Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life
A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life
A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life
Ebook350 pages5 hours

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

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

Read preview

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.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 3, 2010
ISBN9781608193042
Author

Steven Kotler

Steven Kotler is a New York Times bestselling author, an award-winning journalist, and the Executive Director of the Flow Research Collective. He is one of the world’s leading experts on human performance. He is the author of nine bestsellers (out of thirteen books total), including The Art of Impossible, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, Stealing Fire, The Rise of Superman, Bold and Abundance. His work has been nominated for two Pulitzer Prizes, translated into over 40 languages, and appeared in over 100 publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Atlantic Monthly, TIME and the Harvard Business Review. Steven is also the cohost of Flow Research Collective Radio, a top ten iTunes science podcast. Along with his wife, author Joy Nicholson, he is the cofounder of the Rancho de Chihuahua, a hospice and special needs dog sanctuary.   

Read more from Steven Kotler

Related to A Small Furry Prayer

Related ebooks

Dogs For You

View More

Related articles

Related categories

Reviews for A Small Furry Prayer

Rating: 3.880952380952381 out of 5 stars
4/5

42 ratings36 reviews

What did you think?

Tap to rate

Review must be at least 10 words

  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I requested this book assuming it would be a short, heartwarming story about animals which I always enjoy and am not particular about the specific details, similiar to those who avidly read romance after romance for the temporary thrill, not the plot. What I got was similar to taking a college course that was lifechanging, perhaps philosophy, and feeling like I learned and understood more about lhumans and their companions than I ever realized I could. This is not an easy read and once assimulated, it is evident that every moment engaged in ithe reading of it was pure gold. Kudos to everyone involved in it's publication! Get yourself a copy today and evolve and then share and discuss with others.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dog rescue is fascinating to me, and this book details the beginnings and day-to-day operation of a unique rescue facility started by the author and his wife in a remote area of New Mexico. With no cages or crates and a mission to accept only hospice and special needs cases, with an emphasis on chihuahuas, this home is unique among shelters. While some dogs become adoptable many are there for the long haul, and the size of the pack leads to many interesting discoveries for the author. Taken on as something of a midlife crisis, the shelter provides the author with a number of learning experiences and new questions to explore concerning the meaning of life. To that end, Kotler describes the changes that take place within him spiritually as he works with these outcasts and discovers their capabilities, one by one. Kotler is a journalist and researcher and offers many side trips into theories of dog psychology, ethics and even the nature of the dog soul. Sometimes I hoped for more about the dogs and less science, especially in the second half of the book, but overall it is a fascinating story of a very worthy effort by two dedicated and empathetic people, working hard to overcome insurmountable odds.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    As much philosophy, psychology, mysticism, and theory as dog rescue. Love it!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A little flaky at the beginning, and not always gracefully written, but turns out to be a thought-provoking meditation on how dogs help us reach more understanding of the meaning and value of living each day. Have bought this for others.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The book " A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life " gives little information on animal rescue, and many short essays on topics such as : cross species altruism, brain neurochemicals, Mayans, evolution, Darwin,toteism, philosophers and religion. By the time the author got onto an essay on Shamanism and shape-shifters, he had really lost my attention. I found that there was precious little information on actual animal rescue and far more on the above topics which loosely related back to animal rescue in some fashion. Steven Kotler and his wife Joy moved to New Mexico and began an animal rescue operation, but there is very little information about how they established the animal rescue, how they supported themselves financially or the emotions surrounding the entire operation . I felt at a distance from this author's story and never felt emotionally engaged to the rescue animals, the author nor his wife, whom he did not really write about at all.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Overall, I enjoyed A Small Furry Prayer immensely - it wasn't what I was expecting. It is a lot less memoir-y than I thought it would be. Kotler focuses a lot on his research about dogs - information that is fascinating, especially for dog owners. That said, there was not really a narrative arc or traditional storyline with a beginning, middle, and end. The book starts out quite narrative - we read about Steven and Joy's experiences starting a dog sanctuary, the dogs they help, and the challenges they face. Kotler flashes back to his early days with his original dog, Ahab, and how loving Ahab set him down his dog-saving life path. The narratives more or less stop after a particularly tough period of time in which Joy and Steven lose seven dogs in seven weeks, including their favorites. After that, the book turns much more philosophical and scientific and the anecdotes that Kotler shares serve to illustrate his deeper points.A Small Furry Prayer doesn't have a conclusive ending, it really could have gone on as long as Kotler still had insights and anecdotes to share, and I get the feeling that he nowhere near exhausted his reserve in this book. I would have liked a more definitive structure and order - it felt too scattershot.Kotler addresses sticky issues like the value of animal rescue as a cause (i.e. why save animals when so many people are suffering?), the "humanity" of animals, and the interconnectedness of all life. Still, the information is interesting and well-cited, the stories emotional, and the cause noble. A Small Furry Prayer is a must-read for dog lovers and animal rescuers, but be prepared for deep thinking and deep emotions.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The subtitle for this book sums it up perfectly; Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life. Half the book tells the story of how Kotler came to the vocation of dog rescue and his experiences, with the rest consisting of a free-flowing, philosophy "lite" of his thoughts and feelings. These begin with dogs, but move onto pretty much everything. I was very interested in Kotler's concrete experiences running a dog rescue in rural New Mexico and much less interested in his musings about the meaning of life. So, for me, half of this book was great.