Teaming up on their first collaborative effort, Greive and Hale explain once and for all Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats. Now, before all you cat lovers find your fur standing on end, Greive is quick to stress that he is simply “prodog, not anticat. The purpose of this book is not to criticize cats or their owners, but to champion the many exceptional virtues unique to dogs.”

What are these unique attributes that make canine companions superior to their feline fiends? (Oops, we meant friends.) Consider the following:

Put simply:

* Dogs are social. Cats are sociopaths.

* Dogs match up to people. People must match up to cats.

* Dogs teach us patience. Cats test our patience.

* Dogs give and give. Cats are the gift that keeps on grifting.

The bottom line is this: Dogs want love. Cats want fish.

Although Greive admits that there is something to be said for “soft, warm, and sleepy” (a.k.a. cats) as captured in Hale’s cuddly feline photographs, he concludes that dogs would be the only ones with character enough to admit this fact, thereby once again positioning themselves as the superior pet, confidant, admirer, and friend.

Why Dogs Are Better Than Cats

The first part of the book describes the emergence of humans as the master species and their domination of the rest of the inhabitants of the earth. The second part examines the industrialization of slaughter (of both animals and humans) that took place in modern times, while the last part of the book profiles Jewish and German animal advocates on both sides of the Holocaust.

The Foreword is by Lucy Kaplan, a former attorney for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), who is the daughter of Holocaust survivors.

Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

Gordon Smith is renowned for delivering powerful messages to people from their loved ones on the Other Side. But very often it’s not just human friends and family members who come through—the animals that have been so close to us in life also continue to visit us after death.

There have been many times when Gordon has given readings to clients about the loss of those very close to them, but these individuals can’t “hear” the message because pain has closed them down. However, when animals turn up, the barriers just dissolve, and these people can accept the truth of the information that Gordon is relaying to them about their loved ones.

In this extraordinary book, Gordon tells these heart-wrenching stories, presenting some of the amazing encounters that people have had with animals in the spirit world and here on Earth as well, including Gordon’s own experiences with his springer spaniel, Charlie.

This book is full of astounding personal accounts that are a great testament to the power of animals and their unconditional love for us!

The Amazing Power of Animals

One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter brings this issue vividly to life via a true account of 7 days in a typical U.S. animal shelter. With compelling photos and moving vignettes, this book chronicles the stories of 75 animals who passed through a Northern California animal shelter during one week. Their gripping stories include excerpts from actual shelter records; the words of shelter workers, volunteers, and visitors; and the final conclusion of each animal’s journey through the animal shelter system.

Look into the eyes of these animals and let their stories give you a riveting and unforgettable glimpse into this nation’s homeless animal tragedy. Whether it is the lost dog quickly reunited with his family because he was wearing an ID tag, the frightened cat given up by guardians who didn’t understand the commitment of caring for her, the cat facing euthanasia or the dog joyfully adopted into a new home, each animal in One at a Time has an important lesson to teach and a powerful message to share.

One at a Time will help you to see the real faces behind the numbers, and to experience the miracles and heartbreak that play out every day in our nation’s shelters… one animal at a time.

Even more importantly, One at a Time will give you hope, because this tragedy can be ended and each one of us can be part of the solution… offering us the chance to become better people, to reawaken our connection with other living beings, and to reaffirm the sanctity of life itself. The animals of One at a Time will show you how.

One at a Time: A Week in an American Animal Shelter

Updated and expanded for today’s entrepreneurs, Pet Sitting for Profit, Third Edition covers all the fundamentals of starting and operating a pet-sitting business. It addresses new challenges and concerns faced by novice and experienced pet sitters alike, as well as the issues fundamental to the field.

With information on everything from office procedures and personnel to advertising and business forms, this book is invaluable to entrepreneurs interested in starting a pet-sitting business or making an existing business more profitable. It’s laced with real-life stories from professional pet sitters–stories that show how to handle unexpected situations with furry, feathered, or finny pets or their owners.

Pet Sitting for Profit

A stylish two-color format with black-and-white photos will ensure that the book is easy to use and appealing to the eye.

