Tag: dogs

A picture of a hand giving a thumbs up. The hand is made of words, and the words "book review" are in pink in the middle, with all the other words in black
Posted in Reviews

Mini Review: How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With by Clarice Rutherford

Posted on by Jennifer

How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live with by Clarice Rutherford

I’m ready! Maybe?

I guess my true of you will have to wait until I’ve had my puppy for a while, but I feel like I know more now! I’ve never had a puppy before, and haven’t even had an adult dog since I was a child, so I really don’t know that much about dogs beyond how freaking cute they can be and that they like to chew.

This book did a great job of giving an overview and then specific pointers about each topic. I appreciated them being very specific in the process of each step, as well as how to correct when they don’t go as planned. Using the already-trained sit command to distract and redirect the puppy from doing something wrong and be able to praise them for doing something right when they follow the sit command is something that sounds useful in many sustains.

*Note* – I just brought my puppy home today! She’s settling right in well so far, and I’m in love already. ^.^

Continue reading “Mini Review: How to Raise a Puppy You Can Live With by Clarice Rutherford” →
Posted in Fast-Forward Friday

Fast-Forward Friday: Good Boy

Posted on by Jennifer

In contrast to Throwback Thursday, I use Fridays to look ahead to upcoming releases that I’ve been excited about! This one is, I’m hoping, not going to totally break my heart. Focusing on dogs as a pathway, Good Boy: My Life in Seven Dogs by Jennifer Finney Boylan might be a heartbreaking/hilarious format for a memoir.
Expected Release: April 21, 2020

Why wait on this one?

  • Who can resist a story of dogs? Their very inclusion in the story promises antics and lessons learned. I can’t have a dog at my current residence, so I desperately need to live vicariously for this.
  • But then again… including dogs kind of implies that I’m going to have my heart broken as the author is forced to leave these dogs one way or another. Early deaths, forced abandonment, tragic accidents… I know they’ll shatter me, but such is life. And I’ll probably have my heart broken at least six times.
  • This also promises to be a memoir that we see more in recent years of a person recognizing themselves and transitioning to reflect who they truly feel they are. In short, as the book blurb says, “how a young boy became a middle-aged woman.”

Summary:
n her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking column went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: finding and giving love.

Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman—accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. “Everything I know about love,” she writes, “I learned from dogs.” Their love enables us pull off what seem like impossible feats: to find our way home when we are lost, to live our lives with humor and courage, and above all, to best become our true selves.