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    After receiving this book to review, I instantly thought maybe I should not be the one to do it. I have been in dog rescue for 14 years and am incredibly jaded about "dog" books (rescue, behavior, "Marley and Me," etc.) and just probably have read my share of bad ones. But wow, was I surprised at this one. I loved it. As the title suggests, it is not just about dog rescue, although that is the nucleus for the psychological and scientific studies and stories in various chapters. The thing I most enjoyed was Steven's kind, unique approach to helping some of the dogs with severe behavioral issues. Having had my share of those throughout the years, I was not very hopeful this would be anything good. I thought I had heard everything, but there were some great new things to be found here. I also thought the fresh historical approach to dogs and their relationships with humans (and amongst their packs) was amazing, e.g., altruism in dogs, creation of play and strategies, how dogs can read our facial expressions and movements and homosexuality in dogs! Although not always related to the rescue, the stories on rural Northern New Mexico are really interesting too. I whipped through this book and would recommend it to anyone interested in dog rescue or humane treatment of animals - if nothing else, to learn some new things about both. I did not give this five stars because at times it was a bit too "memoir-ish" or "All About Steve" and I really just wanted the dogs/dog science. But I suppose the meaning of life must be applied to the meaning for the human telling the story, to make it real.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The sub-title wasn’t fooling. Kotler and his wife are deeply involved in dog rescue. I was prepared to hear about the difficulties of moving to the country & a new lifestyle, of the struggles of finding homes for the dogs, of dogs being sick and of dogs dying, but I wasn’t looking for metaphysical speculation and “deep ecology”. It's a great glimpse at what people who live for dogs think about, but I wanted more dog stuff, even it was gritty, and less theory.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    It's not until the penultimate page of the text of this book that author Steven Kotler paraphrases the Buddhist truism, "All things, as they say, are connected ..." But you don't have to read very far in A Small Furry Prayer to know that he obviously subscribes to this theory. The book's cover shows a shadowed photo of a cowed-looking Chihuahua, an image that will certainly grab dog-lovers. It did me, and I'm not even that fond of that particular breed of dogs; just a bit too yappy for my taste. The thing is, this is not really 'just' a dog book. Maybe the subtitle should have tipped me off: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life. It's that 'meaning of life' stuff that really gets more attention than anything else here. Which is okay, I suppose; but I was hoping for a little more about the dogs, ya know? Kotler does tell his readers early on, I'll admit, that he is "inquisitive by nature and a journalist by trade." And his chops as a skilled investigative journalist are evident throughout the book. Early on too he makes the sad point that millions of dogs are killed in the U.S. every year. Since his girlfriend-later-wife, Joy Nicholson, is deeply committed to the altruistic avocation - life calling? - of animal rescue, mostly dogs, Kotler quite naturally wants to join the club, wants to understand. So he does, he says, what he's always done - "ludicrous amounts of research." And that's where the "everything is connected" stuff begins to display itself. Because it seems he is research crazy, and everything he reads up on he somehow manages to drag into his narrative about their run-down and cash-strapped animal rescue ranch in rural New Mexico. I mean this is so NOT just a book about dogs. This is more about trying to make sense out of being a human being and how we relate to the other creatures around us. I would have exepected to see references in this kind of a book to, say, Patricia McConnell, Jeffrey Moussaieff Mason, and okay, Cesar Millan and even Aldo Leopold - and there they are, along with countless other animal experts. But we also get (and this is only a very small part of a much longer list): St Francis, Carlos Castaneda, Aldo Leopold, Arthur C Clarke, William James, DesCartes, Emile Durkheim, Eric Fromm, Aldous Huxley, Dr DOLITTLE, for cripesakes! And on and on and on, with many, many endnotes to back it all up. This is simply research run amok, interspersed with cute pop psychology and endless cleverness, utilized in the interest of drawing all this widely disparate information together. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But to this reader it often became just too damn much, too over the top. So I will admit to plenty of skimming through literally dozens of pages that often seemed either a bit too esoteric or just plain irrelevant. But maybe that was just me. After all, I only got a C+ in Intro to Philosophy in college, so maybe a lot of this is just over my head. Or maybe it was NOT all so connected. All that said, I did find parts here and there that truly moved me, most notably Chapter 26, about bereavement and grief over the loss of a beloved pet. Been there. It's devastating. And Chapter 28, with its sad tales of dogs dying in spite of the attempts of Kotler and Nicholson to save them. I do not doubt for a moment that Kotler and his partner are dedicated dog lovers, and for that I salute him. But if you're looking for a simple 'dog book' to give you a 'warm fuzzy feeling,' this ain't the book for you. Try Marley and Me. It's less pretentious and a lot more entertaining.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I almost didn't request this book, as I'm not a fan of the Marley/Merle type books (the ones I have were all gifts). I'm glad I did. Kotler doesn't try to turn this into a warm and fuzzy, "look how amazing we are!" type of narrative, yet still manages to have his deep love of the dogs shine through on every page. As others have said, it's much more than a dog book. I'd suggest flipping through it, reading excerpts, etc. before purchasing it. I enjoyed the journalist style of writing, it's much easier to believe, rather than the constant feeling of things being grossly exaggerated in other dog narratives.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    As with the other ARCs I have reviewed please keep in mind that the page count and a few details I may mention may or may not be the same as the actual text. Now on to the review. I personally did not enjoy this book the way I had hoped. The author does have a talent for writing and his style is fluid, precise, and quick paced. However, I can't stand when people interrupt stories...especially if it's their own story. There were a lot of very interesting, cute, sad, and touching stories about the dogs that he and his wife fostered, but just as a story is starting and you're getting interested -pause- and the philosophy side story or research starts. After about a page or so of that you finally get back to the story but it's just not the same now that you are bogged down with a bunch of knowledge about a wide assortment of things. I suppose to be fair this book isn't purely about the dogs, it's about the lifestyle and how he grew into it. So the fact that he is thinking about how he and the dogs interact and get to know each other is a good thing, I just would have preferred if the information would have come before the actual story or after, or if being in the middle is the only perhaps if it was shorter in length. That was my major dislike. There were a few issues I had with the author and that was just a personality clash I suppose. There are a few editorial mistakes like for example the author's wife is named Joy, but there are a few times that he calls her Lila. It's not terrible but it's enough to make you backtrack to see who exactly he's talking about.Also I never want to go to Chimayo, New Mexico ever...it sounds terrible. The scenery sounds beautiful but the community sounds absolutely terrible. It may not be that way now but I'm definitely not going to put it on "to travel" list.I personally love the message that this gives though. Dog rescue is hard work and by no means pretty, but the rewards come in so many different ways. This book proves that there is a lot we can learn from animals, and there are somethings we may never understand. I can't say I recommend this because it was a bit of a tedious read but if you really enjoy books about animals and/or animal rescuing I'm sure you would enjoy this a lot.In compliance with FTC guidelines, I won this book through the First-reads program on Goodreads
