Showing titles in Pets & Animal Care

Does God care about His creatures? Does He care about you? Sadie, a golden retriever, gives us a hint as Rhonda weaves for us a beautiful story of dog and master. Revel in Sadie’s quirks about the smell of socks and the taste of popcorn. What divine lessons can we learn from this zany duo?

Entertaining and informative, Pets in America is a portrait of Americans' relationships with the cats, dogs, birds, fishes, rodents, and other animals we call our own. More than 60 percent of U.S. households have pets, and America grows more pet-friendly every day. But as Katherine Grier demonstrates, the ways we talk about and treat our pets - as companions, as children, and as objects of beauty, status, or pleasure - have their origins long ago.

After years of loving the vibrant city life in San Francisco, Lonnie Hull DuPont reluctantly trades her three-room apartment on foggy, lively Telegraph Hill for a farmhouse on a quiet plain in Michigan. She immediately misses the rhythm and the pace of the city, and the isolation country living brings has her longing for something more.

Listeners will delight in this tale of an urbanite who leaves her magazine job to move to Collelungo, Italy, population: 200. There, in the ancient city center of a historic Umbrian village, she sets up house with the enticing local gardener she met on vacation only weeks earlier. This impulsive decision launches an eye-opening series of misadventures when village life and romance turn out to be radically different from what she had imagined. Love lost with the gardener is found instead with Marcus, an abandoned English pointer that she rescues.

A gift from an overseas relative, Graycie, an African Gray parrot, arrives in the Gardiner home not long after the birth of their first child, adding the responsibilities of parrot-hood to their newfound parenthood. Jenny Gardiner and her husband were hoping for a docile, beautifully plumed, Polly-want-a-cracker type of companion - but patchily feathered, scrawny, ill-tempered Graycie was the furthest thing from what they envisioned.

After the New York Post's Cindy Adams lost her beloved husband, the famed comedian Joey Adams, the last thing on her mind was finding a companion. But that's exactly what she got when a visitor arrived with a surprise: a Yorkshire terrier named Jazzy. This is the true story of a tell-it-like-it-is gossip columnist who takes on society's most powerful and glamorous every day, but is ultimately redeemed by a tiny dog who teaches her more about joy and survival than any human ever could.

When cats start getting sick, feline-loving freelance writer Theda Krakow suspects it’s accidental. But Violet, Theda’s shelter-owning rock-music buddy, claims the cats’ kibble was poisoned. When Theda starts looking at politics at the city shelter, she finds a number of people who could have happily committed the heinous crime.

In 1992, two Russian moviemakers left a cryptic note for New Mexican writer Stephen Bodio at his local bar. It led him to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn, where he saw a film about the ancient breed of Central Asian sight hounds known as tazis. He would end up chasing these leads to Kazakhstan, where these beautiful dogs may have existed 6,000 years ago.

When Michael and Cheryl Morse slowly drifted apart amid an empty nest, her diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, his symptoms of PTSD, and the grief of losing their two beloved dogs put down on the same day three years prior, it became apparent their lives were in need of a little joy. Enter an energetic, white ball of fluff known as Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson's story begins in Arkansas, where he was left in a leaky, drafty barn for days.

In this long-awaited and much-requested book based on her "Horseblog" at Book View Caf, author and horse breeder Judith Tarr answers these questions and many more. She looks at horses from the perspective of the writer whose book or story needs them as anything from basic transport to major plot device, and provides definitions, explanations, and links and references for further research - leavened with insight into the world of the horse and the humans who both use and serve him. Here is a guide to the fine art of getting it right.

Since moving west over a decade ago, Tom Groneberg has worked with horses as a trail guide, as a ranch hand, and as the manager of his own ranch in Montana, but he has never owned a really good horse. Until, on an autumn night, in a warm barn under a blanket of snow, Blue is born. Soon, he will belong to Tom Groneberg. "If I had a good horse," writes Tom, "I could give it my life. I could ride it for years. We could grow old together." So begins this unique American love story about a man and his horse.

In A Dog's Gift, award-winning journalist and author Bob Drury movingly captures the story of a year in the life of Paws4people and the broken bodies and souls the organization mends. The audiobook follows the journey of pups bred by the organization, from their loving if rigorous early training to an emotional event that Terry and Kyria have christened "the bump", where each individual service dog chooses its new owner through an almost mystical connection that ignites the healing process.

The stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul will encourage listeners to stay upbeat, because there's always a brighter way to look at life. This collection includes 30 Stories about play, what's important, and belief.

For those who enjoyed Amazing Gracie or Merle’s Door, here is a completely new tale of a rescued dog who becomes the unlikely purveyor of a powerful gift. What if most people have it wrong, and miracles are not the exception but the norm? Flash’s Song is the true account of how one person discovered the secret of miracles. It is a story of the power of laughter, the power of family, and, ultimately, the power of love to get us through life.

We share our lives, for better or worse, with a multitude of animals: white-tailed deer and white-tailed eagles, hens and wrens, frogs and guppies, and, last but hardly least, bugs and bacteria. For the most part, we drift along separately, with neither man nor animal affecting the other's way of life. Sometimes, however, we fall in love - as in the case of the cat in the title - or otherwise encounter our animal neighbors in ways that change both of us.

If you want to learn more about nature, try enjoying life like a dog. Kathryn Miles sets out to do just that when she becomes determined to let Ari live life on her own terms. Once some basic ground rules are set, Kathryn takes the leash off her dog and the blinders off her own eyes. A new world soon emerges: She and Ari explore a backyard landscape of grass, mud, snow, trees, and the occasional fox. They find the scent of a northern wind, the footprints of a startled raccoon, and other secrets of the natural world.

In Shaggy Muses, we visit Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Flush, the golden Cocker Spaniel who danced the poet away from death, back to life and human love. We roam the wild Yorkshire moors with Emily Brontë, whose fierce Mastiff mix, Keeper, provided a safe and loving outlet for the writer’s...

Melissa Wareham always wanted to work with dogs. After failing her biology O-level she realised she'd have to start at the bottom, cleaning out kennels at Battersea Dogs Home. From frail old men looking for a four-legged companion to famous folk who've lost their favourite hound, it seemed that...

America's highest military award, the Congressional Medal of Honor, was awarded to 440 deserving members of the "Greatest Generation" that served in World War II. But in 1943, before the war was even over, Allied leaders realized they needed another kind of award to recognize a different kind of World War II hero - animal heroes. Founded in 1943, the prestigious PDSA Dickin Medal is the highest award an animal can achieve for gallantry and bravery in the field of military conflict. It was given to 55 animals who served valiantly alongside the members of the Greatest Generation.

Scotlund Haisley, the founder and president of Animal Rescue Corps, has spent more than 25 years saving the lives of thousands of animals. Wearing a respirator mask for protection from the piercing ammonia that hangs in the air and with law enforcement officials at his side, he infiltrates puppy mills, animal fighting operations, and other large-scale cases of animal cruelty, freeing dogs, cats, horses, and other animals from lives of wire cages, filth, and starvation.