Every Dog has a Gift

Every Dog Has a Gift: True Stories of Dogs Who Bring Hope & Healing into Our Lives by Rachel McPherson (who started The Good Dog Foundation) is a book that contains several stories about dogs helping people. As I have mentioned before I like dogs. Personally I feel dogs do not receive enough credit for their contributions to society. This book mentions a few of the ways dogs have and do contribute to society but no where near all the ways that they do. Dogs have been helping people for thousands of years in a large number of tasks. For example (my list not purely from the book): autism service dogs trained to handle the challenges of autism; seeing-eye dogs for the blind; dogs offer comfort to people at funeral homes, hospitals, and nursing homes; dogs locate trapped or missing people; dogs locate bombs and drugs; dogs are/were messengers during war; dogs help people hunt; dogs protect peoples property; dogs help in corralling other animals; dogs offer friendship/companionship to people; dogs provide entertainment; dogs encourage people to exercise; have been experimented on; went to space; dogs are substitutes for children to many people; etc.

This book contains a few waffy (warm and fuzzy feeling) stories but not really that many. I feel that the author could have and probably should have included more. The best thing about this book is that it gives you some information about raising service dogs that I did not know before. It is a much easier task according to the book than I believed it to be.

A photo gallery with some picture of dogs from this book can be found at: Tarcherbooks