Customer Reviews

Walking Ollie: Or, Winning the Love of a Difficult Dog

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This was yet another clueless person gets out of control dog book. None of it was new, and other than the dog being a rarer mix it wasn't even that interesting. It was slightly more interesting that it was in the UK, but that just led to the author relating useless dog superstitions not based on fact from a different country than the norm.

Anyone who habitually lets a saluki mix off the leash near roads without fences has a screw loose. Especially after the dog has shown that catching it is near impossible. Why would you keep letting it loose outside a fenced area? I had trouble believing anyone sensible would keep letting it loose.

I felt a little frustrated with this book. The author never found a way to help this poor creature. I kept waiting for Ollie to be happy... The end of the book was not really an end.

This is another dog rescue biography (I suppose the dog equivalent is caninography?) that has the novelty of being set in the UK and involving a particularly British combination - a saluki lurcher cross that one doesn't come across much in the U.S. Part of the book's interest, then, is that it discusses the whole getting a dog from a shelter and rehabilitating it in a Brit setting.

Truthfully, there's not a great deal to interest one other than that in the content, because, plotwise, not much happens. The author principally relates his trials and troubles acquiring and then walking his dog. Though the author claims to be a pro writer, the book rambles. It doesn't have much structure. As for the characterization, the dog remains something of an enigma even to the book's relatively uneventful conclusion.

The book has a few moments of entertainment and humor, but not many. A lot of it is taken up by this first time dog owner relating in a partially astounded, partially complaining tone about how his schedule has been disrupted by all this dog walking and pooper scooping. I suppose it's not a bad idea for a newbie owner to relate to the equally clueless the work involved in dog ownership.

There's somewhat proportionally less of the book relating various fitful attempts to turn around this fearful dog. Ollie the dog fears most men, including his new owner. So the story is supposed to be how the dog slowly - very slowly - moves past that and what the author did or didn't do to make it happen.

Part of my issue with the book was that the writing style mirrored the dogs equally unimpressive and fitful progress. And no particular sense went into getting the dog past his issues. It's pretty common in shelters to "office foster" a particularly shy dog, to get him used to people. But though the author works at home (a perfect setting for letting the dog learn to relax in your presence and look forward to frequently thrown treats) the dog stays on one floor, and the author on another, to which the owner periodically decends and invades into the dog's room to throw treats, with the result that the dog, instead of relaxing from a constant presence, gets even more nervy by the author popping in on him. And even in the 80s the Monks of New Skete talked about the advantages of having your dog sleep in your presense to get used to you and relax, and the benefits of binding or later, crate training. But none of this was done with Ollie. So he seems to make much slower progress than he might have. Keeping the dog with him, crating him at night (because the author relates his frustration that Ollie is not housetrained to last the night) would have perhaps brought Ollie around a lot quicker and eliminated at least half of the author's complaints about nighttime incontinence and that the dog grew no better or even more fearful of him during his pop in and throw treats schedule.

The rest of the complaints deal with his frustrations in "walking Ollie". I couldn't help but wince every time the dog (running off leash close to traffic) comes in near contact with a car, or the repetitive tales of how the owner just lets the dog run wild to rough house with other dogs (whether the canine targets appreciate it or not). The author's disparaging comments re those owners that responsibly keep their dogs on leashes contrast with his frustration and despair over his attempts to recollar his dog at the end of these walks or just when he's attempting to prevent it from harassing humans (such as when it disrupts a riverbank full of men attempting to hold a fishing competition) or pull it off some other dog that may not appreciate its rough play. The reader quickly gets that the dog is impossible to control off leash. That the author hasn't attempted to gain control prior to taking him off leash. We come to understand that the author (as well as the dogs victims) find Ollie's off leash behavior very frustrating. But what is difficult to understand is why the author keeps letting him loose. The author claims he wants the dog to run free and play with his kind. I have to admit I'm not one to much appreciate the idea of the impotent owner and the out of control dog repeatedly (daily or more often) being inflicted upon the neighborhood. How about exhausting the dog jogging with it for an hour, and then keeping it on a flexilead until it you meet up with a fellow dog owner whose dog appreciates being slammed? It just seems like a little control or attempt at trying such would have gone some toward relieving the idea that the owner was pretty pretty irresonsible and somewhat of a neighborhood nuisance to boot.

