A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life

Steven Kotler

Oct 2010 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Steven Kotler was forty years old, single, and facing an existential
crisis when he met Lila, a woman devoted to animal rescue. "Love me,
love my dogs" was her rule, and Steven took it to heart. Spurred to move
by a housing crisis in Los Angeles, Steven, Lila, and their eight
dogs-then ten, then twenty, and then they lost count-bought a
postage-stamp-size farm in Chimayo, New Mexico. A Small Furry Prayer chronicles their adventures at Rancho de Chihuahua, the sanctuary they created for their special needs pack.

While
dog rescue is one of the largest underground movements in America, it
is also one of the least understood. An insider look at the "cult and
culture" of dog rescue, A Small Furry Prayer weaves personal
experience, cultural investigation, and scientific inquiry into a
fast-paced, fun-filled narrative that explores what it means to devote
one's life to the furry and the four-legged. Along the way, Kotler combs
through every aspect of canine-human relations, from humans' long
history with dogs through brand-new research into the neuroscience of
canine companionship, in the end discovering why living in a world made
of dog may be the best way to uncover the truth about what it really
means to be human.

About the author

Steven Kotler is the author of the novel The Angle Quickest for Flight, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and the non-fiction West of Jesus, a 2006 PEN West finalist. His work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Wired, Discover, Popular Science, Details, Outside, National Geographic,
and elsewhere, and he writes "The Playing Field," a blog about the
science of sport for PsychologyToday.com. Kotler runs the Rancho de
Chihuahua dog sanctuary with his wife in New Mexico.