Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Keep On Keepin' On!

Some time ago I re-read (and blogged about) The Catcher In The Rye.  A few months ago I read (for the first time in my life) To Kill A Mockingbird.  And I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Recently a friend and I decided we would read Atlas Shrugged together.  I checked it out of the library and got about 60 pages in (it's 1168 pages long) before I had to return it - this after renewing it not once but twice.  Good book but long, slow read.  I will try again.

In the interim I have begun reading this little gem.  I first saw this book in a remainders catalog and it looked interesting.  Luckily the library had it and I started reading it last night. 

It is the story of a man who decided his sheltie dog "Carmen" needed something to do so he began agility training sessions with her.  If you don't know, this is a sort of obstacle course run by the dog with instructions and signals from its owner/trainer.

At one meet Carmen suddenly refuses to make one of the jumps.  It turns out she had developed hip dysplasia.  Carmen was retired - but the bug had bitten.  The book is the account of his efforts to find and train a new agility dog and he apparently finds the world's least likely candidate in Dusty, a rescue dog.

I've only just begun (the book, not the song) but it seems the dog and its owner have a rocky road ahead of them - but there is most likely a pot of doggie-love gold at the end of the rainbow.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

Quotable quotes; in the category If Everybody Adopted A Dog Unemployment Would Cease To Exist!

"Scratch a dog and you'll find a permanent job."  Franklin P. Jones, American Journalist