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Steven Kotler is a big man who fell in love, opened a dog rescue facility in Colorado and learned to love little dogs. His accounts of showing love to lost and easily disposed of creatures is a new look at what to expect from human-dog interactions. This is a great look at psychology using our four footed friends as the medium for phrasing research.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I have been turning over and over again about how to write this review. To me, there were two books in one. One book is about the personal experiences of the couple with the dog rescue in northern Arizona and the other is related or not sometimes not of philosophy of religion and animal research.The part that I enjoyed was the telling of Joy, Steven Kotler’s almost saint like wife and his relationship to her and the dogs. Both of them had chronic illnesses. She has Lupus and he has Lyme disease. So both of them were limited physically in what they could do by their immunological diseases. Joy seemed to be driven in her desire to run a shelter operation. I didn’t know before reading that the many of the rescue dogs are often so feral that they could never be pets. They might seek the heat of a human’s body for warmth at night but if that human woke up and started to get out of bed, the dogs might bite them.The couple moved from Southern California to Chimayo, New Mexico soon after starting their rescue operation. Partly because the place they rented was going to be sold. I had some hunches about which dogs from shelter would be most adopted. I knew without saying that the puppies that are cute and cuddly and especially those that were already housebroken are the first to be adopted. I didn’t know that the color of the dog’s coat made a difference. When searching for a dog in the pound that would be considered a candidate, they looked for the shy, the handicapped, deaf, blind, drooling, chewy, dogs who were probably not housebroken.I learned that I probably would never be up to heartache and the disappointment of running a dog rescue operation. Joy loved the dogs so much, that it was love me and the dogs or we don’t get together. So since Steve loved her, he decided to accept the dogs and was surprised to find that he was profoundly grief stricken when they died, often of old age.Now, the part I didn’t like. This may be because of my educational background. I took philosophy and philosophy of religion course and a full year of animal behavior courses. I have also read a great deal about animal intelligence and behavior. That is why, when the author would discuss a study or an animal story, I felt irritated. When I decided to read this book, mainly because of the endearing cover of a dog looking so forlorn, I didn’t expect to review all or most of the material that I had already covered in college. I started skipping through the book whenever a study or a religion thought was discussed.If you are different from me and are interested in animal rescue operations, love dogs but haven’t read many animal studies than you will probably love this book and wonder at how many things we know about animals and dogs and familiar. But if you are already well schooled in this topic you might not learn very much from this book and will be disappointing.I received this book from the Library Thing program and that in no way influenced any part of my review.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a terrific book on dog-human connections contemplated in deep thoughtfulness, questioning, and research by the author. Building his case, Kolter includes evolutionary theories and scientific facts, as well as experimental and spiritual insights. Living, and having intimate relationships, with rescue dogs Steven Kolter exposes his emotions and discoveries of the many primary similarities between canines and humans and why they co-exist so well.This nonfiction narrative relates how Kolter became involved with dog rescue and how it impacted his life and beliefs. The rescue aspect of his story is primarily the context in which he garners emotional strength, spiritual insight, and connection to the natural world. This is not a comprehensive how-to or insider information on dog rescue. The title itself is somewhat misleading. This becomes a hard look at our sensitivities to animals/nature and trying to understand how it all fits together.We don't know all the answers yet, but Kolter makes an honest effort to understand his world. The philosophy, psychology, and biological evidence he has incorporated is interesting and informative to me. No topic was taboo in this book. The reader explores a myriad of issues from animals' use of hallucinogenic substances - to dog homosexuality - to mimicing human facial expressions and emotions. Kolter is a man who examines every aspect of being and belonging.A combination of humor, surprise, and deep examination of life this book may not appeal to everyone. I found it fascinating.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A SMALL FURRY PRAYER: DOG RESCUE AND THE MEANING OF LIFE by Steven Kotler is nonfiction. I prefer nonfiction to fiction when the nonfiction tells a story, as nonfiction often does not. In this case, A SMALL FURRY PRAYER does and doesn’t. It really is about what the subtitle says, dog rescue and the meaning of life.The book begins when Kotler is 40 and wants to do something different with the rest of his life. He falls in love with a dog rescuer, Joy. Love Joy, love the dogs. So dog rescue turns out to be both the subject of the book and the “something different” that Kotler does.Kotler moves from LA to New Mexico with Joy and her dogs. They live in a home with lots of property and lots of solitude.Joy’s pack of dogs becomes Kotler’s pack as well. And the pack keeps growing as the local humane society gets more unadoptable dogs, i.e., dogs who are sick, maybe dying, retarded, ugly, etc. But freelance writing assignments are much harder to come by in the out-of-the-way place they now live. So money is always an issue, and they make their choices based on that: $20 or $60 dog food? medical treatment for the dogs or euthanasia? rescue 13 or 10 dogs? and so on.Chapters of this book tell stories of their lives with their dogs, with Kotler’s thoughts on particular incidents. This leads to much philosophizing and a lot of research and examination. Some chapters are continuation of examination of issues from the previous chapter. But you could still say that A SMALL FURRY PRAYER does tell a story because the chapters are presented in chronological order.Yet, each chapter of the book could stand on its own. This is a device many writers of nonfiction use, and it is often successful. John Grogan used it in MARLEY & ME. He put together the newspaper columns he wrote about his family’s life with their dog, and look how well that book did.Although that type construction doesn’t entirely work with me, in both cases (both MARLEY & ME and A SMALL FURRY PRAYER) I liked almost every chapter. (In A SMALL FURRY PRAYER, I could have done without a whole chapter on dogs and sex.) But these books came across as what they are: many common but separate stories or (as in the case of A SMALL FURRY PRAYER) stories that lead to thoughtful examinations. The common thread running throughout A SMALL FURRY PRAYER: has Kotler chosen the right path for the rest of his life? So he examines the path he chose: dog rescue. The separate stories of dogs that Kotler and Joy rescue are touching, Igor’s story especially so. You’ll see.The book is not a single, detailed story, my preference. Just the same, I loved the individual stories, and Kotler’s examinations are excellent. His viewpoints are validated by much research that is so much like those of Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, I hoped that they knew each other. So I emailed Kotler to ask him. Unfortunately not, but I’m betting it will happen.As for my comparison of A SMALL FURRY PRAYER and MARLEY AND ME, it ends with their construction. In my opinion, honestly, A SMALL FURRY PRAYER far outweighs MARLEY AND ME. While I enjoyed MARLEY AND ME because it was often laugh-out-loud funny, I prefer stories that are thoughtful as well as humorous, as those in A SMALL FURRY PRAYER are.I received this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is not your ordinary dog book. This book is about dog rescue and the meaning of life. Steven meets Joy who is a woman devoted to dog rescue and with her 'Love me Love my dogs' rule they became a rescue team. I highly recommend reading this book.