Book Review: The Secret Life of Dog Catchers (California, Animal Control Officer, Dogs, Horse, Druggies, . . . . )

The Secret Life of Dog Catchers: An Animal Control Officer’s Passion to Make a Difference, by Shirley Zindler (Shirley Zindler, 2012, 249 pages, $12.95)

Has it really been seven years since The Secret Life of Dog Catchers was published? We here at DogEvals kept waiting for our county library to order a copy but we finally gave up and purchased it for review.

I was ecstatic to find a large collection of short chapters in Dog Catchers, animal stories that I could read when I had just a few minutes (I had just finished reading a wonderful book for a writing competition and writing two reviews about it and was ready for some light reading).

And they were more than just short stories, they led to a conclusion. In many chapters we follow the personal pets of the author as they grow.

Light Reading? Was I Wrong!

I started with Dog Catchers late one Saturday night.

And stayed up til 2 am! (but it took another couple of days to finish it)

This is one author I want to meet!

Dog Catchers is a book you will carry with you until you finish it. Each story is funny and warm and human and perhaps a little bit tragic. I couldn’t wait to be back to reading it.

But Why Did Zindler Self-Publish?

I’m going to have to write author Shirley Zindler and suggest she contact an agent – this book is so good, I am sure a publishing house will pick it up.

What’s It All About?

Forty-five short chapters and a few not so short, each with an adorable animal photo to start, including the very adorable little pittie puppy on the front cover (Have you ever ripped off the cover of a paperback book and framed it? I have.). Animal stories with dogs mostly, but also cats and kittens, several about horses (including positive reinforcement training), pigs (smart little ones), bats, raccoons who wandered through open doors (!!) into houses, chickens (cock-fighting), llamas and goats who need hoof help, deer stuck in fences, skunks stuck inside houses. . . .

People and Animals - You Gotta Love 'Em

Zindler is also a very special human who knows so much about animals she will wow you. She lives with a pilot husband, an aunt who helps with the kids and house, two teens and a young niece, three dogs, two cats, three horses and numerous foster humans and animals (including new litters that have to be cared for around the clock) throughout the book.

Being an animal control officer* (also known as a dog catcher) is also or mostly about dealing with people – frightened people and dangerous gang members and animal abusers and even animal hoarders – all of whom need to be handled with kid gloves so Zindler can remove the animals if necessary for their health and welfare. And she does so with aplomb and caring and even humor.

New Definitions?

I loved the stories about miscommunication because we all know people like that: people who call in about a dog hit by a car lying on the side of the road (“Please come right away!”) who turns out to have a broken toe nail, people who call in about a vicious dog attack (the dog simply barked from a 20-foot distance) or even the time the bite marks on the victim were too small to be seen.

A Very Human Human

I would love to have Shirley for my friend. She is madly in love with her husband after 20 years, she is humanly sleepy when on-call for the night shift, she is lucky enough to be able to take her dog with her to work.

Who Should Read?

Yes, some of the stories may “yuck-you-out” but most will entertain you and inspire you, perhaps to volunteer at your local shelter if you don’t already do so!

Of course, animal lovers will love Dog Catcher, but so will dog people and horse people and people people: after all an ACO may run into druggies and gangs and livestock owners and non-animal people – she needs to know how to handle each one with the animal’s best interest in mind (according to the law which may be too flexible for an animal’s best future).

Why Does She Do What She Does?

She educates. She saves. She is passionate about making a difference. She does it for the animals. Read it for the animals.

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*One chapter takes the reader through a typical yet very varied day as an ACO (Animal Control Officer)

Book Review: (OT) Rock Needs River (open adoption, hippies, divorce, relationships)

Rock Needs River: A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption, by Vanessa McGrady (Little A Publishing, 2019, 189 pages, $14.95 paperback)

Title

If you liked Wild, you will love Rock Needs River. The title was intriguing me all the way through but once author Vanessa McGrady explained it toward the end (sort of), on page 156, it made perfect sense, not only for the protagonist and the other characters in the book, but also for me and probably everyone I know.

Subtitle

The subtitle, A Memoir About a Very Open Adoption, did not wow me: I probably would not have picked up this book had it not been sent to me for review – but am I ever glad I did! And not to worry, McGrady focuses her book on herself in the many years before the adoption for the most part even though this is a love story for her adopted daughter to treasure.

The Hippie?

McGrady lived the life you might have dreamed of: she was a vagabond of sorts but still very successful career-wise and with deep continuing relationships (though it seemed that every couple of years, there was another).