Pretty Pet-Friendly: Easy Ways to Keep Spot’s Digs Stylish & Spotless

In this revised and updated edition, Martin continues to explore the shocking processes by which commercial pet foods are produced. She offers alternative recipes for feeding pets, nutritional advice, and an exploration of “Pet Peeves,” in which she explores several scams aimed at pet owners.

This groundbreaking book gives us a glimpse into exactly what we are doing when we buy pet food.
Food Pets Die For: Shocking Facts About Pet Food

Thankfully, animal lovers all over the U.S. are increasingly rejecting the excuses and blame shifting of shelter administrators used to justify that killing. And it is that rejection of the status quo, propelled by the American public’s great love of companion animals, which is explored in this book’s essays.

Irreconcilable Differences: The Battle for the Heart & Soul of America’s Animal Shelters

All My Patients Have Tales is a heartwarming and funny collection of stories by a dedicated veterinarian featuring wild horses, porcupine-quill-covered dogs, male cats in labor, an extremely ornery pygmy donkey, an enormous hog, as well as many other domestic, and not so “domestic” animals. Wells begins his work as an inexperienced recent college grad and emerges a caring and beloved veterinarian. Affording the reader an inside glimpse into his daily life, he narrates many uplifting, life-altering, lifethreatening, and hilarious episodes.

All My Patients Have Tales: Favorite Stories from a Vet’s Practice

Through this extraordinary exploration of our relationship with animals, Tolle demonstrates that our relationship with the animals we know and care for is not simply a bond of love, but a spiritual one too, transcending words to form an uplifting, enlightening experience.

Guardians of Being

Amazon.com Review
Product Description
How can we give animals the best life–for them? What does an animal need to be happy

In her groundbreaking, best-selling book Animals in Translation, Temple Grandin drew on her own experience with autism as well as her experience as an animal scientist to deliver extraordinary insights into how animals think, act, and feel. Now she builds on those insights to show us how to give our animals the best and happiest life–on their terms, not ours.

Knowing what causes animals physical pain is usually easy, but pinpointing emotional distress is much harder. Drawing on the latest research and her own work, Grandin identifies the core emotional needs of animals and then explains how to fulfill the specific needs of dogs and cats, horses, farm animals, zoo animals, and even wildlife. Whether it’s how to make the healthiest environment for the dog you must leave alone most of the day, how to keep pigs from being bored, or how to know if the lion pacing in the zoo is miserable or just exercising, Grandin teaches us to challenge our assumptions about animal contentment and honor our bond with our fellow creatures.

Animals Make Us Human is the culmination of almost thirty years of research, experimentation, and experience. This is essential reading for anyone who’s ever owned, cared for, or simply cared about an animal.

Q: In Animals Make Us Human, you discuss a wide range of animals, from dogs to pigs to tigers. Which animals do you enjoy studying and working with the most?

A: I’ve worked with cattle the most, so I really enjoy cattle. I always liked to sit in the pen and let the cattle come around me and lick me–they’re really peaceful animals when they’re not afraid. But the thing about cattle is they’re a prey-species animal and they get scared really easily–and I can relate to that because as a person with autism, fear is my main emotion. So I can relate to how cattle are always hypervigilant, looking for rapid movements, looking for little signs of things that might be danger.

Q: How has autism helped you in your work with animals?

A: I’m a total visual thinker. And you’ve got to think about it: animals don’t think in language. If you want to understand animals, you must get away from language. Animals are sensory-based thinkers; they think in pictures, they think in sounds, they think in touches. There’s no other way that their brains can store those memories.

Q: How has your work affected the treatment of animals?

A: I’ve been working on improving the treatment of cattle for years. When I started out in the seventies, people were incredibly rough and abusive with cattle. The thing that kept me going was that there were some really nice people who handled their cattle well, and their cattle had a great life, and so I could see that it was possible to handle animals right. And today many more people are now involved in teaching low-stress stockmanship and good cattle handling. When I started in the early seventies, I was a pioneer in the U.S. on this; nobody else was working on these things.

Q: How will this book be useful to people working with cats and dogs in animal shelters?

A: People often don’t recognize emotions in these animals. I went to a very nice animal shelter recently that had group housing for cats that had tree-like things with platforms and cubbyholes for the cats to get in, and a very astute worker there noticed that you can have a situation where a cat seems very calm in a shelter, but he’s not really sleeping, he’s constantly keeping an eye out for another cat. And people need to watch for that kind of situation, because even though it looks peaceful, that one particular cat that never sleeps is going to be stressed out.

