It's a wonderful thing to hold a book you wrote in your hand, long after the writing and the editing and the discussions with the publishers about cover photos and who to ask for quotes on the back... My new book, Tales of Two Species: Loving and Living with Dogs just came from the printers, and I have to admit it feels good to see it. It's a collection of essays written over the years for Bark magazine, published by Dogwise (who I call the Amazon of dog books). Working with the editors of Bark has been a joy, and collaborating with the folks at Dogwise has been equally delightful (I presume you are not shocked to learn that this is not always the case between author and publisher? I have been exceptionally lucky with my national books, having wonderful editors at Ballantine who have Read More
Are Pets Important? Will Comes into his Own.
I was working on my new book, coming out from Dogwise in early November, and found a section that relates, I suspect, to the cancellation of my radio show, Calling All Pets. The book, coming out from Dogwise, (Tales of Two Species) is a collection of my columns from Bark magazine. One of them is titled "Pet Peeves." In it I write about our country's ambivalent feelings about our pets. On the one hand, many of us love them, treat them like family and can't imagine life without them. They are as important to our well-being as is literature, music and art. (For some of us, I'd add food, water and oxygen.) And yet, look at how often we hear people say, demeaningly, that an animal is "just a pet." Here's an excerpt from the essay: “Just a pet.” How many times have you heard someone say Read More
Thunder Phobia and Your Dog: Good Sounds, Bad Sounds
5 AM. I wake up to Lassie's nails clicking on the floor (wasn't I going to trim them last night?) as a boom of thunder shakes the farmhouse. Damn. Why is it that Lassie's slight discomfort of storms has become more serious as her hearing degrades? Surely it should go the other way around. We pad downstairs and lay down together on the carpet, she spooning against me as I stroked her head. (And no, it won't make her more afraid of storms.... check out my column coming out in Bark magazine soon.) "Eaa-a-a-a-a-a-a-sy" I crooned, using my voice to help her calm herself. Why didn't I bring the CD home from "Through a Dog's Ear," a new and fantastic book about the effect of sound on dogs? The CD has music designed by the authors to calm dogs, and both it and the book are invaluable Read More