prescribed Cerenia. Since then, Sandy has not vomited. Unfortunately, the drooling has not gone away. As soon as the car door opens, she begins drooling and continues for about an hour and is often dry for the rest of the trip unless we get stuck in traffic. Then she gets up and starts drooling again.

A: Well, you are halfway there.

Cerenia is the first drug actually made for dogs and cats that prevents the vomiting from motion sickness. But it is not a sedative and does nothing to control a pet’s anxiety about traveling. The anxiety combined with the short muzzle of the boxer promotes drooling. There is not much that can be done about this.

In a perfect world, you would have the time to take your dog in the car every single day for short trips combined with lots of positive reinforcement and thus she would look forward to the car trips and the anxiety and drooling might stop.

Right now, she associates car travel only with the long trip to Vermont. You could ask your vet to prescribe an anti-anxiety medication, but how many drugs do you really want to give the dog for this situation?

My best guess here is that with the Cerenia, she no longer feels ill when she travels, so as time goes on, she will lose a lot of the anxiety. Animals seem to do best in situations when they come to the conclusion that there is no longer anything to worry about.

Q: We just started to feed the wild birds in our backyard, and I had a lot of problems with two or three squirrels that kept pushing all the seeds out the feeder in their search for sunflower seeds. I tried squirrel baffles on the pole that holds the feeder up, but they always seemed to find a way around them. So I figured that if you cannot beat them, join them.

I got an old birdbath and every day I put a pound or so of black oil sunflower seeds in it and let the squirrels eat to their hearts’ content. Now the birds can eat in peace at their feeder. My neighbor says that if I encourage the squirrels in this manner, my “squirrel feeder” will draw in others and we will soon be overrun with them in the manner of rats.

Thus far, we seem to have only the same two or three. (I can tell the difference as one is larger and another has a fuller tail and one is all black.) I am not sure if my neighbor is correct.

A: Squirrels and rats are both rodents, but the similarity ends there. Rats are social animals and gain strength in living together in large cooperative groups. This is why they are so successful. Tree squirrels such as the gray squirrels you mention are more solitary in nature and have prescribed territories that are protected by the resident squirrels.

When food is abundant, you may have a small group as you have that can live together harmoniously, but they will not willingly share their bounty with strangers that are looking for a new place to call home. So I very much doubt your neighbor’s fears of your backyards being overrun with squirrels will come to pass. Most likely, you will just have the resident animals and that is it. However, lots of uneaten seed on the ground beneath a feeder can actually draw rats, and if your neighbor is looking for something to complain about, this is a valid fear.

So do your best to keep the ground under both your squirrel feeder and the bird feeder as clean as possible.

Q: My backyard is set up as a little nature preserve. I have a lot of native plants, a little garden pond and many bird feeders to attract a variety of birds. My favorite birds are the ones that visit my suet feeders: woodpeckers, chickadees and even mockingbirds.

However, now it seems that a raccoon is visiting my suet feeders at night and pulling them off the trees. I tried putting the suet in a metal cage, yet the raccoon still was able to pull the cage off the tree and carry it away. I never found it anywhere in my yard.

Is there any way to feed the suet to those little birds that need it so badly in this cold weather yet keep it safe from the raccoons?

A: Suet is beef fat, and the calories in it are very useful to small birds that spend the winter months feeding off dormant insects such as your woodpeckers do. They have to spend a lot of energy looking for such a meal, and the addition of a suet feeder in a backyard can make the difference between life and death.

However, the raccoons have to eat as well and see no reason they cannot partake in this tasty meal that you so graciously put out for them every day. The raccoons have a lot more options available to them as far as finding meals in the winter goes, so it is OK to inconvenience them by simply taking the suet feeders down in the late afternoon and putting them back outside in the morning. (It is rare that a healthy raccoon will be out and about in full daylight in a backyard looking for food.) This way, the birds will still be able to partake of the suet during the day and the raccoons will just do their best to forage elsewhere.