And Baby Makes Four provides expecting parents with straightforward instructions on how to prepare the family dog for a new baby’s arrival. Written by a behaviorist and mother, this useful guide helps to address specific pet behaviors that may concern parents-to-be, including possessiveness, jealousy, fear of new people and new situations, inappropriate jumping, and chewing on baby toys.

The chapters are arranged chronologically by trimester, continuing through childbirth and the arrival of the newborn baby, to help your dog adjust to changes in the home. The book also features an assortment of contemporary, eye-catching illustrations that highlight and define key information from the text.

If you wish to guide your pet through your pregnancy and help ensure a loving relationship between him and your new baby, And Baby Makes Four can show you how to be a leader to your dog while reinforcing his status within the family dynamic.

And Baby Makes Four: A Trimester-by-Trimester Guide to a Baby-Friendly Dog

Inspiring stories of dogs who do good.

Anyone who has ever had a relationship with a dog will tell you: They want nothing more than to give love and be loved in return. In Every Dog Has a Gift, Rachel McPherson draws on her experience as the founder and executive director of The Good Dog Foundation, the largest animal-assisted therapy organization on the East Coast, to share the amazing stories of dogs that bring hope and healing into our lives.

Much has been said about the heroic roles dogs played following September 11th and Hurricane Katrina in providing support and comfort for the families and victims of these terrible tragedies, but the truth is that millions of dogs around the world are heroes every day. These therapy and service dogs (and often quite ordinary, “uncertified” dogs just like your own!) can:

*serve as the perfect audience for kids who need help with practicing and improving their reading skills;

*hold troubled families together;

*provide a calm and centering presence for autistic children, and

*help individuals who have lost the ability to walk to more easily navigate the world.

Every Dog Has a Gift is a celebration of the gift that each and every dog possesses: the ability to bring the healing power of unconditional love into our lives.Amazon.com Review

A Look Inside Every Dog Has a Gift
(Click on Images to Enlarge)

Every Dog Has a Gift: True Stories of Dogs Who Bring Hope & Healing into Our Lives

‘A testimony to the powerful connection between pets and people.’ –Joe Camp, author of The Soul of a Horse and creator of Benji

Moments with Baxter is a collection of touching, true stories about the poignant connection between Baxter, a 19-year-old therapy dog, and the hospice patients and their families to whom he brings comfort and love. During the last four years, Baxter has helped hundreds of patients ease out of their lives with dignity and peace. His uncanny intuition and almost human responsiveness demonstrates the unique and inextricable bond between human and dog. 36 true and touching stories of canine/patient connection.

Interior photography by Dennis Bussey.

Moments With Baxter: Comfort and Love from the World’s Best Therapy Dog

Found Dogs is full of wonderful photos and words by people who have adopted dogs in myriad ways. Celebrities from Peter Mayle, Jamie Lee Curtis, Al Gore, and Bobby Short to everyday heroes who have found dogs–from purebreds to scruffy mix-breeds–that have become service dogs, protectors, and friends, offering solace, aid, companionship, and inspiration.

Found Dogs is a moving tribute to the power of love between people and dogs–how that love has transformed dogs who were lost, and the people who were lucky enough to find them.

Found Dogs: Tales of Strays Who Landed on Their Feet

Readers laugh, smile, and tear up with the help of adorable shelter dogs, police canine handlers, dogs rescued from hurricanes, returning veterans united with service dogs (and the prison inmates who train them), and everyday mutts who transform lives just by providing an exuberant welcome at the end of the day.

There’s even a dog that dazzled David Letterman on his Late Show. Ideal for anyone who loves a dog, or simply loves to be inspired, this book delivers a full dose of canine companionship.
Dogs and the Women Who Love Them: Extraordinary True Stories of Loyalty, Healing, and Inspiration

They argue that dogs did not evolve directly from wolves, nor were they trained by early humans; instead they domesticated themselves to exploit a new ecological niche: Mesolithic village dumps. Tracing the evolution of today’s breeds from these village dogs, the Coppingers show how characteristic shapes and behaviors—from pointing and baying to the sleek shapes of running dogs—arise from both genetic heritage and the environments in which pups are raised.

For both dogs and humans to get the most out of each other, we need to understand and adapt to the biological needs and dispositions of our canine companions, just as they have to ours.

Dogs: A New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior and Evolution

From developing deep intuition into the thoughts and feelings of animals to learning how to verify the information you receive, here is an illuminating course of useful exercises and expert guidance to help listeners open to the unconditioned love animals freely offer.

