From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 2011:

Your Dog is Your Mirror:
The Emotional Capacity of Our Dogs and Ourselves
by Kevin Behan
New World Library (14 Pameron Way, Novato, CA 94949), 2011.
304 pages, hardcover. $23.95.

Dog trainer Kevin Behan draws from his lengthy training
career to present Your Dog is Your Mirror: The Emotional Capacity of
Our Dogs and Ourselves, his second book.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:

A New Name for Worthless: A Hero is Born
by Rocky Shepheard, illustrated by Tamara Ci Thayne
c/o Dogs Deserve Better (P.O. Box 23, Tipton, PA 16684), 2011.
Hardcover, 16 pages. $17.97.

A chained dog named Worthless craves human companionship. In
the winter a shabby doghouse barely protects the old dog from the
brutal winters. There is not much shade from the sizzling summer sun.
A New Name for Worthless means well. Author Rocky Shepheard
presents it as a tribute to Tamira Ci Thayne, founder of Dogs
Deserve Better, and her devotion to freeing dogs from the misery of
chains, a most laudable goal. But the book conveys mixed and
confusing messages to its intended audience of young readers.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2011:
What Every Horse Should Know
by Cherry Hill
Storey Publishing (210 MASS MoCA Way, North Adams,
MA 01247), 2011. 192 pages, paperback. $19.95.

“Horses are wonderful already,” begins Cherry Hill in What
Every Horse Should Know. Her book is wonderful too.
Hill, horse trainer extraordinaire, begins the book with a
chapter on fear. Fear, she says, is the single most dangerous and
destructive force in a relationship with a horse. “Eradicate fear
and you begin to develop trust,” Hill writes. Fearful horses often
panic and try to flee. Wild or undomesticated horses, suddenly
cornered, feel trapped. Attempting to escape can harm the horse or
anyone standing close by.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

Saving Cinnamon:  The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy And the Desperate Mission to Bring Her Home  by Christine Sullivan
St. Martin’s Press (175 Fifth Ave.,  New York,  NY 10010),  2010. 256 pages,  paperback.  $14.95.

Mark Feffer,  a U.S. soldier then serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan,  in December 2005 befriended a stray puppy he named Cinnamon.  Adopting Cinnamon was against military regulations,  but Cinnamon quickly became a base mascot anyhow. When Feffer and other members of his unit were due to be rotated back to the U.S.,  Feffer and his wife Alice arranged for a civilian dog handler who was employed by the U.S. military to escort Cinnamon to Chicago via Bishkek,  the capital of Kyrgyzstan,  a former Soviet Republic that borders Afghanistan.

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From ANIMAL PEOPLE,  January/February 2011:

Ask the Animals:  A vet’s-eye view  of pets and the people they love
by Bruce R. Coston,  DVM
Thomas Dunne Books (175 Fifth Ave.,  New York,
NY 10010),  2010.  274 pages,  paperback.  $14.99.

I like books that start with a bark and don’t stop yapping until I’m done.  Ask the Animals isn’t one of them.  Having spent the past 20 years volunteering in animal shelters,  including shelter clinics,  I have an idea how brisk and lively a vet’s office can be–but I read nearly 50 pages of Ask the Animals before Coston moved past his personal life to introduce an animal who was not his own. This was a dog named Tess who was referred to his teaching hospital for a further evaluation of a complex medical problem. Read more