Good Questions

Prowling the stacks at Wonder Books, I stumbled across Ted Kerasote’s book Pukka‘s Promise: The Quest for Longer-Lived Dogs. The title is pretty bad (hint: don’t put your dog’s name in the title of a book, because no one cares about your dog), but the topic is of considerable interest to me, as it’s the kind of stuff I’ve been writing about for several decades. 

From the flap: 

In an adventure that echoes ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’ with a canine spin, Kerasote tackles all those subjects questioning our conventional wisdom and emerging with new vital information that will surprise even the most knowledgeable dog lovers. Can a purebred be as healthy as a mixed-breed? How many vaccines are too many? Should we rethink spaying and neutering? Is raw food really healthier than kibble, and should your dog be chewing more bones? Traveling the world and interviewing breeders veterinarians and leaders of the animal welfare movement, Kerasote pulls together the latest research to help us rethink the every day choices we make for our companions.

A quick flip through the book finds a lot of this is wind-up to a pitch. And that’s OK — I’m not lazy — but I find a lot of other people are lazy, and that hiding the gold in too much dirt means a lot of folks will walk past it and miss it. 

As for the title, it’s probably best to come at the reader about their concerns — avoiding canine expense and heartache — rather than hide that promise in cryptic alliteration. 

With that said, let’s see what gold can be panned out of this book.  No doubt there is gold — there are flecks right there in the flap.