The Beginner’s Guide to Animal Communication

The book is peppered with heartwarming and often fascinating stories from her own practice, making it a sure bet for animal lovers of all types interested in enriching the bond with their pet.

When an animal is truly a family member, you want to communicate with it as completely as you do with human members, but how? Amelia Kinkade is here to show you, with plenty of tools for direct and serious conversation with your four-legged friends. Foes of anthropomorphism, beware: if you don’t assume that animals have similar emotional responses to ours, you’re liable to find this book a bunch of hooey.

Kinkade’s techniques involve various methods of telepathy, from sending specific questions like “what’s your favorite food?” to receiving emotions like sadness or joy. Her years of experience working with pet owners and rescue services give Kinkade a wealth of fascinating stories. Conversations relayed between unhappy animals and their humans can be instructive to an amazing point–one horse knew he needed an iron supplement, while a cancer-ridden dog apologized to his owner for being “such a burden.” Simple ideas seem relatively easy to trade. When leaving for a weekend trip, it’s easy to observe an agitated dog or kitty.

Calmly relaying facts about how long you’ll be gone and what she should expect while you’re gone can go a long way toward solving everything from tummy upsets to malicious shredding of furniture. More advanced students of Kinkade’s methods can visually find specific causes of pain in animals and listen to what they need from their humans to heal. As with other books on telepathy, you won’t find research or studies here. But if you have an open mind and willingness to experiment, Straight from the Horse’s Mouth can open up satisfying new dimensions in your relationships with all animals. –Jill Lightner

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth: How to Talk to Animals and Get Answers

Packed with celebrity pet-lore, Chicken Soup for the Soul relates the unconditional love, loyalty, courage and companionship that only animals possess. Just like our furry, feathered and four-legged friends, this enchanting book will bring a smile to any pet lover’s face … and it’s housebroken!

Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul: Stories About Pets as Teachers, Healers, Heroes and Friends

This book is still about cold noses, warm bellies, four on the floor, and a snuggler or two. Your basic fur family. It’s also about the love of a mother for her son, a wife for her husband, a husband for some dogs, and the love it takes to make a haunted house a home. Your basic family furnishings. Throw in a lot of antiques, a couple triumphs over adversity, and a more-than-seems-fair share of heartbreaking loss and you have Dog House–the warm, absorbing, and humorous tale of dogs and marriage, love and marriage and life.

Dog House: A Love Story

-Dog Week Written with compassion and understanding; truly required reading for any pet owner.

-Dog World Coping with Sorrow addresses every aspect of pet loss and grief. Written in a clear, friendly style. It takes a pet owner by the hand and walks him through the stages of bereavement, offering explanations and coping strategies at every step.

-Canine Concepts A small gem of a book. Anderson’s book fills the need for a comprehensive, yet easily read, publication on pet loss and owner bereavement. The message is one of love, common sense, and practical information.

-The Delta Society This book has been needed for a long time-like forever! The wealth of information given by pet owners makes the book come alive. It’s a lovely thing, beautifully and generously written from the bottom of a superb writer’s heart.

-Dog Writers Association of America It gets right to the heart of the issue of pet loss, right to where people are hurting. [Its] warm, down-to-earth language reaches out to a pet owner on the level of friend to friend.

-Bloodlines

Coping with Sorrow on the Loss of Your Pet

Stories include the four-legged speech therapist who helped a scared boy find his voice; the dog who came “special delivery” through the mail at just the right moment in a family’s life; the dog who helped guard Air Force One; dogs from the canine corps; service dogs; and many others.

The book also details new scientific findings on how dogs can save lives, sniff out cancerous tumors, and warn epileptics of impending seizures. Each story is followed by a short meditation that helps readers focus on the messages of love that dogs bring to their lives.

Angel Dogs: Divine Messengers of Love

A Step-by-Step Program for Communicating With Your Animals

Based on her successful 7-step HeartTalk ProgramSM, which has already helped thousands of people understand their basic telepathic connection with animals, Gurney outlines the principles of “heart-to-heart” communication, showing you how to open your heart to a more meaningful connection with the animals you love. Learn how to:

* Understand your animal’s needs, feelings, and innermost thoughts so you can discover who he or she really is

* Develop long-distance communication skills to locate lost or stolen animals

* Understand animals’ physical feelings so you can help comfort them when they are sick or injured

* Emotionally prepare yourself for the death of your beloved animal

* Discover how animals can be your best teachers in helping you to love yourself

* Actually communicate telepathically with the loving beings that share your world!

Animals are not only our loyal companions; they are our guides, our healers, our link to the simple wisdom of the natural world. Filled with amazing real-life stories of human-animal communication, The Language of Animals is a must for every animal enthusiast–and a loving gift to the engaging, expressive animals who have so much to share.

