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Reviews tagging 'Animal cruelty'
The Purest Bond: Understanding the Human-Canine Connection by Jen Golbeck, Stacey Colino
4 reviews
rachaelcwilson's review
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
Graphic: Grief
Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic, Medical content, and Animal death
Minor: Animal cruelty and Cancer
zydecovivo's review
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.
Graphic: Grief, Animal death, and Animal cruelty
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Self harm
ninahuynh's review
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!
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Suicidal thoughts, Ableism, Death, Mental illness, Self harm, Cancer, and Chronic illness
hmatt's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
This is a lovely, perfectly paced look at all the ways dogs enrich our lives. Each topic is explored from an emotional/anecdotal and scientific perspective in equal balance. Jen (the author) reading the audiobook is fantastic, as well. My only note is about how clunky the audiobook reads when it comes to naming the authors/scientists of studies - there's no real way to fix this, but it's a lot of "So-and-so, PhD, So-and-So, PhD, in their lab at X University in Y place, found that..."
Graphic: Grief, Cancer, and Animal death
Moderate: Terminal illness, Abandonment, and Animal cruelty
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