Review: The Possibility Dogs

The Possibility Dogs

Since starting this blog and my foray into the World of Dogs two years ago, I have been struck by a particular reality again and again: We do a lot for dogs, but dogs do so much for us.

Nowhere is this truth more evident than in Susannah Charleson’s latest book, The Possibility Dogs.

In The Possibility Dogs, Charleson, a pilot and a search-and-rescue handler, recounts the many stories of dogs serving a more subtle purpose: dogs who act as psychiatric service dogs.

But even the phrase “psychiatric service dog” is relatively new. We’re all familiar with guide dogs for the blind and even therapy dogs who visit hospitals or nursing homes or schools. But a psychiatric service dog? What does that even mean?

Charleson shows us what it means with her truthful and sincere accounts of rescue dogs who showed great potential to serve as daily companions and aides to those with less recognizable issues, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), anxiety attacks, and so on. She works to evaluate rescue dogs who show potential to serve as service dogs for people with a wide range of issues.

Particularly moving is Charleson’s own account of her rescue Jake (the pup shown on the cover; more about him here). Jake was found as an abandoned and starving puppy near Charleson’s home. But through her careful attention and love (and the love shown from Charleson’s other dogs, particularly her golden retriever, Puzzle, who acted as a surrogate mother), the puppy began to grow and thrive — and show remarkable potential for service work. Jake was so clearly motivated to work with and near people. Today, he serves alongside Charleson, who uses him as a “demo dog” for her new nonprofit and for herself, as she has personally suffered symptoms of OCD and debilitating arthritis.

I liked that this book wasn’t all sappy stories. Charleson is a clear, controlled writer, and she plainly shares the ups and downs, both of her own experience and the experiences of others. These service dogs aren’t perfect, and living with and training them isn’t necessarily easy. But is it rewarding? Always.

As briefly mentioned above, Charleson has now also started an organization by the same name as her book, which aims to rescue and train dogs that show aptitude for service work and to serve as their public advocates. Be sure to check out the Possibility Dogs website for more information.

In short, I enjoyed the various narratives and success stories and the great, incomparable work that is being done by these dogs and by the people like Charleson who see so much potential in them. How heartening to be reminded of the enormous potential that exists in so many dogs, many of the dogs, perhaps, whose lonely faces greet ours in countless shelters and rescues. We have the ability to do so much for these dogs, and they clearly have the ability to do so much for us.

You can also follow Charleson on Twitter: @S_Charleson / Buy this book in hardcover or the Kindle version.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a review copy of this book by the publisher, but all expressed thoughts and opinions are exclusively my own.

Review: Pukka’s Promise

Pukka’s Promise

I am surprised a book like this hasn’t been written yet. It’s about time we started talking about why our dogs are dying so young.

Ted Kerasote takes on that question in his newest book, Pukka’s Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs. Kerasote, heartbroken by the death of his beloved dog Merle, sets out on a quest to investigate canine longevity. In the process, he brings home an athletic labrador retriever, Pukka (pronounced: puck-uh), who inspires his journey into dog health, diet, genetics, and environment.

Kerasote is based in the wilderness of Wyoming, but his research takes him all over the country. He interviews dozens of veterinarians, breeders, shelter workers, and just general dog people about their perspectives on how we can extend the lives of our canine companions.

I particularly enjoyed his chapters on breeding and genetics. I’ve become increasingly dismayed at the purebred breeding practices in the United States, and Kerasote shares my concern. He examines the recorded longevity of many purebreds and notes that most breed organizations add a handful of years to the breed’s estimated longevity; in reality, most purebred dogs die many years earlier than they are “supposed to,” according to breed standards. He shares findings from studies and anecdotes from breeders intent on improving genetic health. I was especially fascinated in his discussion of the silken windhound, a breed invented by geneticist Francie Stull. By selecting dogs for health and longevity, many of Stull’s windhounds lived into their upper teens and several into their twenties, which is remarkable for a dog of any size or breed.

In choosing his new dog (Pukka), Kerasote decides to go with a breeder instead of a rescue, despite citing research that mixed breeds tend to live, on average, a year longer than purebreds of similar sizes. He makes the choice based on reliability of information: you have a better idea of what you’re getting from a breeder than from a pound puppy. However, I thought it was a bit contradictory that he railed against dog fanciers for valuing looks so highly, because he repeatedly turns down puppies because they didn’t look just like Merle, his previous dog; they had to have that “rangy look” and that “rufuous coat” or he wouldn’t accept them.

His discussion on diet and vaccinations I also found to be helpful. Particularly, his approach to vaccinations struck me as level-headed and reasonable, not swinging too much to either party line (vaccinate all the time vs. never vaccinate). Instead, he vaccinates the minimum recommendations from his vet and then uses titers thereafter.

