Absolutely nothing, thank God (or Dog). The site and its siblings look much as they did at the turn of the century. And each day’s homespun story of a beloved pet, whether from Wailuku, Hawaii, or Turner, Me., or most anywhere in between, is as lovely as those I remember.

As I’ve fallen in love with Dog of the Day in a new phase of my life, though, and reached out to talk to Ms. Watts, I’ve realized that what I like best about her site — its deep, seemingly easy reserves of animal-inspired goodness — is in fact an enormous labor for her, one that offers a window as much onto the complexity of human relationships as onto the simplicity of animal ones.

Take factionalism, in this age of it. Each day, Ms. Watts says, Dog and Cat of the Day duke it out for traffic stats. One day, virtuous Dog triumphs (hurray!). The next, treacherous Cat claws its way back on top. The only rule in this ancient struggle is that Pet of the Day — a sort of D.M.Z. where Ms. Watts attempts to interest readers in such charmers as Spike, a porcupine from Edmonton, Alberta, who “has no idea what a threat is and therefore his quills are always laying flat on his back” — never wins.

With pets, as in politics, ours is a two-party system.

While Ms. Watts navigates the partisan shoals of Cat and Dog (she won’t take sides, though she did say she has a “sadly genetic” cat allergy), her inbox forces her to confront other, even more dispiriting aspects of the human condition.

Take Queen Lizzy, a Rottweiler/Labrador mix from Butte, Mont. Her owner found Lizzy at a shelter, a year after losing her previous dog to cancer. The pre-shelter story of Lizzy — starved, abused, locked outside — raises some of the biggest questions and perhaps answers them, too. “I don’t know who could hurt her,” writes Lizzy’s owner, who also doesn’t think “that’s for us to figure out. She is now in a loving, warm safe home forever, and she seems to know it too!”