This is a first time ever for us here at It's a Wonderful Dog's Life. We have never attempted to do a book review before. We don't usually let our Mom have full rein of the blog. She does the typing for us, but she can be very long winded so we try not to allow her full access to our blog. We don't want to put our furiends to sleep ;)
Mom has been following Mango's Great Adventures and then Dexter the Wonder Dog along with, Honey the Great Dane, Urban Hounds, Dog is God in Reverse, and they have all done book reviews and inspired Mom in many ways. So she thought she wanted to give it a try.
Here we go...............................................Green font will equal Mom.
I have bookshelves full of unread dog books and thought what better way to get the motivation flowing than to write a review for each one. I have a difficult time sitting down to read a book as it feels like I'm "wasting" time. I usually feel guilty I've set there and read when there were other things I could have been doing. Miss Bella is nudging me to get on with the topic so without further delay here is a review for Through a Dog's Eyes by Jennifer Arnold.
Mom: The book was an easy read. It was a nice enjoyable book. The book is written by the owner of Canine Assistants. She interlaces her own personal story, her dogs, and the story of recipients dogs into the book. They train and provide service dogs to those that need them. The only thing I didn't like was that they breed dogs for the program and only rescue a small few. I wish all dogs for these programs would come from shelters to help save more lives. I feel that Labs and Golden Retrievers have been unfairly labeled as the "perfect" dog and therefore may be underestimated and put into too many unfortunate situations because the naive dog owner may not recognize the need to still be responsible and cautious in the situations they leave these breeds of dogs in.
Bella: Mom, stay on topic. Remember....the book review?
Mom: Bella, I'm sorry and apologize. I will try to stay on topic here. There are many, many more positives to this book. I do like how they realized the error and cruelty in harsh force based training techniques and revised their program and strategy to include only positive training techniques which are still used today.
She spends a lot of time on how dogs may think and see the world. I like the real life stories that support these thoughts. I like the idea that dogs think in pictures instead of words since they lack vocabulary. She suggests you read Temple Grandin's book Animals in Translation. Which is on my shelf awaiting the pages to be turned.
I like that they debunk the whole dogs should be treated as wolves and the dominance hype. The author points this out w/ an alpha wolf feeding his pack family. He feeds the female with pups first, the teenage and older pups second, the alpha female and then the male ate.
I enjoyed the explanations of how dogs see, hear and smell with related stories from the authors own dog and a recipients dog. This really makes you want to try harder to see the world through your dog's senses to help make their world more comfortable and enjoyable. It also made me a little envious of their supreme abilities. To hear and smell like they do.
The author briefly discusses the marvelous ability of dogs to be pre-cognitive and foretell future events like seizures which appear up to an hour after the alert and before any brain activity can be detected by modern medicine. As well as telepathy and ESP with a story to back up this idea.
The author discusses the emotions dogs experience and how they experience them more strongly than humans. The example being grief and grieving to death over a loss. We can console ourselves, but dogs feel emotion without the tempering filter of higher thought. That is really an eye opener and a huge thought to absorb and process.
It's amazing how acute a dog's ability is to read body language. With some of the recipients these dogs go to they have to be able to follow instructions from just eye movements. Dogs are masters at reading body language.
One of my favorite parts of the book are the Dogisms on page 168-172. I was going to write them out here , but decided I will just let you all read them and see which ones you like best.
I would highly recommend this book. I think most dog lovers will really enjoy it.
Bella: Whew, I finally got my blog back. I hope everyone will enjoy our first book review and as long as it doesn't interfere with any of my walkies, play time, Mom snuggles or food then I hope Mom will continue to read more books and share them with us.
Licks & Wags,
Bella & Sweet Pea