(As a side note, I was delighted that he spent a whole chapter about his visit to the Charlottesville-Albemarle SPCA [CASPCA], which is our local SPCA and the SPCA that I volunteered at for a year while waiting for Pyrrha! He uses CASPCA as a shining example of a successful no-kill shelter and a pleasant place for homeless animals. I felt a lot of hometown pride.)

My only critique of the book is that I wish Kerasote’s recommendations were more broadly applicable to the average dog owner. He lives on a plot of vast acreage in Wyoming. He feeds Pukka raw, wild game that he kills himself. Pukka gets hours of free-roaming adventure and play every day. Pukka does not wear a leash, ever. Kerasote is a single, childless person who also has a stay-at-home job, so he gets to be with Pukka all day long. This sounds like paradise to every dog-loving person, but I don’t think many of us could follow all of his doggy lifestyle recommendations. Most of us have full-time jobs, human families, budget constraints, and live in suburban or urban areas in which it would be both unsafe and unwise to let our dogs roam, leash-less and intact. It would have been nice to have made some more applicable advice or shared modifications on how we can incorporate these healthy living principles into our dogs’ lives.

All in all, it’s a great book. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to read general research on dog longevity and discover some broad principles to extend the life and well-being of one’s beloved canine.

Bonus: A video of Pukka by the author.

Disclaimer: I was provided with a review copy of this book, but all opinions expressed here are my own.

Review: Doggerel

Doggerel.

I was contacted by this book’s publisher–obviously, I think, because of this blog’s name–to review Doggerel: The Moving Memoirs of Rescue Dogs and Their Second Lives, in Poetry and Prose, by Angela Patmore.

The book contains photos and poems for 50 U.K. shelter dogs who were either recently rescued or in need of a home. The proceeds from the book go to the Association of Dogs’ and Cats’ Homes, a U.K. rescue organization.

Patmore, a former organizer for Scruffts, the U.K. dog show for mixed breeds, clearly has a lot of love for homeless dogs. She is, however, not a poet. I know that this book isn’t intending to achieve any high literary acclaim, but the poetry is so abysmal that it’s almost embarrassing to see it in print (e.g., “When dogs are indoor angels just/Their wings are made of light/But when you look up into the sky/Whole outdoor ones go sailing by/Invisiball to sight”). The photos were nice, however, and I always like reading about dogs who have been rescued; I’d just rather read about them in a format that wasn’t nonsensical verse.

The second half of the book is a how-to guide for U.K. residents who are planning to adopt a dog. There is a comprehensive directory of U.K. shelters and rescue organizations, and Patmore places particular focus on rescuing greyhounds, which I appreciated. She includes general statistics on the dismal state of dog adoptions in the United Kingdom and implores her readers to consider adoption.

The brief training recommendations made me wince. It’s more of the same, worn-out, disproved dominance theory stuff: Make sure your dog knows that you are the alpha, always eat before your dog–and the absurd recommendation that you should pretend to eat some of your dog’s kibble before you give it to him, just so he knows that you’re “in charge”! Wow. That’s a new one. To teach heeling, Patmore says, “If he pulls ahead, which is much more likely, give a jerk on his collar and say ‘Heel!’” All I could think about was that poor dog’s neck, not to mention his increasing lack of comprehension…

I wish I liked this book more, particularly since I was given a review copy. Overall, this may be a nice little book to hand off to adopters who walked out of your U.K. rescue organization with a new furry companion, but it’s not one that I would recommend to anyone who wants to learn anything about raising a rescue dog. The bad poetry, for me, obscured the meaningfulness of these dogs’ memoirs and almost served to cheapen their experiences, by reducing their complex histories to silly couplet rhymes and forced syntax. If you really want to learn about rescuing dogs, I’d direct your attention to PetFinder’s adoption book or Love Has No Age Limit, which provided far more valuable information in 50 pages than this book did in 186.

Review: My Dog Tulip

My Dog Tulip.

At least in the Western world, the English are somewhat famous for their undying love of dogs. James Herriott is the father of all modern country dog legends. The stereotype of the “stiff upper lip” does not apply to the national English feeling toward canines. Indeed, as J.R. Ackerley himself says in the beginning of this book, My Dog Tulip: “Unable to love each other, the English turn to dogs.”

All that to say, I was excited to read his memoir, which I have often heard about. I love dog memoirs (great ones like Dog Years and Pack of Two come to mind) and this one was about a proper Englishman, J.R. Ackerley, and his love affair with his Alsatian (aka German shepherd), Tulip. (Tulip’s actual name was “Queenie,” but Ackerley’s publishers made him change her name in the book, because they were worried that the dog’s name might become a derogatory, if oblique, reference to Ackerley’s sexual orientation.)

