5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Amazing!!, February 15, 2003
This review is from: Dog Miracles: Inspirational and Heroic True Stories (Paperback)
Brad and Sherry have done it again. This book is an amazing and heartwarmiing book that will leave you with a greater appreciation for our dogs. Thank you for writing such an amazing series of books. Excellent job. Keep them coming.
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3 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
This is only based on the "Search Inside!" exerpt..., June 7, 2007
This review is from: Dog Miracles: Inspirational and Heroic True Stories (Paperback)
So I haven't read this whole book and based on what I have read I doubt I ever will. I read the two stories in the available exerpt and find them rather lacking. Before you get the wrong idea I want to emphasize that I love animals, particularly dogs, and I know they do plenty of amazing and heroic things. Based on the two stories I read, however, this book is only going to impress people who have never read a story about an animal doing something remotely heroic before.
One of these stories involved a dog saving its owner from a fire and giving its life to try to save a litter of puppies as well. Okay, that's pretty heroic, but it's also par for the course when it comes to heroic dog stories. I'm so used to the idea that dogs sometimes save their owners from burning buildings and stuff like that. They're wonderful, but this particular story is a little too familiar to feel like a miracle to me. What made it even worse for me is that the dog dies trying to save the puppies and they don't even survive in the end! So sad! Now I wish I hadn't read it at all! Even if you consider the overall event a miracle it just isn't a very good story unless you've really never heard of a dog doing something like this before.
And then there's the other one. At least the dog with the fire did something brave and self-sacrificing that went against its normal behavior. In the second story I read a woman basically has some trouble with her electric wheelchair and falls out of it. She has a bit of a fright (as can be expected when you fall), but she's not hurt. Now this takes place in her home. She's on her floor, not a busy highway. Her legs don't work, but the rest of her body is perfectly healthy. Basically the "miracle" in this story is that when she tells her service dog to go find her cell phone, he finds it for her. Incidentally this is exactly what he's been trained to do. Then she uses her cell phone to call 911 and have the firemen break into the house and put her back in her chair. Wow. That dog's a freakin' hero alright.
Yes, I know I sound terribly cynical, but the point is that these are supposed to be incredibly heroic, miraculous stories and if these two accurately represent the quality of the rest of them then this particular book isn't worth the money. If the woman was in actual danger that might make it a little more noteworthy. If the dog handn't been specifically trained to get things for her and wasn't already used to fetching her cell phone that would have also been a little more impressive. If the woman lived alone and was physically incapable of getting back to her wheelchair without other people to help her there would have been still more justification for this being a "miracle", but no. What this story boils down to is that a woman had a little scare, but was uninjured, and her service dog did what it was there to do and fetched her the phone which she used to call the fire department away from other, possibly life-threatening situations, to sit her back in her chair and save her from the inconvenience of having to drag herself to her chair, or even, heaven forbid, just into a sitting position where, if she couldn't get to her chair, she might actually be forced to endure an hour or two of boredom (or, as an optimist might call it, "an opportunity for quiet reflection") before her sister (who was out for the afternoon, not vacationing in Nova Scotia) got home and could help her back to her chair. OH THE HUMANITY! That would have been almost as bad as the time I got locked out of my house for a few hours! Except she was safe and warm and had a loving animal for company and I was out in the cold alone with nothing to do. That poor woman, I'm glad the fire men were able to take time out of their busy day of saving lives to rescue her from a minor inconvenience. It's so lucky the dog was willing to traverse those dangerous hallways and do the same thing it does many times every day. Surely you can see what I'm talking about here?
So yes, maybe the rest of the stories are fabulous and the first two are just duds. Normally I wouldn't write a review if I hadn't read the whole book, but the only review that's been written so far was so contrary to my impression I wanted to offer a dissenting view.
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