If you’ve ever wondered what it is like to open your home to a dog in need, Cara Sue Achterberg is here to tell you. She has fostered over 50 dogs (at the time of the book, it is now over 100) who would otherwise have been euthanized through no fault of their own.
The book introduces us to 50 sweet, gentle, loving dogs who often start off frightened and grow into the happy animals they will one day become. We get to read 50 fairy tale endings for dogs who were slated for death row.
I enjoyed reading this book, but to be quite honest I wasn’t 100% sure why the author decided to write it. Fostering dogs is a relatively common practice. Even if you never have, it’s not hard to imagine what it’s like if you’ve ever owned a dog.
As the story develops though, I begin to see why she wanted to write this story. Although fostering is very common, over half of all dogs who enter shelters around the USA never leave again. If there were more fosters, maybe none of them would have to die.
Despite this stark reality, she’s not against responsible breeders. During the book one of her friends got a dog from a breeder after a disastrous adoption attempt—one of the family members was allergic to dogs, and they needed a hypoallergenic pet.
Many of the dogs that came into the rescue were extremely abused. They were skeleton skinny, riddled with scars, and one even had their collar grown into their neck. Despite this, none of the 50 dogs she fostered bit her over the course of her fostering.
It was interesting to have a peek into her life. She has helped a lot of dogs. Almost all of the dogs who went home to their families were clearly good matches.
Not A Preachy Book
My favorite part of this whole book was that Cara does a great job of sharing the problems our beloved canines face, without slapping you in the face with it. At the end of the book she does encourage you to foster as a way to help these dogs, but not in a way that makes you feel bad if you don’t.
Too many people are so lost in the cause that all they do is scream at passersby rather than remember those people have feelings as much as the dogs.
Although I’m currently buried in my reading challenge, I have written down her book on dog 100, so at a later date I can pick up that book and read it too.
Similar Posts:
- Review of Woodrow on the Bench
- Review of Saving Sadie
- Review of Dogs by DK
- Sit, Stay, Heal Review
- Review of Travels with Casey
