Always looking for a good read and even better if it's a "dog book". I just finished a book that I'd like to recommend. No, its not going to win a Pulitzer or any awards for that matter, but I felt the author understands how both dogs and "dog people" think and relate. I didn't think it was a Marley & Me waste of time. So, if you're interested, pick up "The Dog Who Saved Me" by Susan Wilson.
The old man and the boy by Robert Ruark... Hunting fishing and dogs. He was a feild and stream writer and big game hunter who wrote a few books and published his memoirs of his grandfather teaching him life lessons trough the outdoors in the early 1900s. Exelent read.
The best dog books are those from the literary giants which do not necessarily mention dogs but upon their grand landscapes or within the bussom of their panelled drawing rooms one finds ample canvas, improving the prose ever so slightly with the image of their own canine confidant, companion or conspirator.
Another book by Mike Gaddis that I really enjoyed was Zip Zap: The True Story of a Dog and a Dream. It made me want to get a pointer and a horse and start pointer field trialing.
What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs, by Cat Warren.
It's the authors experiences training her dog for search and cadaver dog. Thought it was pretty interesting, different path, but similar journey (get a good pup, it needs a job, how to train, when to train, find a training group and mentor, etc.)
I know what Buck Mann means about wanting to get a pointer and a horse. I'm not a pointing dog man, but I could relate to working with an athletic dog in the quest for upland game birds.
Not a dog book, but lots of duck hunting and other outdoor sports, Gordon Macquarrie collection of short stories "Stories of the Old Duck Hunters".
His ability to describe the scene is wonderful.
Also "More Stories of the Old Duck Hunters"
and " Last Stories of the Old Duck Hunters"
Robert Crais Suspect. A great story of a relationship between a man and a dog. Seems to get the dog part right. GSD Maggie and a K9 cop.
Panther: And other Stories of Great Hunting Retrievers: Original stories about the Special Bonds Between Man and Dog.Art DeLaurier Jr. (Editor) Collected stories, some better than others, but Panther is a great story.
Of the oldies, I love anything by Ruark, his Old Man and the Boy is a favorite as is Use Enough Gun, and one of my all time favorites is a hound story by McKinlay Kantor, The Voice of Bugle Ann. Just finished a gem, Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen, about sled dogs and a novice running the Iditarod. Excellent read. One i enjoyed on audiobook a couple of years ago was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, a saga about a family that raised a particular line of working dogs for generations. Great for a long journey, 18 CDs.
LOL, Julie...I read Edgar Sawtelle, and hated it. Page after page of overdone, heavy handed prose, and then the ending was not just terrible, after slogging through writing all those pages, it was like the author threw an ending together in five minutes. I love books...but this one was used for kindling. Seriously...it went straight into the fireplace. I know a lot of people like it...but not my kind of read.
It was the first book on CD I ever listened to, on a long road trip and I remember wondering if I would've liked it if I'd read it. Maybe not.... but it hooked me on audiobooks.
If you like spare, and amusing prose, here's a good summer read: Sick Puppy, by Carl Hiasson. His novels are sort of mystery, sort of satire stories based in South Florida; this one is about some eco terrorists protesting some swampland being developed. So they decide to intimidate one of the developers and kidnap his dog, a supposedly expensive trained hunting Lab. Only problem is, the Lab was more of a couch potato than a hunter and has terrible gas (the description of him in the car with the enviro thugs right after they stole him is pretty funny) and the owner isn't real anxious to get him back so the thugs are kind of stuck with him. Any of Hiasson's books are pretty good reads; they are satires but the characters are believable and as funny as they are pathetic and Sick Puppy is definitely dog related.
Archibald Rutledge wrote about all different kinds of hunting with dogs. Deer, turkey, quail and ducks. He's under-appreciated.
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