Former foster dog Chandler is completely comfortable in his booties now and loves not having to get his feet wet.

It's always something, isn't it? The latest way that we're poisoning our planet (that I've heard of) is by spreading toxic road salt all over our snowy roads. We all know that when our dogs come indoors after walking on salted wintry sidewalks or roads, we had better wipe their feet or they'll do the job with their tongues, and this could give them an upset stomach. But it turns out that that road salt usually contains a potent deleterious ingredient that can do much more harm than that―like cause cancer. It's called "ferrocyanide" and it's used as an anti-caking agent. The problem with it is that it breaks down into various other forms of cyanide, which can promote cancer by activating carcinogens.

In 2004, three dogs on one street in Ottawa who often walked together all died of lymphoma quite suddenly probably as a result of ingesting this toxin, according to their veterinarian. One of the people whose dog died, Mark Watson, decided to make it his business to come up with an alternative to toxic road salt, and that's exactly what he did. He formed Earth Innovations, Inc., and researched and traveled around until he was able to find a safe alternative to conventional road salts. He calls his product Ecotraction, and it's made from a harmless green volcanic mineral. Rather than melting ice, Watson's product creates a "traction zone." In addition to preventing the tragic deaths of unsuspecting dogs, his nontoxic product will also spare wildlife and plant life that suffers from the conventional salt applications. In fact, it's so good for plant life that you can grow plants in it or even spread it on your lawn. An added bonus: It doesn't cause cars to rust.

Watson is trying to promote the use of Ecotraction by both consumers and government agencies. So far, he has all the Home Depot stores in Canada selling it. The wheels of government turn slowly, but at least in 2001 Environment Canada and Health Canada's assessment report stated that "road salts that contain inorganic chloride salts with or without ferrocyanide salts are 'toxic' as defined in Section 64 of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 (CEPA 1999)." So the Canadian government does officially consider the road salts toxic even without the ferrocyanide salts in them. Yet almost seven years later, there are still no regulations prohibiting the use of these toxic salts on the roadways.

We're in the same boat in the United States, only worse. We use even more road salt than the Canadians do―about 10 million tons per year to Canadians' 5 million. If you'd like to find out how you can order Ecotraction in bulk for your own home or neighborhood use, call 1-888-293-3406 to speak with someone at Earth Innovations or e-mail info@earthinnovations.ca (and include your postal or zip code).

In the meantime, I ran across another article featuring a different danger to pooch paws. This one is about police dogs in Düsseldorf, Germany, who often find themselves at risk of having their paws bloodied as a result of broken glass on the streets. In certain parts of town and on certain holidays, outdoor beer drinkers carelessly drop their empties on the pavement, resulting in dangerous glass shards. So the police department went online and did some shoe shopping for their canine "partners." Similar boots are available in the U.S., too, as well as online, so if you live in a part of the country that puts salt down on the roads, you might want to consider having your dog don a four-pack of booties before you go out.

I bought booties for my dog Rowdy last summer for a very different reason. He had developed a sore on his foot that he couldn't stop obsessively licking and it was getting worse and worse. Seeing no improvement after a couple of rounds of chiropractic adjustments and holistic topical treatments, which normally do the trick in short order, I went to my neighborhood conventional vet for the "big guns." There, I was told that Rowdy had to wear an Elizabethan collar if his foot was ever going to heal.

In an Elizabethan collar, Rowdy would have been unable to use the doggie door. Plus, when I first put one on him, he looked like a deer caught in the headlights―so pathetic and terrified that I instantly took it back off and apologized to him. "There's got to be a better way," I thought. And there was: Although he did rip through a number of booties (I had to buy two four-packs), he kept them on long enough to give his foot the time it needed to heal.