An Open Adoption

She starts to think about kids, but time flies and suddenly she is 40. She continually thinks about having a child (“If I had my own baby, I could love her and she would love me back, on our own terms. We’d make our life as a complete family.” page 51) and tries a few times - even marries a man with teenage girls (a really stressed situation as you can well imagine or in McGrady’s words, “more nerve-wracking than fulfilling”). She researches adoption agencies, prepares a marketing brochure for a pregnant girl looking for the perfect adoptive family for her soon-to-be-born child - and then – a baby* seemingly falls into her lap – who becomes a wonderful creative artistic sprite of a girl she names Grace.

An open adoption is one in which the biological and adoptive parent(s) know each other, may have chosen each other, and perhaps continue their relationship with each other and with the child. Such was McGrady’s life but the biological parents are so very different and McGrady tries so hard to help them. She is torn because she wants the bio parents to love her daughter – but not too much. And she wants the bio parents to be successful so she tries to help them. . . .

Hippies – Or Just off the Grid?

McGrady reminded me so much of Cheryl Strayed (Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail): their life values and experiences, though vastly different are yet similar at the same time. And my reviews of them are six years apart. Perhaps I still keep Wild in my mind

because after reviewing it, I then read another Strayed book (it was that good!) and even saw Reese Witherspoon portraying her in the very successful movie of the same name in 2014.

Not Perfect Words but Nearly So

What does Rock lack?

A table of contents since there are four sections to the tale – all titled – and 19 chapters, all perfectly descriptively titled, I might add.

Much of the book was “all about me” (McGrady) – but both her atypical childhood and family stories could have been abbreviated OR the subtitle could be - something more focused on her and less on the adoption since that is the track the book takes.

The open adoption takes a long time to take place, but, on the other hand, perhaps the long lead-in solidifies our understanding of McGrady and why she does the things she does.

Writing Style*

McGrady takes us through evolving relationships and family dynamics like a therapist. People change. Relationships change, almost imperceptibly, and one may not notice until it is too late to fix – but, generally, both people are aware at about the same time and can’t change back. So they strive to make their children better.

McGrady has a lovely writing style – almost breathless. So many long long sentences that I was glad I didn’t have to read this book out loud! But the sentence length was her personality in word-form and very natural. (Rock is available on Audible for the adventurous listener.)

Reading Rock, you may dream that you lived part of her life or wish you had. I’m glad I did.

PS – I am not going to tell you why the author selected the title, Rock Needs River, but you will remember the meaning for a long time.

*Upon meeting the soon-to-be biological parents for the first time, “On Sunday I fretted over what to wear, with the little knowledge I had about them. Something earthy enough and relatable for hippie musicians but pulled together enough to show responsibility. I settled on a short yellow linen dress with cowboy boots.” Page 76.

Book Review: Another Hank Tale (kids, cowdog, ranch, Texas, etc.)

Hank, the Cowdog: The Fling by John Erickson with illustrations by Gerald Holmes (Puffin Books, 2001, 126 pages plus fun pages of activities, $4.99, ages 8-12, grades 2-7) Review by Skye Anderson

Head of Ranch Security

We, the staff here at DogEvals, loved the first Hank book we read, Hank the Cowdog: It’s a Dog’s Life (#3),

so much that we couldn’t wait to read Hank the Cowdog: The Fling (#38). We found this book to be a bit contrived, however, perhaps because we so dearly love our first one.

Who is Hank?

Hank is the smelly, smart-alecky Head of Ranch Security (“. . . it’s a grueling job – eighteen hours a day, sometimes twenty or even thirty. . . . The work never ends, and sometimes I have to go days, weeks, even months without sleep. . . .I am no ordinary dog. . . .around two A.M. Confident that my ranch would make it through another night, I returned . . . to my office/bedroom beneath the gas tanks.”) - on a ranch in the West Texas panhandle.

The Hank books have been Book-of-the-Month selections - and an audio taped title won the 1993 Audie for Outstanding Children’s Series from the Audio Publisher’s Association. Other awards include the Oppenheimer, Wrangler, and Lamplighter awards, plus Hank now can be read in Japanese, Spanish, Danish and even Persian Farsi.

Who is John Erickson?

Currently there are 73 Hank books - all since 1982! That’s 73 books in 37 years or about two a year. What a prolific storyteller!

