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Ascent of Dog: Working Dogs in the West

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The bond between dog and man has created a super-organism combining the acute sense of smell of the former with the questionable intelligence of the latter. In the days before toy poodles and their psychiatrists and exercise machines for cooperating with men whose frequent exploits make mockery of modern Iron Men competitions. It is partly this early era in several chapters that Wendy Bush has cronicled from her ransacking of archives and photographic collections from Rocky Mountain sources, to the Hudson Bay Company Archives to distill explorers' diaries along with her own interviews to produce a panoramic and intersting depiction of a past, none but the weekend adventurer would think they would care to repeat. Wendy's smooth prose is interspersed with diary quotes from explorers, travellers and the like, making easily digestible bites. She 'mushes' (French for 'marche') us from Indian dog-eating festivals, to the uncanny canine Hollywood dog actors, to the expected early explorations and mail service, to dog and wolf behaviour, to her own adventures, notably her retracing David Thompson's crossing of the Athabasca Pass in 1811. This is a well-researched book 162 references in its 192 pages, index included. Our author is the best kind of eccentric, the type that doesn't realize it. Wendy has worked the Jasper and Banff regions of the Canadian Rockies, taking people by dog-sled, snowshoes or horseback through those splendid landscapes. She thinks nothing of getting down to chew away the injurious snow accumulations between the dog's does. Despite life on a shoestring, she manages to travel to the British Museum of Natural History to reserch fleas, start up the Canadian Porcupine Service to promote Biodiversity as well as collecting obscure Rocky Mountain facts when she's not snowshoeing in the Bow Valley. For those who can't stomach puns, fear not; the only one is in the title. Although this book is Wendy Bush's personal celebration of her "respect for the inestimable role of these mute companions in our heritage," it is now ours as well. Thank you Wendy, whoever and wherever you are