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    The Underdogs: Children, Dogs, and the Power of Unconditional Love
    The Underdogs: Children, Dogs, and the Power of Unconditional Love
    The Underdogs: Children, Dogs, and the Power of Unconditional Love
    Ebook381 pages6 hours

    The Underdogs: Children, Dogs, and the Power of Unconditional Love

    By Melissa Fay Greene

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    About this ebook

    From two-time National Book Award nominee Melissa Fay Greene comes a profound and surprising account of dogs on the front lines of rescuing both children and adults from the trenches of grief, emotional, physical, and cognitive disability, and post-traumatic stress disorder.

    The Underdogs tells the story of Karen Shirk, felled at age twenty-four by a neuromuscular disease and facing life as a ventilator-dependent, immobile patient, who was turned down by every service dog agency in the country because she was “too disabled.” Her nurse encouraged her to tone down the suicidal thoughts, find a puppy, and raise her own service dog. Karen did this, and Ben, a German shepherd, dragged her back into life. “How many people are stranded like I was,” she wondered, “who would lead productive lives if only they had a dog?”

    A thousand state-of-the-art dogs later, Karen Shirk’s service dog academy, 4 Paws for Ability, is restoring broken children and their families to life. Long shunned by scientists as a manmade, synthetic species, and oft- referred to as “Man’s Best Friend” almost patronizingly, dogs are finally paid respectful attention by a new generation of neuroscientists and animal behaviorists. Melissa Fay Greene weaves the latest scientific discoveries about our co-evolution with dogs with Karen’s story and a few exquisitely rendered stories of suffering children and their heartbroken families.

    Written with characteristic insight, humanity, humor, and irrepressible joy, what could have been merely touching is a penetrating, compassionate exploration of larger questions: about our attachment to dogs, what constitutes a productive life, and what can be accomplished with unconditional love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateMay 17, 2016
    ISBN9780062218537
    Author

    Melissa Fay Greene

    Melissa Fay Greene is the author of Praying for Sheetrock; The Temple Bombing; Last Man Out; There Is No Me Without You: One Woman’s Odyssey to Rescue her Country’s Children; and No Biking in the House Without A Helmet. Her honors include two National Book Award nominations, a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, the ACLU National Civil Liberties Award, the Hadassah Myrtle Wreath Award, the Salon Book Award, Elle Magazine’s Readers’ Prize, the Georgia Author Award, and a Dog Writers of America Award. She is a current Guggenheim Fellow.

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    • 4/5
      A very moving and informative book about the "4 Paws for Ability" service dog academy - specializing in training dogs for children with special needs and their families. The author goes into detail about the history of service dogs, the evolution of dogs in general, and the development of the practice of placing dogs specifically for children. As a family that has raised, trained, and worked with four Therapy Dogs it was interesting and heartwarming to read about the people and dogs that provide so much comfort, relief, and love to children and families in need. This is a MUST READ for anyone that loves dogs and understands their "special powers".

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    The Underdogs - Melissa Fay Greene

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