When an Upper West Side veterinarian, Karen Cantor, walks her 5-month-old Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, she often receives unsolicited advice from wellmeaning passersby. They suggest that Dr. Cantor invest in a dog trainer or a raw food diet for the puppy, whose name she did not want printed.

“In New York City, everyone has a big opinion,” Dr. Cantor, who practices at Westside Veterinary Center on West 83rd Street, said. “People give all sorts of advice on the street, whether they know better or not.”

The so-called “mommy war” battles — fought among mothers making disparate professional and child-rearing choices — have entered the realm of pet parenting, inspiring guilt and selfdoubt, city dwellers say. On any given day, New York dog owners are likely to get an earful about just how maladjusted their furry, four-legged friends are. Young mothers often debate breastfeeding, preschool admissions, and nannies; dog owners, in turn, clash over training methods, barking cures, and the city’s best doggy day care centers.

When an Upper West Side resident, Veronica Hackethal, adopted a mixed breed named Puccini six weeks ago, the year-old dog suffered from a hacking cough and a gastrointestinal illness that precluded him from eating much of anything. Ms. Hackethal, a psychiatry resident at Mount Sinai Hospital, tended carefully to Puccini — feeding him by hand and taking him on short walks in the neighborhood to build up his strength.

Still, she faced an onslaught of criticism from strangers, accusing her of everything from using the wrong collar and thereby exacerbating Puccini’s cough to undermining her dog’s health by feeding him commercial dog food. “People would say,‘You shouldn’t use a neck collar — it’s making him choke.’ They’d say, ‘You shouldn’t feed him Iams,'” she said. “They just assumed I wasn’t treating him right.”

Ms. Hackethal said these encounters remind her of the blunt criticism strangers offer up to her friends and family members with small children. “A lot of people in New York don’t have kids, and for them, a dog is a surrogate,” she said.

The judgment often spills off of the street and onto the Internet, too. Online content for city pet owners bears more than a passing resemblance to UrbanBaby and other popular parenting Web sites. At urbanhound.com, for example, pet owners ask questions and dispense advice on anything from pet dandruff, to “puppy kindergartens,” to the benefits of holistic veterinarians. On its message board, a woman identifying herself as “Oliver’s Mommy” writes, “My dog, Oliver, has a stain on his tooth … I do brush his teeth but it’s still there.” In response, one site contributor suggests putting Oliver on a “raw diet,” while another asks, “Is this about your dog, or about your vanity?”

Meanwhile, at the Web log puplife.com — “The blog for dogs and their people” — pet owners can learn about curbing canine obesity, petproofing their homes, and the lurking dangers of the urban dog run.

At Canine Ranch pet spa — which has two locations on the Upper West Side, and a third in East Hampton — many patrons introduce themselves as their dogs’ “moms” or “dads,” a store manager, Sheri Weiner, said. “It’s a different kind of love than you’d have for a child, but the connection is similar in that you want your dog to be healthy, good, safe, and happy,” she said.

The willingness to dispense dog care advice is perhaps most prevalent on the Upper West Side, Ms. Weiner said. “I can’t imagine someone stopping you while you’re walking your dog along Madison Avenue,”she said.”On Columbus Avenue, it happens all the time.The Upper West Side, historically, has been made up of opinionated people in politics, in publishing, in the arts.”

The notion of stranger-knows-best is not limited to a single New York City neighborhood, according to a city dog trainer with 20 years of experience, Stacy Alldredge. “In any area where there are a lot of dogs, you’ll hear a lot of people doling out advice, most of which is bad,” Ms. Alldredge, the owner of Who’s Walking Who Dog Obedience and Behavioral Training in Chelsea, said. “I’ve been out on the street with my own dog, and have been given advice that’s so wrong that I was stunned. They’re not doing it to be mean; they’re just misinformed.”

Misinformed or not, city dog lovers can be, well, dogged about foisting on others their ideas about pet care, a canine fitness specialist, Joshua Stine, said. “There are 100 opinions about socialization and vaccinations,” he said. “That extends into nutrition. There’s the supermarket food, and the higher quality premium food. There’s organic foods, and then there are people telling you that you should actually cook for your dog.”

For some dog owners, only the best will do for their dog — and for everyone else’s, too. “It’s one of those things people seem to get very passionate about,” Mr. Stine, a managing partner at Midtown’s Running Paw, which develops customized exercise regimens for dogs, said. “They become an advocate, and stick up their nose at anything else.”

Mr. Stine said well-meaning strangers have chided him about the prong-style collar that his two-year-old, 135-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback, Toronto, sports. He insists that, far from being cruel, the collar simulates the corrective measures that mother dogs use with their puppies. “I generally thank people for their advice, and move on,” he said. “You need to do what you’re comfortable with.”

When it comes to offering up his opinions on animal nutrition and care, one pet store owner, Neil Rosenbaum, admits he’s “the first to get up on a soapbox.”

“I’m very much in favor doing the right thing,” he said, noting he generally favors a Biologically Appropriate Raw Foods diet (yes, BARF), and a holistic approach to veterinary care.

Still, Mr. Rosenbaum, the owner of Pet Stop on the Upper West Side, said it’s important to know when to back off. “I can give you my opinion, but ultimately it’s your decision,” he said. “You’re the parent of the dog. It’s your child.”