The author and his dog do find their way to eachother after predictable events unwind, and you are glad for them. They've been through enough to get there. And you're glad the author hung in there since he did find it all so frustrating. But both author and dog stumble around in such a clueless, anxious (both dog and human) and frustrating way to get to that reconcilation, that while you're glad of it, it seems like there would have been numerous ways to make it far more easier and far less stressful and dangerous for all involved. Of course, that would have eliminated half the content of the book.

It's not a bad book. It's just not a great one. I didn't find it very heart warming nor inspiring. It's not amusing. Nor does it have any good advice or tips for the novice with a similarly troubled dog. You finish it with a sort of a nod - another rescue story: clueless owner, difficult dog made more difficult by clueless owner. It was more interesting for me due to the Brit background and the fact that it was a lurcher dog. We also had a rescue lurcher, another very difficult dog, whom we picked up off the I-95 with a dislocated hip after it was thrown out of a car. Like ollie, it had also been abused based on it's temperament -- a fear biter. He lived to the ripe age of 17, but like Ollie's owner, the journey wasn't all peaches and cream. One good thing about all these dogographies is the truism that misery loves company, and drives book sales. People who work with difficult dogs like to read they're not in it alone. And we're already interested in reading out how someone else did it, to pick up any tips, or laugh, or commiserate. This book was a little thin in some departments.

In conclusion, rehabbing any difficult dog is no picnic. And while all such tales are essentially the same, they're also interesting to read for those who have interest in that activity, both for the circumstances and the dog portraints. For the general population, I'd gues there's not enough of a story here to make this worth the purchase.

This book's main flaw to me was that the author's complaints through 3/4 of the book tend to be wearing even though you acknowledge he is doing pretty well to hang in there with Ollie. The ending is a happy one, though. With that, and points for the novelty of the setting and dog, and seeing how these things may be handled across the pond, I'll give it a (generous) three stars.

As the director of a Greyhound adoption group, I'm always on the search for books that deal with Greyhounds or addressing adoption issues. The portrait on the cover of this book was clearly a Greyhound cross (Lurcher) so I eagerly snapped it up.

My enthusiasm ended there. This book rambles in an unstructured way without any real sense of progress. The author spends quite a bit of time being aggravated with other dog owners who object to his out of control dog allowed to run loose every day in a public park. He also spends alot of time explaining how angry it makes him that his dog won't come back when called.....but he keeps doing it day after day. He also spends precious LITTLE time saying positive things about why he loves his difficult dog.

I really wanted to read a book that make some progress. A book that talked about the precious gift of bonding with a dog with problems and how that was accomplished. I was hoping for a book that really talked about the differences in Lurchers from the English perspective. I WASN'T looking for a book that only spoke about how angry his dog made him, how stupid the other owners were for not wanting their dogs to be jumped by his, or complaints about how much time and energy Ollie took out of his life. There could have been a real story here, but the author's opinions on his right to inflict his dog on others entirely misses the way most dog owners feel about their responsibilities. At one point he gets so angry that he simply walks away and intends to leave the dog in the park! All I can say to that is WOW and shake my head.

Really not much positive in this book, I'm sorry to say. I certainly can't recommend it to our owners and won't be keeping it in our library.

This is a difficult read, although very interesting, as the author (Ollie's owner) kept demonstrating that he was not qualified to own a dog, let alone a very difficult dog. There were some very good insights (not usually intended as such!) into Ollie's behavior system.

This charming book is for dog lovers and people lovers. It's sensitive, funny and sweet. It's an honest look at how we humans make human assumptions and how our dogs show us time and again that they are dogs who have, for whatever reason, their own way of dealing with and getting through life. You'll enjoy this book and will probably learn something about yourself and your dog.

This is by far the worst dog book I have read. The author is a poor writer and while he obviously considers himself an intelligent and witty individual, he is neither. He allows his dog off leash to harass other dogs, complains about their owners, and is so self absorbed that it never occurs to him that he is the problem. The author makes the generalization that since his dog has issues, that "rescue dogs are always problematic and deranged in the head." Having had several rescue dogs of my own, a few that made regular visits to nursing homes and schools (with none of these issues), tells me that more likely this is a description best suited for the author.

I happen to be a dog lover and read many books concerning dogs and their owners difficulties and trying times to get their pet to respond. This one took the author quite some time but he finally got it right and never gave up on Ollie. Good for him. It takes a loving and caring person to take the time to work with a pet. Stephen Foster is that type of person. I applaud his efforts and in the end it paid off.

I kept waiting for the author to explain how he won the love of Ollie, but the book petered out after he exhaustively detailed his training trials and tribulations. I enjoyed his sense of humor but couldn't find anything constructive about training rescue dogs from this book.