Instead of a charming memoir, though, this little book is really just the record of one Englishman’s positive MANIA to pimp out his dog. The poor girl. Aside from one chapter about the social difficulties of your dog defecating on the sidewalk, the rest of the book is about Tulip’s heat cycles, her vulva, and her long parade of unsuccessful suitors, including the long and tiresome descriptions of her failure to copulate.

As a side note, I am not surprised that Elizabeth Marshall Thomas wrote the introduction to my edition and that she loved the book. (She would.) As you may recall, I have a rather low opinion of Thomas’s methods of dog rearing and it therefore was not surprising to me that she adored this book about one man’s unscrupulous treatment of his dog, her behavior, and her reproductive faculties.

Supposedly, this memoir was made into an animated film, but wow, that is not one film that I would ever want to see.

Review: Don’t Shoot the Dog!

Don’t Shoot the Dog!

This classic book by landmark trainer and behaviorist Karen Pryor has been on my to-read list for almost a year now. Our public library didn’t carry a copy, but then I stumbled upon it at a used book sale for a $1. Perfect!

I actually had no idea that this book wasn’t exclusively a dog training book; Don’t Shoot the Dog! is actually a general primer on the techniques and methods of positive reinforcement training, applied to all kinds of animals–humans included. The book is not a step-by-step training manual, but rather a primer on why these positive techniques work in the first place.

Pryor is best known for being a leading proponent of clicker training, a method of reward and reinforcement that she began using while training dolphins. Clicker training has widespread application to many different types of animals and dogs, of course, respond very well to the use of clickers.

The book discusses the application of clickers in positive reinforcement training, but it spends more time explaining why clicker training works. Why do animals respond so well and so quickly to this schedule of training? Pryor has the answers, and she presents them cleanly and clearly in this book.

I almost wish I had read it earlier, as it would have been a nice foundation for my introduction to positive training. As it stands, however, I’m still glad I read it and glad to have that extra assurance that this is the type of training that is respectful and effective. I am looking forward to continuing to learn these techniques and put them into practice with my own dog in the coming months!

Review: Adopt the Perfect Dog

Adopt the Perfect Dog.

English trainer and author Gwen Bailey compiled this short and helpful introductory guide to dog adoption. Adopt the Perfect Dog was published by Reader’s Digest and is short and hands-on, filled with lots of photos and instructional side bars.

At this stage in my dog-book reading process, it wasn’t the most illuminating book. But that’s not Bailey’s fault: When I was reading this, I’d already read 52 other books about raising and training dogs (I know; I have a problem). Most of her advice and recommendations–while being very true and helpful–I’d already encountered numerous times. (I think I’m finally realizing that I’ve just about exhausted my dog reading potential. Until some other great book comes out, I may be nearing the end of my dog book list for now.)

This book would be a great place to start for someone who, again, was a total stranger to dog adoption, particularly adopting an adult dog and acclimating him or her into one’s home.

Bailey advocates positive reinforcement training techniques and provides clear, hands-on advice about how to introduce your dog to your family, how to set house rules, how to handle possessiveness, and how to avoid separation anxiety, among other things.

On the whole, I think I’d be more willing to recommend Petfinder’s guide to dog adoption, as it is far more comprehensive while also being very accessible to a first-time dog owner. But this is a nice, quick little book and it is not without value.

Review: A Dog Is Listening

A Dog Is Listening.

This is probably the strangest book I have read so far in my year of dog book reading. Roger Caras, you were such a funny little man! I’m not even sure where to begin with a review. Caras, who passed away in 2001, was a president of the ASPCA and a long-time host of the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. His deep love for dogs is apparent in this odd little book.

First, A Dog Is Listening is quite short and readable. So, that’s nice. The book begins with short chapters on all of the senses a dog has (sight, smell, touch, taste, etc.). The chapters, though, don’t really stick to their headings, and Caras has a tendency to wander off on some goose chase, talking about his farm and his large pack of dogs, or about some news story he recently read, or about fanciful domestication legends. Sticking to the topic at hand is not a primary concern for him.

His writing tone is also somewhat bizarre; it almost sounds like he’s read too many mid-19th-century British novelists and is trying to imitate one. The language construction is very strange and stilted.

The book is also peppered with totally unrelated black-and-white photographs or paintings of dogs throughout history. I enjoyed looking at them, but they were never mentioned or referenced in the text; many of them didn’t even have captions.

Overall, I wouldn’t say that I disliked it; it was entertaining and interesting, for the most part, but I’m not sure if I really learned anything. Oh, well. I just like reading about people’s undying love of dogs.

Review: Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

Why Does My Dog Act That Way?