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Steven Kotler was feeling adrift when he fell in love with a woman who had dedicated her life to saving dogs that no one else wanted. When they were kicked out of their rental home in LA, they used their savings to buy a small farm in Chimayo, New Mexico, a rural area filled with bikers, convicts, drug addicts, shamans and a lot of abused dogs.The tale of their efforts to found a rescue in the badlands of NM is compelling, and Kotler's prose is vivid and honest, sometimes heartbreakingly so. Unfortunately, for me at least, there wasn't enough dog rescue and far too much meaning of life. As the book progresses, it reads more and more like a term paper. Kotner trots out every scrap of research and analysis on dog-human interaction, and if you've read a lot of dog books (and I have) it's stale stuff. By the last third of the book, I found myself skimming over his long discourses on the metaphysical aspects of dogs and screaming inwardly, "What about Bella? And Igor? And Bucket? And how are you paying for all of this?" He does return to the dogs in the end, but it's too late. This is a book in need of an editor. Preferably one who loves dogs and knows how to tell a story.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I received Steven Kotler’s book A Small Furry Prayer in the mail on the day we picked up our first foster dog, a chocolate and tan dachshund with an attitude. Good thing, then I didn’t take all the growling personally. I found that Steven’s book was something I needed to sift through. There are short anecdotes of his life at the dog rescue, Rancho De Chihuahua that he and his wife run in New Mexico, inter-dispersed with science and esoteric meanderings. I loved reading about the dogs and how this started—the process he went through emotionally to embrace the life his wife choose. The scientific studies he quotes from are interesting and I’ve even seen some of the documentaries on PBS and read some of the articles in National Geographic, but the conclusions he jumps to don’t always add up. The quality of the writing is great and at times I laughed and cried, so it is touching. There is a take-away, the breakthroughs he made hiking with the dogs; that imagery will stay with me inspiring longer exploratory walks with our dogs. I received this book through Librarything.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I received a copy of A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life as an Early Reviewer. I enjoy memoirs that revolve around animal lovers and the non-human companions Life puts in our paths. I know a few people who do rescue work and respect that it is a calling not many can (or should) undertake. Reading this book before bed, I struggled to stay awake. This story focuses more on the the author's interpretation of meaning of life than what I expected to find—rescuers and the animals they save. Small Furry Prayer went deeply into the existential and not nearly enough (for me) on the life of the author or his wife. I loved the photos, wished there were more. I wanted to know more about the individual dogs in their care and how the author and his wife managed to afford to do what they did for these many dogs. While I wanted to connect to this couple and their story, for wont of a good editing, I never did.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a memoir about the author's decision to open a dog rescue with his girlfriend/future wife . It's beautiful , funny at times and heartbreaking in others . The story has three parts alternating through it . There's the author's falling in love with and marrying his wife that convinced him to help her open the dog rescue , the author finding himself becoming emotionally attached to each rescue dog and then there's the part spent exploring the history of the "Man and Dog relationship" . So glad I won this book from LT's Early Reviewers ! If you love animal-centered memoirs then you will love this book !
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    When I started A Small Furry Prayer by Steven Kotler, I expected to read about the author's experiences running a dog rescue ... but it was really much more than that. The author does describe how he and his girlfriend (later his wife) moved to New Mexico and began a dog rescue ... complete with descriptions of the dogs' personalities, some daily routines, and the ever-heartbreaking losses. Each section, however, used the author's observations of the dogs as a jumping off point to explore another area ... religion, spirituality, human-animal bonding, dogs' ability to feel emotion, etc. Within each section, the chapters were really quite short and easy to skim if that particular subject didn't capture your attention. Overall, it was not what I expected, but I enjoyed it none the less.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A quick and interesting read, A Small Furry Prayer ends up being more about the search for the Meaning of Life via dog rescue than it is dog rescue. Kotler uses the experiences from the rescue to delve into numerous topics ranging from shamanism to dopamine, and while the asides can be very interesting, they at times get a little old. Being very interested in animal rescue myself, I would have loved to hear more about the dog rescue side and a little less about the midlife crisis/meaning of life side. Overall, though, A Small Furry Prayer is well worth the read.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I asked for this book to review, predisposed to like it, because I consider myself a "dog person" – that is each of the dogs I have owned has been a street stray or from a shelter. I was disappointed with the preface and first few chapters and had to force myself to continue reading. In fact the first eight chapters comprise Part I. The book consists of nine parts, and I'm glad I continued reading past the first part. Part 1 was about the author – his "back story" and his reasons for making the move from Los Angeles to creating a dog sanctuary in New Mexico. The rest of the book combined some stories of individual animals with a very wide range of mostly animal's rights issues. There is a chapter on the debate between the view that humans are custodians of the earth and the view that the earth is one ecological entity and humans are just one part, no more important to the whole than beetles. There are discussions of whether or not dogs feel empathy, whether dogs laugh, whether dogs are aware of their mortality. The author recounts many scientific studies, some of which I found too technical, but I can understand the necessity of citing these studies to show there is a scientific treatment and interest in these issues. The wide range of topics, and the rational discussions of each made this a very interesting and rewarding book to read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This book was not what I expected. I was expecting stories about the author's experience with dog rescue and the sad and funny things that can happen with rescued dogs. There is a little of that here - but there's so much more. Kotler uses each little snippet of a tale as a jumping off point to explain some of the science (and metaphysics) behind how and why dogs became domesticated in the first place, why we respond to each other as we do, why dog rescuers rescue, and other mysteries of the doggie world. Kotler manages to make this understandable to the layperson. So, while I didn't get the warm and fuzzy dog stories I was expecting, I did get an interesting read and many concepts to ponder.