Reviews tagging 'Grief'

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

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Content Warnings

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. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Animal death, and Animal cruelty

Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Self harm

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..."

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Cancer, and Animal death

Moderate: Terminal illness, Abandonment, and Animal cruelty

lindseyag23's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative lighthearted fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Grief, and Mental illness

Minor: Bullying, Suicidal thoughts, Eating disorder, Pregnancy, Self harm, Injury/Injury detail, Cancer, Chronic illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Terminal illness, Car accident, Grief, Medical content, Toxic relationship, Dementia, Domestic abuse, and Pandemic/Epidemic

The book discusses how dogs (and to a lesser extent other pets) help people who experience many of these content warnings- nothing particularly graphic. There are 2 chapters regarding aging and death of pets, again nothing graphic.