oooo it's been a little while since updating again! sorry folks, was outta town in savannah for a while with the huzz and his mom carole, visitin our buddy
jenn and getting into all around southern shenanigans! we're home now, had the art reception for coming clean last night and it was really fun! thanks to all that made it out, you're the bomb-diggity!
while we were flying out to savannah i found merle's door in the airport bookstore. the subtitle, lessons from a freethinking dog, is what caught my attention and made me read the back to find out what it was about. anyone who's met our dog jimmy knows that he is absolutely one of those dogs with their own opinions and agendas. so anyhow i ended up buying and reading it, and loved every minute of it.
merle's door: lessons from a freethinking dog by ted kerasote
this book is completely atypical of what i usually read - i'm not into actual real life stories for the most part, gimmie fiction every time! so anyhow, this one was cool because it was a memoir telling about how the author met a stray dog while rollin' down the river with his buddies one day, and he ended up adopting him. or the dog adopted the dude, that's more what happened.
so long story short, this guy talks about all kinds of dog behaviors and how dogs are related to wolves and all sorts of different ways people think about dogs as pets. and through his experiences with this particular dog, about how some of those ways of living with a pet don't necessarily lead to the most fulfilling life for them. and it really really really makes me want to live in a house with a yard, cuz there's no way jimmydog's gettin anywhere near the amount of exercise he really needs to be happy...
but anyhow - the main message i got out of the book, that really spoke to me, is that it's totally important that your dog understands how to behave in certain situations, and that knowing the sit, stay, down, come, is really important, but that they're not robots, and that they want to share leadership instead of taking orders all the time. living with our dog i can totally get behind that - he's always tryin to not so much tell us what to do, though he does definitely get jackassy, but he definitely has ideas on what his favorite walks are, and when he's bored with sitting and watching me work stand by cuz he always lets me know.
so really, the book was all about learning to help your dog have a full happy life exploring his environment and becoming an active partner in your relationship with him, instead of the robot that does nothing but what you tell him to do.
i dont know, i think i'm rambling here - but after reading this book i've let up on jimmy a little bit on our walks, and sometimes i do let him stop and smell the trees as long as he wants to, and he really seems to be enjoying it more the end!
also, spoiler alert the end of the book SUCKS because it's all about the dog getting old and dying. josh kept telling me to stop reading it because i was full on bawling and i kept telling him i only have like 3 more pages and then i'll be done hold on a sec.
ratings4 hearts: the book was totally rad, except for:
1 fart: the effing dog dies, not old yeller style but still pretty effing sad.
Labels: book reports