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    With a title like A Small Furry Prayer and a cover picture of a little dog with huge sad eyes I knew this book was for me. Steven Kotler and his beloved Joy move to a tiny town in Northern New Mexico in order to open a special needs dog rescue refuge. As soon as I read that the name of the sanctuary is Rancho de Chihuahua I knew it had to be in Chimayo, a very special place with an ancient history of powerful spirituality, the location of a Catholic Church, Santuario de Chimayo and shrine that has what is known as a place of healing dirt but was also considered a spiritually important area to early indigenous Tewa Indians as well as the Mexicans and Spaniards who followed them. The perfect place to shelter dogs! The history and research on the dog and human bond brings so much to this topic. I found myself reading sections to my family members. Now, that's a good book! I enjoyed the book immensely and will recommend it to others. Well done!Oh, and if you're ever in Chimayo treat yourself to a fabulous Northern New Mexico lunch with Sangria at Rancho de Chimayo on the tiered patio in the summer or near a kiva fireplace inside in the winter. Don't miss the Chimayo red chili.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I was thrilled when I was to recieve this book to read and review. I am into dog and cat adoption and believe it is the only way go. I give major kudos to Mr Kotler and his wife Joy for the dedication they have to these animals. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of how the author found meaning in his life thru finding the right person to share it with and their journey to Chimayo, NM. That story was wonderful and well written, exactly what I would want from this story. But I wish the book was call A Small Furry Prayer - Dog Rescue. I was quite bored with the ramblings about altruism, Darwin and Roughgarden anf animals ang psychedelics, etc. This for me greatly took away from a great story. Would I recommend this book? Maybe. Was there potential for a terrific read. Yes. Unfortunetly as a whole it missed the mark
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I enjoyed this book for many reasons, as it certainly made me think about humans and their relationship to dogs and other creatures. At first, I wondered why anyone would be crazy enough to devote their whole life to dog rescue, at huge personal expense, no remuneration, and lots of trouble and hours of sometimes very unpleasant work. The author attempts to answer that question, and along the way delves into a lot of the scientific research about our human understanding of animals and dogs in particular, as well as questions of altruism and spiritualism. The stories of small triumphs and heartbreak spread throughout the book are what kept me turning the pages. Dog rescue is not for the faint of heart, and brings you face to face with human evil and even just the small references to it really make me despair about the human race. Thankfully, there are also people like the author and his wife Joy who try to make a difference and combat the evil. Although I still think they have to be a bit crazy, I can now understand why they do it, for the miraculous and joyful difference they see in many of their dogs, and the spiritual connection they feel with another species.What I like about the book is that it contains a lot of humour, and the author tells it like it is, and does not romanticize his life, including a long period of depression and despair when a number of dogs died or had to be put down. The book is authentic and well worth reading. There is a good chance you will learn a lot as well.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    I requested this book from EarlyReviewers and wasn't that surprised when I 'won' it, since I've read and reviewed many animal books in the past. I was looking forward to reading it....and then it failed the 100 page test. (You know, where if you don't like a book after the first 100 pages, just give up on it because it's a waste of your time and there are another 200 books on the shelf, floor, etc. waiting to be read and there's a good chance some of them are better.)I did skim through the rest of the book and read parts here and there, but I'm wondering what the reviewers who found humor here were smoking (or drinking) because I was highly disappointed in the lack of humor. Usually tales of dogs involve a good deal of it, but I only found one instance where I snickered a little at the description of what the dogs were doing. I have no doubt that these animals are getting lots of affection and have a better 'rest of their life' than they otherwise would have, but I didn't feel a real connection between Kotler and the dogs. Even when he declares that he loves Chihuahuas, there is little bonding between him and the individual dogs. In fact, he keeps naming new dogs that he never introduces. I didn't get to know most of the dogs on any kind of level that would make me care about them - therefore, why do I want to read about them? Then again, the book isn't so much about the dogs as it is about Kotler anyway, which is OK, but not my thing. And the science stuff thrown in just makes it sound like a bunch of short National Geographic articles strung together in a book - usually not in any kind of way that made sense to me....not even an interesting stream of consciousness - just random and to me, incomprehensible.So, while it is not common for me, I didn't read the whole book. I'm sure some people will like this combination of scientific and philosophical and memoir, but there was too little dog love and cuteness and hilariousness in there for me. Others who do dog rescue might find it more enlightening, but I was just bored.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ironically, I almost didn’t request this book because I was afraid it would delve too deeply into the whole aspect of dog rescue. As it happens, there really wasn’t enough. I applaud Steven and his wife Joy (oddly, referred to as Lila several times but I assume that was just an editing issue as this was an arc) who, when evicted from their home in California, move to Chimayo, NM and set up a dog rescue called Rancho de Chihuahua. I never felt like I got to know his wife, who was the real driving force behind the sanctuary, or any of the named dogs who all came and went in a blur. I would have liked to have learned more about their selection procedure and maybe hear some success stories in the placement process.The author uses stories in the dog rescue as a jumping off place to discuss everything from crime and poverty in Chimayo to Thoreau to shape shifting and shamanism. Some discussions worked better than others did. Toward the end, I admit to have done some skimming.Dog lovers will find some items of interest and probably those readers who are themselves totally committed to dog rescue may especially like it. For dog emotion and behavior, a better author is Patricia McConnell. I do plan on making a small donation to their operation but the book itself just didn’t come together for me.