I don’t know why I keep going back to read more Stanley Coren; I never really enjoy his books. But they always sound so interesting! I think I keep telling myself, “Maybe this one will have some pertinent and useful information…” Sigh. Nope.

Why Does My Dog Act That Way? is just more of the same, standard Coren fare: Breed discrimination based only on limiting stereotypes. Like every Coren book I’ve read so far, this one also has a considerable lack of plausible scientific support for his “research,” which presumably backs up his stereotypes. This book is basically an introduction to how Coren judges dogs based on their breed.

While the beginning of the book covers some fundamental material, like how dogs’ personalities are modified by internal or external factors, the rest of the book is haphazardly organized and contains a lot of irrelevant chapters, in my opinion. For example, Coren spends a whole chapter talking about his visit to a dog fight and how it is mostly impossible to trust any pit bull–even a pit bull not bred for fighting–with people, especially children.

As he is wont to do, he then splits up dog breeds into his own categories and then classifies them according to their personalities. The results just give these broad over-generalizations, sweeping across entire breeds: Expect border collies to be high-strung, German shepherds to have fear-based aggression, poodles to be finicky, sight hounds to be virtually untrainable, and so on.

I understand that it’s tempting to do this. We all like to read lists and we all like to read stereotypes, especially when they confirm what we already believe about someone or some dog. I for one, however, want to strive to see dogs as individuals and not make generic assumptions about them based on their breed or breed mix. I’ve met lazy border collies. I’ve met rough-and-tumble poodles. I’ve met very well-trained greyhounds. Every dog is different. I know that there are things you can expect and even predict from certain breeds, but to classify them in such a hard-lined way? No thanks, Stan.

Review: Agility Training for You and Your Dog

Agility Training for You and Your Dog.

Husband-and-wife team Ali Canova and Joe Canova founded Mountain Freaks Agility in New Jersey and wrote this clear, helpful introduction to agility training. The book is colorful and easily readable and filled with instructive photographs and step-by-step training techniques.

I don’t know if we’ll even have a dog who will be interested in or capable competing in agility, but I’m certainly fascinated by it and I have always been interested in agility as a canine sport and discipline.

The Canovas are positive reinforcement trainers and they begin the book with encouraging you to establish a strong working relationship and basic obedience training with your dog before beginning any kind of agility work. They stress that your relationship with your dog, knowing him or her well, and establishing trust is critical before agility can begin.

The book moves from there into specific chapters on how to train for each hurdle or challenge on an agility course. How do you set up jumps? How do you desensitize your dog to the slamming board of the see-saw? How on earth do you train weave poles? The Canovas have these answers and much more.Agility Training for You and Your Dogalso moves into advanced techniques in the latter chapters, including course plans and movement strategies for more experienced handlers and dogs.

If we do bring home a dog who seems like he or she would enjoy this sport, I think I’ll definitely be returning to this book for future guidance.

Review: In a Dog’s Heart

In a Dog's Heart.

Jennifer Arnold is the founder of Canine Assistants, a non-profit that trains and assigns therapy dogs for a variety of different uses. In a Dog’s Heart is her second book and was published in October 2011.

I hesitate to write a review here, because I found this book somewhat disappointing. Arnold is clearly a wonderful woman with a huge heart and lots of hands-on experience with dogs. She certainly knows a lot more than I do.

My reservation is that as a book, In a Dog’s Heart was not a successful project. It is essentially one woman’s collected ramblings about why she loves dogs. That is all well and good in itself, but it is not compelling or interesting. Perhaps it could have been reworked into something more memoir-like, resembling Caroline Knapp’s sweet book Pack of Two. Instead, Arnold’s book doesn’t seem to have any grounding frame of reference or context to give it much-needed structure.

I did appreciate Arnold’s thorough critique of Cesar Millan and the incredible damage he has done to dog training in America today. I enjoyed the heart-warming stories about the therapy dogs she’s trained, worked with, and assigned to people in need. However, I felt dismayed to read her hearty recommendation of dog food made by companies like Purina and Hill’s Science Diet, long known for creating chemically-laden refuse that is patently terrible for dogs. I also thought it was kind of silly that she believed so strongly in puppy temperament testing, something we’ve known for a while is not any reliable indicator of an adult dog’s temperament.

The book’s lack of organization–or a discernible point–is a crippling element. The chapters are haphazardly arranged and filled with all sorts of random thoughts. I almost felt like she just sat down with a legal pad and just wrote down all of the things she knew about dogs and then decided to structure her book that way. Essentially, I’m not sure what this book was trying to accomplish. Is it a behavioral guide? Is it a training manual? Is it a memoir? I don’t think it really knew either.

Arnold is very well-meaning and has done so much good for so many people and dogs. For that, she should be praised and applauded. But this book? Not a keeper.