Customer Reviews

Love Is the Best Medicine: What Two Dogs Taught One Veterinarian about Hope, Humility, and Everyday Miracles

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Dr. Nick Trout works as a veterinary surgeon in a state-of-the-art
veterinary hospital. If there are miracles in veterinary medicine--and sometimes
there are!--he occasionally gets to see them. But he is not the least bit
arrogant about that. He soul-searches diligently to try to determine if he is
doing the right things.

He also appreciates the qualities of dog and cat owners and what their
relationships with their animals mean. He expresses what we know about those
relationships, and clearly sees that there is much more to the relationships
than we can truly understand. He has great respect for the animals and the
people.

There are tears in the book, but not unduly. There is joy in the book. And
what he says about chocolate Labradors is very funny!

I'm so glad I got this chance to read this book. I'm sure you will be, too!

Dr Nick Trout, an animal surgeon who works at Angell Animal Medical Center in Boston, weaves engaging stories around two major dog characters, Cleo, a min pin and Helen, an older street savvy dog. You will fall in love with these dogs and their owners.

I never get bored with animals or their stories and much to my delight I have read Dr. Trout's other two books, Tell Me Where it Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon and Ever By My Side: A Memoir in Eight [Acts] Pets with much laughter and a few tears.

Dr. Trout is not a glory hog about his talent and training. He could become over sentimental or too sterile in his daily profession. He does neither. He relates to his charges and their people with empathy, compassion and professionalism. He never waivers in the fact that his first duty is to the animal and reducing its sickness and suffering. He takes his job seriously all the while not taking himself too much so. If you are looking for James Herriot then prepare yourself, Dr. Trout shakes you up with a look at the hectic, non-stop current day vet practice in a large city, not one found in the 1930's Yorkshire Dales.

If you are an animal lover I highly recommend all three of his books.

Enjoy the read!

"Love is the Best Medicine" is mainly a book about two dogs who are patients of Dr. Nick Trout. A young Miniature Pinscher Cleo and an old abandoned cocker spaniel Helen cross paths in an unexpected way, yet they never met. Cleo's death, through the eyes his owner Sandi, taught Dr. Trout about the selfless love between a human and their animal. It was this revelation that caused Dr. Trout to operate on Helen with such conviction and faith enabling her to live longer than expected.

The book starts out by telling the story of each dog in alternating chapters - one chapter Helen, the next Cleo, the next Helen, and so on. The story is peppered with anthropomorphic descriptions (from the animals' point of view) that most "pet parents" will identify with.

In the later chapters, Dr. Trout briefly mentions some of his other patients--expertly writing their stories into the book like a master weaver. The intensity of the human-animal bond is eloquently expressed in this book and the generosity of the animal lovers featured in this story will make your heart swell.

Dr. Trout is a phenomenal writer. It was practically impossible to put this book down.

The title says it all! Like everyone who bought this book I love animals and was looking forward to a good read. The book has us at "hello" but soon after the hello I was formulating my excuse to make an exit. Really hate to say this but once I put the book down around the fourth chapter or so I never felt compelled to pick it up again. One main reason is the organization of the story line. We are introduced to a pet and it's owner in one chapter and next chapter is another owner and then next chapter reappears the previous pet and owner. I will admit to being somewhat attention deficit but I could not follow who was who and what was happening with them after awhile. If you love animal stories here are some alternate recommendations: pick up the All Creatures Great And Small series and My Dog Tulip.

I'm going to guess that exactly what makes this guy a great vet is what makes him a mediocre writer: he tries hard. Really hard. As a vet, he is willing to listen to his clients (even when they seem a little "out there," such as the lady who consults a pet psychic), he doesn't pretend to know it all, and he's open to new things.

But . . . he has tried TOO hard to be a good writer. When I first picked up the book, I enjoyed reading about Helen (although my preview copy had several typos, which threw the story out of sequence and revealed to readers that the dog was named Helen even before the owners picked her name). But in a very short time, all of the clever descriptions were simply TOO clever. The book just hits you over the head again and again with "hip" details. In the tub, Helen trembles "like a cell phone in vibrate mode." Fine. But then later in the tub, same page, she is "a canine version of a shrouded E.T." Too much. And it just doesn't stop. Even at the end of the book (and I have to say I gave up reading properly and skimmed to the ending), the author compares life to the shuffle feature on an iPod. Enough already! A little goes a long way.

