Book Review: The Possibility Dogs, by Susannah Charlson

I read Scent of the Missing by Susannah Charlson more than two years ago, but it is the book that brought home for me what Search and Rescue really meant.

When I heard The Possibility Dogs was coming out, I didn't even need to know what it was about. I knew I would read it, and fully expected to enjoy it. I was correct on both counts.

The lead in is about a former fire fighter and his service dog, Haska. This encounter was also Charleson's introduction to the world of psychiatric service dogs, and perhaps service dogs to people with "invisible" disabilities.

Training Dreams

Because of the nature of my Google alerts, an article on dog training at the Penn Vet Working Dog Center. Because I am super smart, I both went "Hey, working dog center?" and "are they the same people that do PennHip?" (yes, they are. ish. It's at the University of Pennsylvania, anyway. And they have the same little ikon in the Chrome tabs that I'm looking at. Good enough for me!). Of course my next question was "Well, what kind of working dogs?", and that took me a surprising amount of time to figure out (a fail on my part, not theirs)

Military Working Dogs

I've mentioned before, I think, that I'm a nerd for working dogs.

I'm fascinated by dogs performing work duties, be it something they were bred for (Border Collies herding sheep), or something they were taught to do (Dobermans as Service Dogs).  A dog performing work that he or she loves is a beautiful thing to watch, and a good dog-human partnership is a well-oiled machine.

Military Working Dogs fall into this category, of course.  In fact, there are around 2, 300 dogs currently deployed by the U.S. Military to perform a number of tasks with our troops.

Book: A New Job for Pearl

Just a quick note and link, to the site where you can buy "A New Job For Pearl" (http://www.anewjobforpearl.org/).  The book was written by a second grade class in California, and their teacher.  Apparently, Pearl (since named the ASPCA dog of the year in 2010) is a black lab who got out of her back yard enough that her owners surrendered her to the shelter at which she kept being housed by Animal Control.  An individual looking for Search and Rescue dog candidates evaluated her and brought her home, and since completing her training, Pearl has done Search and Rescue work in Haiti, and in Japan.  The book was created to raise $10,000 to sponsor a search dog through the Search Dog Foundation, which most recently has done work in Joplin, Missouri. Each book is $10, plus $2.50 shipping, and sales are done through PayPal.