The book Peanut Butter Dogs, Photographs by Greg Murray, is the best thing to cross my desk in ages. We now know that the ingredients for a giggling, smiling, heart-warming laugh fest are: 1. Dogs (80% of the dogs in the book were adopted from shelters or rescues). 2. Peanut butter. 3. A great photographer. The inspiration for this book came from Greg's dog Bailey, a Mastiff rescued from a tough life, underweight and frightened of the world. But Greg gave her love and care, and she lived a life of "joy and adventure" until her untimely death at two and a half years of age. While Bailey was alive, Greg happened to take an amusing photo of Bailey slurping peanut butter off of her face. An enlarged photograph of that image greets visitors to the house, each of whom begins smiling when they Read More
Archives for 2017
Why Don’t Dogs Get Angry More Often?
I've had a lot of interesting conversations on book tour for The Education of Will, and one of the topics that comes up relates to dogs and anger. I've heard: "Are you really saying that dogs can experience anger? Isn't that being anthropomorphic; surely anger is a human construct?" And from a few concerned people: "Aren't you afraid that attributing anger to dogs just gives people an excuse to punish them?" Good questions, and an understandable controversy. I've learned that even putting the words "anger" and "dogs" into one sentence can be distressing to some people. So much so that I've written about it twice in the past, once in 2008 (Can Dogs Get Angry?) and again in 2011 (Anger & Anger Management). To summarize those posts, in spite of our vision of dogs as having Read More
Fighting Words
It seems that we all have something we are fighting right now. This next month, I'm all about doing battle with cancer. Cancer. Ugh, I hate it. I actually began this piece with a direct conversation to cancer itself, but it contained so many swear words I had to delete it. I have good reason to hate cancer, as does almost everyone reading this article. Personally, I’ve lost two dogs, a sister-in-law and a best friend to cancer. I have several friends who are battling cancer as I write. I look at my three dogs and find myself wondering—will I lose one of them to it? (That’s not paranoid, cancer affects dogs at higher rates than it affects people.) What about Jim? Argh, I can't even go there. Of course, none of us can have a direct conversation with cancer. It’s not sentient, it doesn’t Read More
The Working Dog Center at Penn Vet
Book tours can be tiring, but there's nothing like being inspired by the work of the people of The Penn Vet Working Dog Center in Philadelphia. I had the pleasure of spending the afternoon there--basically an exercise in intellectual and emotional rapture. In general, here's what they do: "Our goal is to increase collaborative research, scientific assessment, and shared knowledge and application of the newest scientific findings and veterinary expertise to optimize the performance of detection dogs." Here's more from their website: The dogs "prevent crime and acts of terrorism, working alongside military, police, TSA, and the Department of Defense to find explosives and narcotics. Rescue victims of accidents or disasters, using expert search-and-recovery skills. Detect medical Read More
Best cake in the world
I just couldn't resist sending this out: Without question the most amazing cake ever made in the world, thanks to my hosts in Boxboro, MA at the New England Dog Training Club. Nancy and Cindy had the cake made. (My thanks to creative genius Jeannie at Wilson Farm in Lexington, MA!) We had a lovely dinner last night at Nancy and Wade's beautiful home, and I'm anticipating a wonderful night tonight, speaking in Boxboro about my memoir, The Education of Will. It sounds like there are still a few seats available, hope to see you there tonight. Please come up and say hi; I've met several blog readers and dedicated commenters on the book tour already, and I can't tell you how much I love putting faces to names. Without further ado, here's the best cake in the world: They even made Read More
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