About this item
Terrified Penny Jane; brassy but filthy Dixie Lou; tough-guy Dingo; and the crazed, nippy jester, Walter Joe. These are not your average cute-and-cared-for, well-trained pups these are shelter dogs. Scared, aggressive, so painfully shy that they can t look you in the eye, they have languished so long without attention that they are slipping into a dark place, and soon will no longer be able to bond with people."
About the Author
I left my career as a newspaper features writer behind in 2001 to write the first of my three books, "Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America". For a year I crisscrossed the country interviewing chili heads, cowboys, state fair cooking champs, and a few cheats. Next I headed to Moorpark Community College in southern California, where the top school for exotic animal trainers can be found, for "Kicked Bitten and Scratched".
My book chronicles the year I shadowed students through this improbable, magical, grueling program. I met my first binturong. I went on walks with the baboons, the cougars and the wolf. All of this understandably went to my head, which became apparent for all when I wrote a column for the New York Times on how I improved my marriage by using animal training techniques I had learned at the school. That insane outburst earned me a movie deal (Lionsgate-Summit) and the contract for my third book, "What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love and Marriage".
Along the way, I've written for magazines and newspapers as well as taught journalism at Boston University. Currently I write the Bibliophiles column for the Boston Globe's Sunday Books section and am at work on another book project. This one will be about shelter dogs, two of which, Penny Jane and Walter Joe, share my home office in Boston. If you don't find me at my desk it's probably because my two assistants below, Walter Joe and Penny Jane have convinced me it's time for a walk.