After college, author John Erickson, originally from Midland, Texas, worked as a cowboy, farmhand, ranch hand and ranch manager so he knows Hank’s job well. Erickson’s page on Amazon reads like a story in itself (so entertaining we would love to print it in its entirety here!) He wrote four hours a day while working full-time and received only rejection letters for 15 years so, what did he do?

Borrowed money and started his own publishing company, of course!

His sidekick, Gerald Holmes, drew more than a thousand figures for the Hank series before he passed away recently.

Hank’s Fling

In The Fling, we once again meet Wallace and Junior Buzzard, the unfriendly buzzards, and Rip and Snort, the unfriendly coyotes, and Hank lives through encounters with them once again: he ‘dodges bulletins’ (bullets)!

The scenario is as follows: Hank mistakenly finds himself trapped in a trailer of steer headed for town many miles away. Unfortunately, this is the same group of cattle that Hank had just teased and tormented, so being stuck in a trailer with them for a long bumpy ride into town is not piece of cake for this Head of Ranch Security. However, “Part of being brave is pretending that you really are – and hoping you’ll never have to prove it.” And so, Hank manages to survive the rickety dangerous ride into town.

Hank’s adventures in town include being captured by Animal Control but managing to escape after which his antics turn into a ‘comedy of arrows’ (errors) as he tries to snaggle some hot dogs sizzling on a grill.

But, Wait! There’s More!

And there’s more at HankTheCowdog.com including stuffies of Hank* and his side-kick Drover, that little white stub-tailed dog whose favorite saying is, “Oh, my leg!” (whatever that means). Hank and Drover are famous (infamous?) for their roundabout conversations that can travel from the ballet to the moon and beyond in just a couple of sentences. And plenty of puzzles and games for kids that stump the grown-ups, too (also included in the books).

Now, who wants a map of Hank’s ranch? That’s on the website, too!

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*Would you like to put the Head of Ranch Security to work guarding your room, house, car or wherever you need him to be?  This Hank can stand, sit or fight any monster that comes his way and you’ll love having Hank hang around."

The Hardy Boys and Dogs

The Hardy Boys (The Short-Wave Mystery/Undercover Brothers – Operation: Survival, by Franklin Dixon (Grosset and Dunlap/Aladdin Paperbacks, 1966 or 1945/2005, 176/148 pages, $7.99 /$4.99)

Dogs are Everywhere!

Dogs appear in books and magazines and movies, as backdrops where you least expect them but, of course, they are so much a part of our lives, why not be in books and magazines and movies, too, if only in the background?

We picked up a couple of Hardy Boys mysteries since we had never read any of them but had read all the Nancy Drew books – and were pleasantly surprised. Plots were very good and they even had dogs! And puppy love (Iola and Carrie).

Ah, the Hardy boys: Joe, the cute one, and Frank, the budding biologist (at least in Operation Survival) (“. . . eye color is determined by three genes, not just two.” Page 8) often alternate chapters. And then there is Chet, their always-hungry sidekick.

The Short-Wave Mystery

Dits and Dah’s and stuffed animals to fight over at an auction that results in a robbery. And sidekick Chet has a new hobby, taxidermy. And then you have a car explosion and a secret code and ‘Leapin’ Lizards!’ a boy named Biff and a boat named Sleuth. And a bear and an aardvark and a fox and a wolf and a bison and even industrial spies. And wonder drugs and polygraph tests and a hunting lodge in Canada and the FBI – whew! But, where’s the dog?

Typically, boys’ books have boy topics, like taxidermy and boating and fishing and short-wave radios and this adventure is no exception.

Undercover Brothers – Operation Survival

Teenagers Joe and Frank go undercover in each book of this upshot series, this being number seven), this time to Camp Wilderness which is a boot camp for juvie boys (and a sister camp for girls and, yes, teen love plays a part). A really physically tough boot camp and if they don’t succeed, it’s off to prison. However, Camp Wilderness recently had a boy die: then same thing happened in its predecessor, Camp Character in Montana. 

Hmmmmmm. Could it have been murder?

And, in preparation for the wilderness, the Hardy boys and their parents have a discussion about black bears, so you know they will play a part later. After the knock-out and a boathouse on fire.

Dreaming of a dog. A golden retriever. With Nancy Drew mentioned in a passing conversation.

But what does genetics have to do with it? Hairy knuckles, attached earlobes (recessive), dimples (dominant). Read it and see.

Clever Plots

Both these books are quite clever, even for adults, but I suspect the more Hardy Boys books you read, the better you will become at guessing ‘who done it.’