Book preview

A Small Furry Prayer - Steven Kotler

morning.

PART ONE

Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.

—Jack Kerouac

1

Not too long ago, I took all the money I had in the world and bought a postage stamp of a farm in Chimayo, New Mexico. It was an impulse buy. I didn’t know much about country living, had never entertained secret pastoral fantasies. One moment I was a money-grubbing bastard, the next a guy negotiating for a donkey. Sure, there was the recent conclusion that nothing in common remained between the life I had imagined and the one I was leading—but did farm animals solve this particular problem?

It wasn’t much of a problem. Just another existential crisis in the early spring of 2007, and they were in fashion that year. It was the season of nowhere to hide. The economy was lousy, the ice caps melting. There were water wars on the horizon and oil wars under way, and those bees kept dying. Global pandemic came back on the menu. We were freakishly short of food. And this, the experts said, was just the warm-up round. The term scientists have coined for our current planetary die-off is the Sixth Great Extinction. I couldn’t remember ever not feeling tired. All that seemed clear was that at some point we had butchered the job and begun to call up down and right left, and just about everybody I knew could no longer find their way home.

Like others, I had learned the necessary stagecraft. During my waking hours I was a competent enough act as far as such things were concerned: a journalist by trade; a taker of notes, meetings, and an acceptable level of nonprescription pharmaceuticals; a waterer of house plants; fully capable of handling most cutlery; able to recall Spencer Tracy’s advice on thesping—remember your lines and don’t walk into the furniture—during those times of need. As I turned forty that year, there had been plenty of times of need.

In four decades I’d managed to accumulate some hard facts, but little true wisdom. I can say for certain that the Fifth Great Extinction was the one that killed off the dinosaurs, but didn’t think to ask anyone a question about Chimayo before moving there. I was unaware that my new home sits in the heart of the Española Valley and that the Rio Grande Sun is the newspaper that serves that valley. I did not know that the Sun’s weekly police blotter had lately become something of a national amusement. Jay Leno liked the woman who smuggled heroin inside a burrito to her boyfriend in jail. National Public Radio liked the man in a white Dodge chasing people around with a sword and the guy wearing a blue sweater and blue pants talking to the robotic horse in front of the grocery store, and the one who challenged his entire family to a fight and was presently hitting his mother.

It had also escaped notice that Chimayo has one of the highest rates of drug addiction in the country and that a significant portion of the local population was arrested in September 1999 when Operation Tar Pit swept through town. Nor did I hear the August 18, 2005, NPR broadcast that included the commentary of local clean-living activist Dr. Fernando Bayardo, who pointed out that such abuse has been entrenched in this area for over fifty years. You have a grandmother shooting up with a grandchild. You have family members shooting up together. It’s not something the teenage son hides from other family members. How are you going to change those unhealthy lifestyles and habits and develop new norms?

I had no idea how to develop new norms. All that was certain was that my girlfriend and I had been thrown out of our house in Los Angeles with no other options beyond the just plain dumb. In our case, the just plain dumb was deciding to bet everything on a bunch of dogs and a pie-in-the-sky list of homesteading desires. The dogs we’ll get to in a moment. The desires were organized into a wish list of sorts, written the night after we’d learned we were being booted, in a state of not so quiet desperation. A number of the items on that list were critical. My girlfriend had lupus. I had Lyme. Together we were two tenors with multiple sclerosis shy of an autoimmune quartet. We needed long days of brilliant sunshine because we needed to walk. Few zoning restrictions and lots of space were also important because we had a bunch of animals and plans for more. Unfortunately, what we didn’t have was all that much money.

The only location in America that fit all our desires was Santa Fe, New Mexico, but Santa Fe was nearly as expensive as Los Angeles. Maybe an outlying community that had escaped the housing boom was the pipe dream. Oprah Winfrey had a ten-million-dollar mansion in the only outlying community we’d heard about, so maybe this was the crack-pipe dream. There were forty items on our wish list. We had the budget for ten. The thing about Chimayo—we got thirty-nine. I should have known there was a pretty good reason for this, but by the time that puzzle was solved, talking to a robotic horse in front of the grocery store made as much sense as anything else I could think up.

2

About six weeks before I bought the farm, I decided that life weighed too much. So I gave away three thousand books, six garbage bags of clothing, four bookcases, three chairs, three backpacks, two tables, two pairs of skis, two surfboards, two computers, an old skateboard, a torn tent, a packed filing cabinet, a small comic book collection, some entomological gear left over from the bug-collecting phase, a bit of pornography—two-thirds of everything by the end. I had decided to move in with my girlfriend. She lived in a very small house.

My girlfriend’s name is Joy. Her small house sat just south of the Santa Monica Mountains, just north of Hollywood, in the township of Los Feliz—two words that translate from Spanish to English as the happy. Nearby is the Griffith Park Observatory, the Greek Theater, and the three thousand other acres that collectively make up Griffith Park. The park was bequeathed to the city of Los Angeles in December 1896, a sort of Christmas present from the appropriately named Griffith J. Griffith. His gift came with only one condition: It must be made a place of recreation and rest for the masses, a resort for the rank and file, for the plain people. We were the plain people and—for a short while—we lived in the happy.

Our house was rented, cheap, possibly haunted, and measured out to exactly 666 square feet. It perched atop a steep cliff, surrounded by a dense thicket of tall trees. Inside, a small living room gave way to a smaller bedroom and on into a kitchen the size of a ship’s galley. Everywhere, the paint peeled and pipes broke. There were cracks in the walls, holes in the floor, and doors that wouldn’t quite shut. Even the stairs leading up that cliff were not much more than a makeshift ladder of rotting wood, but life at the top was quiet and calm and the living room was a wall of windows. We had fallen in love looking out those windows, looking at our view of the happy.

Mahatma Gandhi once said, There is more to life than increasing its speed, and while I agree completely, two weeks after Joy and I moved in together, we moved out together. There was no other choice. Our landlord had bought too many properties back when the getting was good. In person, he’d told us ours was the last he’d planned on developing. Two years at least—and a six-month warning before I give you the boot, was what he’d said. We had been going on faith here, as none of this was in writing. In writing was an already expired lease followed by a month-to-month contract. That contract gave us thirty days to vacate and no recourse. When we mentioned lawyers, he mentioned the ASPCA. That, as they say, was the end of that.

Our problems were more than a few. The first was simple economics. We were broke. Certainly I had the money to buy that house in New Mexico, but that was the entirety of my savings account, and we’d been living off that savings account for much of the past year. We were both writers. The magazine industry was in the tank, and the publishing industry wasn’t far behind. It was a silly time to try to make a living out of words, but it was a silly time in general. Anyway, our real problem was the dogs.

The reason we lived in a broken-down house atop a steep cliff was that that house came with an exceptionally large yard and exceptionally few neighbors and we needed both because there are seven animal shelters in Los Angeles and dozens more in surrounding communities. At capacity the bigger ones hold about two hundred animals, and they’re almost always at capacity. There’s only one way to make more space. Canines may be man’s best friend, but most of these shelters still have ninety percent kill rates. They euthanize more than a thousand dogs a month in the City of Angels, and Joy spent much of her time trying to even those odds.