Also at this shelter, I was very pleased that the amount of dog barking was way less, and I think one of the reasons for this is that every day, every dog is taken out for an hour of quality time, playing and being walked and interacting with a person. That’s going to help lower the stress. Dogs need to be taken out every day for quality interaction with a person, exercise, and fun play.

Q: What are the things you really like about creating a book like Animals Make Us Human?

A: I really enjoyed getting into all the neuroscience information. Another thing I talked about in the book are the problems with not having enough people working out in the field to implement things. We’ve got policymakers who never work out in the field, and some of the policies can backfire. We need to have more people working in the field. In the wildlife chapter, I talk about who’s going to be the next Jane Goodall–we need a lot more of that kind of on-the-ground work.

Q: You mention Dr. Nicholas Dodman and some other people in your field. Has anyone in particular been a great inspiration for you?

A: One of my big inspirations when I was starting out was a scientist named Ron Kilgore, who studied sheep handling and sheep behavior. At the same time that I was working on cattle handling in the U.S. in the early seventies, Ron Kilgore was doing the same sorts of things in New Zealand. I discovered one of his papers early on, and that really was an inspiration.

Q:What do you think of the more extreme animal activists?

A: Violence I’m totally against–that’s very counterproductive. All that does is make the animal industry go and get more lawyers and more security systems. Demonstrations–sometimes there may be a place for that. In some situations we might have philosophical differences. I eat meat. I get hypoglycemic if I don’t eat animal protein. But I feel very strongly that we’ve got to give the animals a decent life. A woman working at Niman Ranch said that we’ve got to give animals “a life worth living.” These cattle can have a decent life: the cows and the bulls, out on a ranch eating grass. The calves spend half their lives in a feed yard, but they’re still outside. Another way I look at it is, those cattle would have never been born, would have never existed, but now that we’ve made them exist, we’ve got to give them a decent life.

Q: If you could give your book to one person or one group of people so that they could learn more about animal care, who would that be?

A: I think any kind of person who works with animals, whether it’s a pet owner, a cat owner, people who work with horses, people who work on farms–anyone who works with animals on a daily basis is going to like Animals Make Us Human, and they’re also going to like Animals in Translation.

Q: Proposition 2 in California just passed. Its aim is to reduce the inhumane confinement of farm animals by giving them enough room to stand up, turn around, and stretch. What do you think of this, and what do you think the real effects will be?

A: Veal stalls and sow stalls we need to get rid of, plain and simple. Putting a sow in a box where she can’t turn around for most of her life, that’s absolutely not acceptable. Two-thirds of the public have problems with it. With hens and chickens, that’s a more complicated issue. It’s so much more expensive to put them in systems that are cage-free, and what I’m worried about is the egg industry migrating to Mexico and being a real mess, where we have no controls at all. What people don’t realize is that half of the egg industry is liquid egg, which can be easily shipped in those stainless-steel tanks. It’s the eggs that go into bread, the eggs that restaurants use…And I’m concerned that that might migrate to Mexico.

There needs to be a lot more thought going into how we’re going to implement things. What’s happening in a lot of fields now–with any issue, not just animal issues–is we’re getting more and more policymakers totally separated from the reality of what’s happening on the ground, where ideology takes over from practicality.

Q: What are your future plans relating to animal advocacy? What is the next issue that you would like to tackle?

A: I’m an implementer. Somebody has to work on implementing things. I want to continue working with people on practical guidelines that will result in improvements. I spend a great deal of time working with large meat buyers, because economic forces can often bring about great change. One of the things that should be a major criterion in judging welfare is when there are too many lame animals. And lameness is something I can measure. I want things I can measure. Too often we’ve got our best and brightest going into policy, and they haven’t done anything practical. All I can say is, whatever field you’re in, whether it is animals or something else, you need to get out in the field and find out what’s going on in the trenches, so that you don’t make policies that might have unintended, bad consequences. Get away from the lobbyists, get away from all that, get out and visit farms, visit ranchers, because with a lot of issues, the truth is somewhere in the middle.

(Photo © Joel Benjamin)