From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

The Lost History of the Canine Race:
Our 15,000-Year Love Affair With Dogs
by Mary Elizabeth Thurston
Andrews and McMeel (c/o Universal Press Syndicate,
4520 Main Street, Kansas City, MO 64111), 1996.
301 pages, indexed, glossary, bibliography, photos; $24.95.

Mary Thurston has seemingly tracked downevery bit of history
of human interactions with the dog and included it in Lost History.
From educated speculation on how ancient humans and dogs got
together, to the sometimes disastrous outcomes of modern attitudes to dog
ownership, this book is interesting reading for dog lovers.
”Drawing on archival documents, artifacts, engravings,” etc.,
Thurston has put together an informative book not in the usual genre of
dog treatises.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1997:

Cats’ Meow!
An Anthology of Cat Tales
edited by Jeannette Cakouros
and Ruth K. Flowers
Maine Rhode Publishers
(RR #1, Box 635, Woolwich,
ME 04579), 1996.
160 pages, paperback, $13.50.

Besides a lot of stories,
essays, poems, and a few elegantly
simple line drawings, Cats’ Meow!
offers biographical sketches of the
many authors.
Everything is about cats,
except for the bios, which do not
separate aleurophiles from aleurophobes––but
how did the latter get in
here, anyway, with a handful of
creepy stories, and some about cats
with disgruntled owners?

Read more

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

The Fairfax Ferret
by Pamela Troutman Grant
Carlton Press (Order c/o Star Ferrets,
POB 1714, Springfield, VA 22151-0714), 1996.
49 pages, hardcover, $14.45.

I hope librarians and others who buy books for
children see The Fairfax Ferret, as few books describe
pets other than dogs and cats, or small wiggly things that
mothers have difficulty accepting. Fish and birds are often
purchased to fill needs foreign to their natures. A ferret is
in-between-sized: one can cuddle a ferret, but the animal
accommodates the small apartment lifestyle. Author
Pamela Grant, who runs a “rescue mission” for ferrets,
describes how Johnny loses his ferret in an unaware
moment, but gets lucky and gets the ferret back, who survives
the transition from comfortably pampered pet to foraging
feral and back again.

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1997:

Animals as Teachers
and Healers
by Susan Chernak McElroy
Ballentine Books (201 E. 50th St., New York, NY
10022), 1996. 253 pages, hardcover. $18.95.

We have no evidence that there was a previous
edition of Animals as Teachers and Healers, yet author
Susan McElroy leaves the confusing impression that there
was one, piecing together many accounts from various
sources without warning that her book is a pastiche. I kept
turning back a page to be sure of the identity of her everchanging
narrator. Teachers will be tempted to scribble on
the cover, “WHERE is your outline? See me,” as the
topic meanders from animals as mentors of compassionate
behavior to the destruction of wolves by forest and park
rangers and the hypocrisy of various others who have
harmed animals while purportedly helping them.
McElroy’s own contribution centers on her experience
with cancer and the help she believes she posthumously
received from her dog, Keesha, who died of cancer several
years before McElroy’s own was diagnosed.