Dog rescue involves plucking a dog off death row in the hopes of eventually finding the animal a home. Most of these animals arrive in pretty poor shape. Rehab takes months of hard work. It often takes thousands of dollars in medical care—much of which comes out of the rescuer’s pocket. Occasionally, after all that, some of these dogs end up too sick or too difficult to be adoptable. Dog rescuers call these lifers. In my late twenties, an old girlfriend awoke one morning to end our relationship. I want eight kids, you don’t want any, was her reasoning. While I couldn’t fault her logic, she’d long known of my antipathy toward children. It had taken her over a year to realize there was no changing my mind. Not much later, for advertising purposes, I printed up a T-shirt reading Dogs Not Kids. I still feel that way—but lifers add a whole other dimension to the equation.

Years back, Joy had started out rescuing English bull terriers. For those unfamiliar, these are squat white beasts created by some eighteenth-century madman intent on crossing a bulldog, a pit bull, and a Dalmatian. They were bred for bull baiting, a process that involved leaping at the underbelly of a bull, clamping jaws to testicles, and applying something like sixteen hundred pounds per square inch of pressure to said testicles. Eventually the bull fell down. Then the dogs released the balls and tore out the throat. Until it was outlawed in 1835, this is what passed for fun in Britain.

Afterward, bull terriers became fighting dogs, meaning they were still bred for aggression. Their albino coats are highly prized, but the inbreeding required for such coloration leaves them with compromised immune systems and limited social skills. They also have an extremely short intestinal tract, which leads to bad digestion and worse gas. The results are an aggressive, easily agitated, stubborn, single-minded fireplug of a fart machine so damn macho that the only other dogs Joy’s bull terrier wouldn’t attack on sight were Chihuahuas—thus she had five of them.

And there was also some kind of dachshund-beagle hybrid, and then my half-husky, half-Rottweiler got added into the mix. We totaled out at eight—and they were all lifers. This was a little tricky since Los Angeles’s canines-per-household law specifies three as the legal limit. Trying to find a landlord willing to bend this rule under the best of circumstances was difficult. Then the real estate market stalled and the rental market soared. The city’s occupancy rate stood at 96 percent. Under such conditions, finding an affordable apartment that took eight dogs was right up there with world peace and ample leg room in coach class on the list of things that weren’t going to happen anytime soon.

It was a Sunday when we found out our house was being sold. I came back from running errands to find Joy crying on the couch. She told me the landlord had dropped the hammer, and then told me she had made a decision. She was moving to Mexico, where life was cheap and they didn’t care how many dogs one owned. I had no desire to live in Mexico. I had no chance to revive my career in Mexico. This wasn’t, it is worth pointing out, her first choice. It was her last chance. She knew I couldn’t move to Mexico with her, but it had taken over two years of constant looking to find our small house and we didn’t have two years. We had less than a month—and almost no money. She couldn’t stand the thought of being a burden. You want a life in the city, a great career, and you’re not going to get that with me and my dogs.

All of which might be true. It was also true that I didn’t want those things anymore. What I wanted was to feel like something in this world mattered, even if it had been a long time since that had been the case. What was the case was that I’ve been downright silly for Joy ever since the day we met. I gave away a lot of stuff to move in with her, and truthfully, it all could have gone. Most days, my gal and her dogs were the only things around worth keeping. So no, none of us were going to Mexico, though all of us were going somewhere—that much for sure.

3

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons are nine words that T. S. Eliot once wrote. During the period of time I’m talking about I would often repeat these words to myself as some kind of talisman, meant to ward off … well, I was never quite sure. They were often stuck in my head when I was stuck in traffic, among the hundred-foot billboards, the thousand-dollar haircuts, the everybody with their shopping bags, the endless repetition of strip malls and strip clubs and suntans—this whole mad crush that was often Los Angeles. These words were my way of putting into perspective the feeling that had become much of my day. I was forty years old and no longer sure my life meant much of anything.

I had come into adulthood equipped with the essentially romantic delusion that life would get easier. It had not gotten easier, but had gotten something. I began making choices. I gave up cooking for thirty seconds in the microwave. I wrote books but stopped reading. I missed the days when the drugs did the work. I wasn’t unhappy so much as unsure. Just the constant sensation that whatever else might be true, this was definitely not what I’d ordered.

It was a time when I wasn’t alone in questioning the way I was living. Joy and I had been having philosophical differences. When being polite, we called these differences art versus altruism. We were not always polite. I believed in creativity, the act of making something from nothing, the high-minded transfer of inspiration, and other such claptrap. She felt the making of art was inherently selfish, and instead trumpeted the quiet generosity of laying it all on the line for every blessed creature. It doesn’t sound like much of a fight—but it was.

What seemed to be at stake was the best way to live in the world; what was really at stake was the best way to live together. Dog rescue is often emotionally exhausting and physically time-swallowing, while freelance writing is more of the same. Love doesn’t always hold up under those conditions. Joy’s had both ex-boyfriends and ex-husbands grow jealous of her dogs—which helps explain how they became exes—while I hadn’t managed a long-term relationship in decades.

Then there was our financial future. Neither of our causes came with a great paycheck, a downside I combated with the traditional metaphysics: do what you love and the rest will follow. But with both of us doing what we loved, would the rest really follow? And if one of us had to get a real job? Since her higher calling involved living creatures and mine involved putting words together in a straight line, common sense said I should be the one to make the sacrifice. Unfortunately, in my experience, common sense and higher callings are contradictions in terms.

It was into this debate that a dog named Damien arrived. He was not much over ten pounds, flea-bit and back broke. His entire life had been spent tied to a radiator, his home range a two-foot patch of hard-packed dirt, his collar a thin metal chain dug so deep into his flesh it required surgery to remove. There were plenty of available comforts lying around; Damien was past the point of available comforts. For his first three months with us, he stayed beneath the house, living inside an old truck tire, trying to kill anything that came close. And more and more, I was coming around to his perspective.

It was clearly time for a change. Joy’s side of the argument hinged on the crucial fact that besides doing animal rescue she was also a writer, with two books to her name and more success than had ever come my way. She had lived the art and preferred the altruism. Until I’d done the same, in her opinion, my opinion remained suspect.