The Language of Animals: 7 Steps to Communicating with Animals

Including photographs, a basic primer on intuition, and chapters on troubleshooting and transforming self-doubt, this guide of practical advice and proven techniques are interwoven with inspiring real-life accounts.

Learning Their Language: Intuitive Communication with Animals and Nature

A compelling true story of one dog’s rescue from a Pennsylvania puppy mill

This touching narrative uses the poignant makeover of Gracie, a sickly Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, to tell the story of America’s hidden puppy mills-commercial kennels that breed dogs in horrific living conditions and churn out often-diseased and emotionally damaged puppies for sale.

Saving Gracie chronicles how one little dog is transformed from a bedraggled animal worn out from bearing puppies into a loving, healthy member of her new family; and how her owner, Linda Jackson, is changed from a person who barely tolerated dogs to a woman passionately determined not only to save Gracie’s life, but also to get the word out about the millions of American puppy mill dogs who need our help.

• A touching story of survival and redemption
• Written by award-winning journalist Carol Bradley
• Newsworthy issues call animal lovers to action

Join journalist Carol Bradley as she draws back the curtain on the world of illegal puppy production in Saving Gracie.

Amazon Exclusive: Q&A with Author Carol Bradley

Author Carol Bradley with her two dogs

What are puppy mills?
Puppy mills are commercial kennels where dogs are treated like livestock, forced to produce puppies in often-squalid conditions. Puppy mills vary in size – they can contain as few as a dozen dogs or more than 1,000. Any breeder who subjects his or her dogs to filthy cages or runs, extreme temperatures, inadequate food and water and little to no socialization or veterinary care is operating a puppy mill.

How many puppy mills are there in the United States?
The Humane Society of the United States estimated in 2008 that there were 10,000 puppy mills in America. The head of the Humane Society, Wayne Pacelle, now believes the number is closer to 15,000.

Aren’t puppy mills illegal?
Surprisingly, no. In most states breeders may confine dogs to wire cages their entire lives if they so choose. Breeders can be charged with animal cruelty if they fail to provide adequate food or water, but there aren’t nearly enough federal or state inspectors to keep tabs on shoddy operators, and even when they’re discovered, they are often given a free pass.

What is it about Gracie that made you want to tell her story?
Gracie is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a breed renowned for their companionship — they’re total lapdogs. I was struck by the resilience a small, vulnerable dog would need to muster to overcome a life as traumatic as the one Gracie had led. I was intrigued, too, by her new owner, Linda Jackson, a woman who hadn’t necessarily wanted a dog—she adopted Gracie to satisfy her kids—but who wound up being changed forever by the experience.

How do breeding dogs like Gracie become available?
Breeders are sometimes willing to sell at a discount dogs that have spent years having puppies. Rescue groups also purchase some of these dogs at auctions and then try to adopt them out. Puppy mill survivors aren’t for everyone, but people who have the patience to work with a traumatized dog often find the experience deeply gratifying.

Letter to Readers from Carol Bradley

Gracie after being rescued

From the attic office of my home in Great Falls, Montana, I have a bird’s-eye view of Memorial Park, where occasionally a dog will sprint by, happy to be alive. It’s heart-warming to watch because I am mindful that across America, hundreds of thousands of dogs are kept in cages, never once allowed the simple freedom of running through grass.

As a newspaper reporter in my former life, I covered the story of a puppy mill — a large-volume dog-breeding operation involving 180 neglected and abused collies. My husband and I had two shelties at the time, and the similarities between those sweet-tempered collies and my own dogs were distressing. Long after the breeders were convicted and the dogs adopted out to new homes, the dark side of dog-breeding still haunted me. I began searching for the right dog, the right case to tell the story of puppy mills in America. The trail led me to Gracie, a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who was rescued from a puppy mill in Pennsylvania. After six years of living in a cage, giving birth to puppies, Gracie finally had a chance at a new life. But could she overcome the cruelty of her past?

Saving Gracie is told “Law and Order”-style, with a description of life in a puppy mill, then segueing to the raid on Gracie’s kennel, the trial that ensued against the breeder, Gracie’s first exposure to kindness in a shelter and then to her new life with Linda Jackson, a woman who hadn’t particularly wanted a dog. As Linda and Gracie struggle to adjust to one another, the state of Pennsylvania undergoes a bitter battle to curtail puppy mills.

Like most of you, I love stories where good triumphs over evil, where perseverance carries the day. Saving Gracie is that kind of book.

Saving Gracie: How One Dog Escaped the Shadowy World of American Puppy Mills