Jennifer Basye Sander - The Little Book of Puppy Love

A heartwarming collection of stories about dogs, cats and pets who have touched the lives of those around them.

Sometimes, animals come into our lives just when we need them most. In these true stories about the powerful connections between people and pets, Jo Coudert and Jennifer Basye Sander uncover the simple joys of loving and being loved by our four-legged companions.

In this book youll meet the German shepherd with a special sense for comforting the sick; the loyal dog who risks his own life to rescue a drowning boy; the troublesome rabbit who worms her way into a new family; the chatty parrot who brings joy to the home of a lonely widow; the abandoned horse and foster child who rescue each other; and many, many more.

These animals dont just bring us comfortthey save our lives. Coudert and Sander celebrate the everyday miracles that happen when we form bonds with animals.

This new edition combines two charming collectionsThe Dog Who Healed a Family and The Dog with the Old Soulinto one beautiful gift-worthy hardcover package.

Praise for The Dog Who Healed a Family

These touching and engaging vignettes will make animal lovers out of us all.

Publishers Weekly

Great gifts for animal lovers, or anyone who wants to be reminded what a poignant, funny and enriching gift that animals are to the human spirit.

Tulsa World

Praise for The Dog with the Old Soul

Brimming with tears, laughter and love, The Dog with the Old Soul reminds us of the life-altering connection that animals can make in our lives.

Talkin Pets

The friendly, first-person presentations reflect wise, warm and compelling storytelling that captures both the combustible and complex feel of the human-animal bond.

Seattle Kennel Club

Jo Coudert was the author of nine books, including Seven Cats and the Art of Living. A lifelong animal lover, she lived in Califon, New Jersey.

Jennifer Basye Sander is the author and coauthor of over fifty titles, including the New York Times bestseller Christmas Miracles.

The Little Book of Puppy Love

True Animal Stories to Warm the Soul

Jo Coudert and Jennifer Basye Sander

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS THE DOG WHO HEALED A FAMILY
AND THE DOG WITH THE OLD SOUL

Table of Contents

The Dog Who Healed a Family

The Dog with the Old Soul

by Finley Taylor

by Katherine Traci

by Tish Davidson

by Maryellen Burns

by Suzanne Tomlinson

by Dena Kouremetis

by Kathryn Canan

by Charles Kuhn

by Robyn Boyer

by E. G. Fabricant

by Trina Drotar

by Elaine Ambrose

by Meera Klein

by Ed Goldman

by Pam Giarrizzo

by Sue Pearson

by Chris Fowler

by Morton Rumberg

by Sue Pearson

by Hal Bernton

by Sheryl J. Bize Boutte

by Louise Crawford

by Jennifer ONeill-Pickering

by Kathryn Canan

by Jerry and Donna White

by Gordon M. Labuhn

by Mark Lukas

The Dog Who Healed a Family

A ll the stories in this book are about animals, and all are true. What the stories have in common is the love and caring that can exist between animals and people. Nancy Topp struggled for weeks to get a seventeen-year-old dog home across fifteen hundred miles. Gene Fleming fashioned shoes for a goose born without feet and supported the goose in a harness until he learned to walk. Months after their javelina disappeared, Patsy and Buddy Thorne were still roaming ranch lands in Texas, Bubbas favorite chocolate in their pockets, searching for their wild pig.

The Thornes recently sent a clipping from their local newspaper describing how a group of men out hunting with bows and arrows came upon a javelina. The animal stood still, gazing at the men, while they shot at it three times. When all three arrows failed to strike home, one of the men ventured close enough to pet the animal and found it was tame and welcomed the attention.

What is amazing about the report is not that the animal was Bubbait was notbut that the hunters shot three times at a creature that was not big enough or wild enough to be a threat to them and that did not provide sport by running. And because the meat of a javelina is too strong-tasting to be palatable, they were not interested in it for food.

The hunters shot at the javelina because it was there, which is the same reason a neighbor who lives downriver from me catches all the trout within hours of the time the state fish and wildlife service stocks the stream. An amiable man who loves his grandchildren, the neighbor has built the children a tree platform where they can sit silently and shoot at the deer who come to the river to drink at twilight. He also sets muskrat traps in the river and runs over woodchucks and possums on the road.

The family doesnt eat the deer; the frozen body of a doe has been lying all winter in the field in back of my woods. Nor does anyone eat the trout the man catches; he tosses them into a little pond on his property where they stay until they become too numerous and die from lack of oxygen. When I once asked this ordinary, pleasant fellow why hed gone out of his way to run over a raccoon crossing the road, he looked at me in surprise. Its an animal! he said as though that quite explained it.

To many people it is sufficient explanation. After all, did not Jehovah tell Noah and his sons that all the beasts of the earth and fish of the sea were delivered into the hands of man? Surely this is a license to destroy them even if we have no better reason at the time than the fact that they exist and we wish to.

Or is it? Belatedly we are beginning to realize that the duality of people and animals, us and them, is false, just as we have discovered that there is no split between us and the world. The world is us and we are the world. We cannot simply exploit and destroy, either the world or the animals in it, if we are not at the same time to do ourselves irreparable harm.

Consider what a Native American, Chief Seattle, said in 1854: What is man without the beasts? If all the beasts were gone, man would die from a great loneliness of spirit. For whatever happens to the beasts, soon happens to man. All things are connected. This we know: The Earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the Earth. This we know: All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life. He is merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.

The world belongs to the animals just as much as to us. Let us be unselfish enough to share it with them openly and generously. Which is to say, when you come upon a lost dog or an orphaned fawn or a goose born without feet, give it nothing to fear from you, grant it safety, offer to help if you can, be kind. In return, as the stories here show, you will sometimes find a welcome companionship, and surprisingly often love.

Jo Coudert

Califon, New Jersey

C urled nose to tail, the little dog was drowsing in Nancy Topps lap as the truck rolled along the interstate. Suddenly Nancy felt her stiffen into alertness. Whats the matter, old girl? Nancy asked. At seventeen, Snoopy had a bit of a heart condition and some kidney problems, and the family was concerned about her.

Struggling to her feet, the dog stared straight ahead. She was a small dog, with a dachshund body but a beagle head, and she almost seemed to be pointing. Nancy followed the dogs intent gaze, and then she saw it, too. A wisp of smoke was curling out of a crack in the dashboard. Joe! she shouted at her husband at the wheel. Joe, the engines on fire!