Now wait just a minute, I tried to protest. I definitely have some experience with altruism.

Which is?

Like everybody else who backpacked through Asia after college, I had sex with a Peace Corps volunteer.

Uh-huh, she said, absolutely, that counts.

So I guess you could say that when I traded forty years of the mostly ordinary for a world made of dog, I was trying to prove her wrong. Or me right. Or something else entirely. Turns out it was something else entirely.

But what that something is—is a bit of a longer story.

4

Chimayo has always been a place people came to in times of confusion and despair, though sometimes their arrival was not entirely voluntary. Its earliest inhabitants were outlaws, sent to this backwater as punishment. The town began in 1680, established as a penal colony for the Spanish Empire, and has never completely escaped this past. It sits thirty miles north of Santa Fe, in the middle of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, on what is locally considered the high road to Taos. The high road also turns out to be something of an apt moniker, as Chimayo is further known for being the black tar heroin overdose capital of these United States and, well, for miracles.

Those overdoses occur at four times the national average. Those miracles occur at El Santuario, a small church said to be the Lourdes of America. Lourdes is the spot in southwestern France where the Virgin Mary appeared to St. Bernadette in 1858. In the years since, its waters have become the stuff of therapeutic wonder. While the Virgin has yet to appear in New Mexico, sometime around 1810, Don Bernardo Abeita saw a light bursting from a nearby hillside. The record is unclear about whether Abeita was a farmer working in his fields or a local friar performing penances, but we are certain that after digging in the spot where the glow emerged, he unearthed a peculiar crucifix: Nuestro Señor de Esquipulas, known colloquially as the Black Christ.

The Black Christ is a religious icon native to Guatemala. Not sure what it was doing in northern New Mexico, Abeita called in the local priest, Friar Sebastián Álvarez, who brought the cross nine miles down the road to an altar in a church in neighboring Santa Cruz. Overnight, the crucifix disappeared from the altar and reappeared in its original hole. The next day, Álvarez brought it back to Santa Cruz and back it went to Chimayo. When this happened a third time, folks decided to leave well enough alone. A small chapel was built near the hillside, the Black Christ installed on the altar.

Not soon after, the miraculous healings began. In a letter to the Episcopal See of Durango, dated November 16, 1813, Friar Álvarez told of people traveling hundreds of miles to to seek cures for their ailment. By 1816, these healings had became so numerous that they needed to replace the small shrine with a larger adobe mission. The mission has since become a National Historic Landmark, with pilgrims still showing up in droves. Every year, nearly three hundred thousand make the trek, some traveling on foot from as far away as Albuquerque. The crucifix remains on the chapel altar, though its curative abilities have recently been overshadowed by El Posito—the sacred sand pit.

The sand pit is the original hole from which the crucifix was unearthed, the dirt said to be the source of its power. While El Santuario is among the holiest Catholic sites in America, this is actually a bit of divine appropriation. When the Tewa Indians lived nearby, they called the place Tsimajopokwi, which technically means waters, but nominally means medicinal hot springs. The Tewa were slaughtered by the conquistadors, the hot springs long dried up. When it came to naming the spot, the Spanish dubbed it Chimayo, for good flaking stone, a reference to the local abundance of obsidian. Whatever the case, just off the main chapel, there’s a little alcove known as the healing room, littered with cast-off crutches and canes and thousands of notes of gratitude for the thaumaturgy performed by this holy mud.

It’s a long thirteen hours from California to New Mexico, and by the time I got there I was tired and sore and could have used some of that mud. Worse, I’d left LA in a hurry, throwing on whatever was around and jumping in my truck and only later realizing that whatever was around was perhaps not appropriate. Some dogs, they’ll piss on anything. By the time I’d noticed the stains the road had been hit and the hours logged and it was late evening and pouring rain. I had arrived in downtown Santa Fe, parked, and gone in search of coffee. I was crossing a gas station parking lot when a voice called out to me. I stopped and turned and found a homeless man sitting on the side of the curb. He was dirty and skinny and missing most teeth and both shoes, but took one look at me and said: Jesus—you got a place to sleep?

I had yet to choose a motel, so shook my head no.

Shelter’s two blocks up and one block left, he said, then looked me over again and added, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve got some clean pants you can have.

There was no need of pants; there was some need of booze. I bought us a six-pack at the gas station. With no dry spots to be found, we headed over to a nearby park to drink beer under the dead branches of an old tree. Along the way, he recounted a recent speed binge in Tijuana. He was Native American himself, apparently didn’t have much truck with Mexicans.

Fuck-fuckers, throat-slitting, piss-takers, was how he put it—whatever the hell that means. But tell you what, he continued, damn Mexicans finally figured out how to cook themselves some meth.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so we sat in silence for a while. Eventually he took another swig of beer and asked what I was doing in Santa Fe. I didn’t know what to say to that either: There are some demons we kill and some that kill us, and after a while these too become hard to distinguish? Instead, I settled on the truth.

I came for the dogs.

Sure as shit, he said, ain’t no shortage of those women in this town.

5

I bought the house two days later, but by the time the banks were dealt with and the papers signed and the long hours driven back to Los Angeles, we had less than two weeks to spare. Ten days to dismantle our lives and pack up our house and bid our farewells and nobody was getting much sleep, not even the dogs. The phone rang constantly. Whenever anyone asked, Joy said we were leaving California to go run a real rescue in New Mexico. A lot of people asked. Eventually I asked as well.

We’ve got eight dogs, two humans, and a shoe box for a house—but this isn’t a real rescue?

Fancy a road trip? she said.

This was about five days before we were supposed to leave and I didn’t really fancy a road trip, but what if I didn’t fancy a real rescue either? I had been to Chimayo already and knew that whatever we might find there, it was going to take a while to find it. Our new home had been chosen because of its distance from, not proximity to, civilization. I was about to be up close and personal with this woman and her dreams and not much else. I got dressed. I decided to see what a real rescue entailed.

There are a half dozen real rescues spread across the California’s Central Valley, with actress Tippi Hedren’s Shambala Preserve being

Enjoying the preview?
Page 1 of 1