Tag Archives: Be The Change

Dogs & Our Animal Companions Are Better People Than Us.
If you are a dog lover, you already know that dogs are better people than humans. Here are some wonderful books that help make the point.

“Dogs love and share and help and care. Dogs Are Better People Than Us. Dogs Make Us Better Humans.” Andrea Geist

A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher by Sue Halpern.
Funny, moving, and profound, A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home is the story of how one faithful, charitable, loving, and sometimes prudent mutt—showing great hope, fortitude, and restraint along the way (the occasional begged or stolen treat notwithstanding)—taught a well-meaning woman the true nature and pleasures of the good life.

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The Possibility Dogs: What a Handful of “Unadoptables” Taught Me About Service, Hope, and Healing by Susannah Charleson.
“Charleson journeys into the world of psychiatric service, where dogs aid humans with disabilities that may be unseen but are no less felt. This work had a profound effect on Charleson, perhaps because, for her, this journey began as a personal one: Charleson herself struggled with posttraumatic stress disorder for months after a particularly grisly search. Collaboration with her search dog partner made the surprising difference to her own healing. Inspired by that experience, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope.

Along the way she comes to see canine potential everywhere, often where she least expects it – from Merlin the chocolate lab puppy with the broken tail once cast away in a garbage bag, who now stabilizes his partner’s panic attacks; to Ollie, the blind and deaf terrier, rescued moments before it was too late, who now soothes anxious children; to Jake Piper, the starving pit bull terrier mix with the wayward ears who is transformed into a working service dog and, who, for Charleson, goes from abandoned to irreplaceable.”

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Scent of the Missing: Love and Partnership with a Search-and-Rescue Dog by Susannah Charleson.
Charleson first book. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing, Susannah Charleson clipped a photo from the newspaper of an exhausted canine handler, face buried in the fur of his search-and-rescue dog. A dog lover and pilot with search experience herself, Susannah was so moved by the image that she decided to volunteer with a local canine team and soon discovered firsthand the long hours, nonexistent pay, and often heart-wrenching results they face.

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The Silence of Dogs in Cars by Martin Usborne.
“Photographer Martin Usborne is on a mission to save as many animals as he can in 365 days. His aptly titled project—A Year to Help—began in July 2012 and will wrap up next month. The quest has sparked him to travel the world visiting rescue shelters in Spain and a dog meat restaurant and a zoo in the Philippines, as well as to launch a blog chronicling his adventures. In his just-released photo collection, The Silence of Dogs in Cars (Kehrer Verlag), he aims to capture the way in which we silence, control or distance ourselves from other animals. Mission accomplished.” quote by Abbe Wright.

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The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving: How Dogs Have Captured Our Hearts for Thousands of Years by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson.
“No other animal loves us in quite the same way as dogs love us. And it is mutual. Is it possible that we developed the capacity for love, sympathy, empathy, and compassion because of our long association with dogs? In “The Dog Who Couldn’t Stop Loving”, Masson considers the far-reaching consequences of this co-evolution of dogs and humans, drawing from recent scientific research. Over the past 40,000 years a collective domestication has occurred that brings us to where we are today – humans have formed intense bonds with dogs, and the adoration is almost always reciprocal. Masson himself has experienced a profound connection with his new dog Benjy, a failed guide-dog for the blind, who possesses an abundance of inhibited love. But Masson knows that the love he feels for Benjy – and that Benjy feels for all the people and animals around him – is not unique, but is in fact a love that only dogs and humans possess. With wisdom, insight, and a brilliant analysis of recent scientific research, the bestselling author delivers a provocative and compelling book that will change the way we think about love and canine companions.”

Be the Change. You can make a difference.

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