The book also operates, confusingly, on "shuffle." Initially, just when you are getting into Helen's story, you switch to Cleo's. And not even Cleo's story, but the long, drawn-out story of Cleo's owner's childhood neglect. It's definitely sad, but again, I did not need all the details. She's a kid whose mom doesn't love her, so she bonds with animals instead. That's clear. We're all familiar with these cases. We get it. Quickly.

I really wanted to like this book. (And I kept waiting to read about the dog on the cover, but I guess he's just a model. WHY?) And I really do admire the vet, and the pet owners who open their hearts. I wish his daughter all the best. I hope the author develops a more straightforward style (or hires a ghost writer) in the future, because stories of animals and love should be told. But for now, from a readability point of view, I simply can't recommend this book to friends.

When I pick up a book by an author who doesn't write full time, I ask myself, "What will I learn from this person that I can't get from a similar book by a full time writer?" In the case of Love is the Best Medicine, I got a glimpse into the emotions a vet experiences in their dealings with life and death; with pets and the people who care for them. And that made this book a worthwhile read for me.

Seeing the cover, I wasn't expecting to be as touched as I was by this book. I think the publishers went for cute and probably misled some potential readers about what they'd find between the covers.

[Mild spoilers to follow.]

In telling the story of a dog he failed to save and one he did, Dr. Trout reflects on the meaning of life, death, personal responsibility, fate, and the nature of relationships.

When I've sought the help of a vet in healing or in ending suffering, I've wondered what toll it takes on her personally. In this book, Dr. Trout gives an honest and poignant description of just that.

If you're looking for charmingly written tales of animals, read the James Herriot books. If you'd like to read a touching and humble account of the responsibilities a vet faces, read Love is the Best Medicine.

I love love love dogs. I have the utmost respect for veterinarians. And I'm a mental health professional, too. So I expected this book would resonate with me on many levels. What I felt instead was that the stories about the people seemed forced, they never seemed to come alive for me. The stories were OK, but told in a way that which stopped me from emotionally connecting.

I have read lots and lots of books about people who love animals. I have a Listmania list of books in the animal-lover-memoir genre. This book places well above the middle in the ranks.

I found the writing more than capable, and the structure of the storytelling was good too. Dr. Trout is a very competent person and so compassionate it is hard to fault him. My criticism is a vague one...after having read both this book and "Tell Me Where It Hurts", his prior book, I started finding him to be rather cloying. It is kind of hard to articulate, which is why I said the criticism is vague. Both books are very well-executed but one of them is enough. After one book by Nick Trout, you start finding yourself rolling your eyes a little bit, or otherwise being very minorly annoyed by him.

I would highly highly recommend either this book or the other one, but not both.

I rarely do not finish an audio book. I did not finish this one. I got to the middle of the third CD and just could not handle it. The long and painful description of Cleo's surgical ordeal was more than I could take as a dog lover. I must also admit that after this, if I hadn't been an experienced dog owner, I would never have let my dog have any procedure that included anesthesia. This whole section was just excruciating. After listening to this part about Cleo, I knew I did not want to listen to Helen's ordeal.

This book had other problems as well. First the author goes into great detail about Cleo's owner's past with her mother and her psychological issues. I find this a bit contrived. I have taken my pets to the same vet for almost 30 years. I consider her my friend, and we have even had lunch together, I find it hard to believe that someone who took their pet to a vet once would convey such personal information, and even if the owner had, to be honest, I wanted to read a book about dogs, not about the owner's psychological issues.

Since I listened to the audio book, I would like to review it on that level as well. I listen to a lot of audio books, and sometimes the reader can make a book more interesting through his/her skill. This was certainly not the case. I love to listen to English accents, but even the accent did not help this reader. As he read, he sounded as if he were bored with what he was reading. There was little or no life to his rendition.

There are so many good dog books out there, I would suggest that you not waste your time with this one.

This book was OK, and the references to the dogs were good; however the author spent too much time talking about himself and not enough about the dogs. Psychoanalyzing the owner of one was weird.