 |
|
Title: We Give Our Hearts to Dogs to Tear: Intimations of their Immortality
ISBN: 1412807794
Author:
Alston Chase
Publicate Date: 2008-04-30
Publish: 2008-04-30
List Price: $34.95
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Hardcover
 |
|
|
|
|
Amazon Lowest New Price: $23.68
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $25.49
Amazon Merchant Price: $24.93
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Customer Review: |
|
1: A different approach
Alston Chase has discovered a way of involving his readers both emotionally and pragmatically with this book about Jack Russell terriers. His insights into our love of dogs and our propensity to try to control nature and the environment in which we live are thought provoking. It is refreshing to read about a family that embraces not only their natural surroundings but their own human nature, without the need to purify or "improve" them. Lovers of the Jack Russells will appreciate Mr. Chases' insights into their nature, but there is much more to receive from this book than simply a treatise on this determined little breed.
|
2: Our love of dogs, captured by this author
This modern-day Pioneer family gave up a secure life as a tenured college Professor of Philosophy to venture West to the sparsely populated state of Montana, complete with primative living conditions and harsh winters. By doing so, they connected with the land, their many dogs and themselves. While reading the book, I obtained a new meaning of my love for our little companions, and why we are so willing to expose ourselves to the sorrow we know we will suffer when their short lives are over. I highly recommend the book!
|
3: The Deepest Bonds
On one level, this is a book about the Chases' retreat to Montana wilderness and their discovery of the treasures around them, including the Jack Russell Terriers they began to acquire. But it runs deeper than that, and explores what dogs are and need to be, and how breeders are ruining them by heeding human criteria, such as form and size, and ignoring the genetic traits that keep a breed viable and healthy.
But this is also a love story, about how the Chases and their Jack Russells (and other pets) deal with each other, and how their differing personalities give and receive differing commitments and differing forms of love. There are passages of great tenderness here, but also passages of speculation: do animals have anything we might call a soul, anything that might transcend death? Might we ever be reunited with our pets beyond the grave?
There is warning here as well: we stand on a precipice. If dogs continue to be bred for purely human criteria such as those imposed by the AKC, and not for those qualities that yield a healthy, athletic animal, the time is not far off when some breeds will be ruined. They will suffer more and more disorders such as deformity, and fewer live births.
This is a love song, and we need to listen to Alston Chase's music.
|
4: Tea Time
For me this precious read is best served with tea, a cozy chair, and a ray of light pouring through a window. I waited each day for just the right moment to pick it up. It is a book to savor.
I understand that Alston Chase is quite the intellectual - the author of several very heady reads. I have to say that in "We Give Our Hearts To Dogs To Tear" I can see the heart of the author, splayed for all the world to see.
This book takes the reader aside from the hustle and bustle of life and drops into the true essence of living. Maybe that shift is seen through a canine friend's field of vision or maybe because of these canine friends Alston Chase has made that shift himself.
"We Give Our Hearts To Dogs To Tear" is reflective of days gone by, of pioneers, and grit, and lasting love.
Thank you for such an endearing read.
|
5: A book about real dogs
Alston Chase has gone against the popular grain with his fascinating account of life on the edge of the wild in Montana with several generations of real, sometimes difficult Jack Russell terriers. They may be "cute" but they are first and foremost working dogs, with bold hearts and ambitions bigger than their bodies. While he may make you cry, Chase is never cheaply sentimental. In a time when too many people reduce dogs to surrogate children or toys, he reminds us what remarkable creatures real dogs are, and how strong a bond they will make with their human partners.
|
|
|
|
|
