Book 7: Adventures with Ari

I read this book by Kathryn Miles last month. It’s one of the many “books about someone and his/her dog and the adventures of being a dog owner.” But it’s different in a few ways, and it was nice to have a variation on that somewhat repetitive theme.

Miles writes about adopting her dog and everything they experience in the first year. That means…it doesn’t have a sad ending! The other difference is instead of writing specifically about dogs at all times, she writes about spending time with her dog while exploring nature. Many of the pieces are not directly about dogs, but about various nature topics, decomposition and communication and all sorts of things.

The other nice change is that when they inevitably go to training class, it’s a very competent professional, an advocate for positive reinforcement, and it was not painful to read. When I heard some mentions about training, I seriously considered putting the book down. After reading a few other books like this over the years, I didn’t want to read it again. But, like I said, it was interesting to see a novice dog owner ending up with a good professional. And it was a very realistic description of her understanding of the classes and lessons and reliability (and not) of the experience.

My only complaints, there were some editing errors. I don’t know that I’d read it again or that it’s highly recommended, but definitely one of the better “stories about my dog” that I have read, and I used to read a lot of those!

It also made me really think about how people with their first dog are experiencing all the silly things that dogs do.