Reviews

The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection by Jen Golbeck, Stacey Colino

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rachaelcwilson's review

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emotional informative reflective medium-paced

4.75

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zydecovivo's review

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emotional informative lighthearted reflective slow-paced

4.5

This is a book I saw thanks to a bookstagram influencer. I own a foster-fail rescue dog myself and knew I needed to read it. While not previously familiar with Jen Golbeck’s social media influence, I appreciated her background in dog rescue, fostering, and hospice care. I can tell that she loves helping the dogs that come through her home. The book itself is a mix of personal anecdotes from Jen, stories from third-party contributors, and scientific research. While I think this was the correct way to write the book, I listened to the audiobook version and found my attention drifting in and out. Jen was the narrator, and, while her voice wasn’t displeasing, I think this book lends itself to having many voices. Even if the subjects of the third-party stories didn’t want to speak, having a male and second female voice for those quotes would’ve helped keep the audio a tad more interesting.

The information in the book is interesting, though I’d argue mostly common knowledge for any long-time dog owner. This is another book that may be useful to keep as a reference since each section corresponds to each stage in a dog’s life with a human. We tend to forget the phases of life for dogs with each new one, so a refresher between dogs and during phase transitions could be helpful for dog owners. As a bit of warning for other listeners, Part 4 deals explicitly with dog death. It wasn’t labeled in my audio version and thus had me crying uncontrollably on a Monday morning. Thank goodness I was working from home.

Content Warnings

bookshelvish's review

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4.0

4⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️. Listened to this entire thing today in a few hours (audio is only 7 hours and with my usual 3x speed it was over just in my commute to work and back, lol). It’s basically just a non fic about the relationship between people and their dogs, and the chapter on aging pets made me legitimately bawl my eyes out for a solid 20 minutes. If you have a dog you love, I highly recommend this one but come armed with tissues for the end!!

charlottelilac's review against another edition

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funny informative reflective slow-paced

5.0

ninahuynh's review

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emotional funny informative medium-paced

5.0

Very informative and engaging! The topic itself is an interesting one, but the way Golbeck and Colino dive into different aspects of human-canine connections (from interacting with children to health benefits) really sold me. The sections about how a dog acts and how certain behaviours can be interpreted made me feel nearly ready to adopt a canine friend!

Content Warnings