BOOKS: Our Lives Have Gone to the Dogs

From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  November/December 2011:

Our Lives Have Gone to the Dogs
by Audrey Spilker Hagar & Eldad Hagar
Hope For Paws (8950 W. Olympic Blvd. #525,
Los Angeles,  CA 90211),  2010.
Free download from <www.eldadhagar.com/>.

An anonymous caller pleads with Our Lives Have Gone to the
Dogs author Audrey Spilker Hagar and photographer Eldad Hagar to help
a dog crouched beneath an abandoned house in a gang-infested Los
Angeles neighborhood.  Drug dealers threaten to kill the dog.  But
this dog escapes.  So does a kitten who appears on the scene.  They
are eventually rescued and adopted.  The Hagars are the founders of
Hope For Paws,  one of several hundred animal rescue charities in Los
Angeles whose work augments that of the Los Angeles city and county
animal control agencies.

Many of the perky dogs pictured in Our Lives Have Gone to the
Dogs were rehomed after being claimed from the community shelters.
For example,  Eldad was at a shelter to bail out a dog when a woman
walked in holding a cardboard box that someone tossed into her yard.
A four-pound scruffy puppy sat inside.  Eldad left that day with two
dogs.

Every rescue and shelter digs dogs and cats out of trash
bins,  but Hope For Paws once housed a needy owl.  Lost in downtown
Los Angeles,  far from her natural habitat,  the owl was rescued by a
Good Samaritan who called Hope For Paws.  Named Junior,  the owl
recovered after receiving fluids and rest inside a warm box.  Junior
now lives and hoots comfortably at a southern California wildlife
sanctuary.

Outstanding color photography made the original printed
edition of Our Lives Have Gone to the Dogs an ideal coffee table gift
book.  Sold to benefit Hope For Paws,  that edition is long gone,
but the free download edition is easily shared with friends.
–Debra J. White