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

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.

Product details

• Authors: Melissa Greene, Melissa Fay Greene
• Publisher: Ecco Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.05.2016
• EAN: 9780062218513
• ISBN: 978-0-06-221851-3
• No. of pages: 352
• Dimensions: 152 mm x 229 mm x 29 mm
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Non-fiction book > Politics, society, business > Biographies, autobiographies; FAMILY & RELATIONSHIPS: Children with Special Needs, PETS: Dogs / General, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY: General, PSYCHOLOGY: EDUCATIONAL, PSYCHOLOGY: CHILD & TEEN, PSYCHOLOGY: FAMILY COUNSELING, PSYCHOLOGY: Psychotherapy / Child & Adolescent, PSYCHOLOGY: CLINICAL, SCIENCE: Cognitive Science