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

November 1, 2010 Christian Science Monitor

Read the review online

At first glance, A Small Furry Prayer looks like yet another entry in the endless series of books about adorable canine scamps who heal marriages, comfort the sick, and bring joy to the world. There’s even a cute puppy on the cover with pleading eyes and a silent message: “I was told there would be doggy biscuits.”

Awash in doubt and heartache, it’s the original tale of one couple’s star-crossed love affair with dangerous, dying, and dumb dogs. It also chronicles the author’s quest through science and the sacred to understand the complex emotional ties between man and beast.

Back in 2007, an unfortunate and predictable series of events led author Steven Kotler and his girlfriend to pack up their eight dogs and leave Los Angeles for northern New Mexico. Their plan is to open a dog sanctuary in a part of the country that’s home to mountains, miracles, a high heroin overdose rate, and a severe lack of “normal people.”

Painfully introspective and damaged by a long illness, Kotler feels lost despite his having a destination: “I was forty years old and no longer sure my life meant much of anything.”

In New Mexico, life turns out to encompass a collection of canine characters. There’s Squirt, an indelicate female dachshund-pug and “brawler with a short fuse and a roamer with no common sense” who looks like “three bowling balls stuffed inside a tube sock.”

And Otis, the bull terrier who, Kotler says, “smashed a box into my chest, a stereo into my head, and a cactus onto my lap, then dove for his favorite spot, directly beneath my feet.” This happened while Kotler was driving around 75 m.p.h. somewhere outside Needles, Calif.

There’s even more: Fearless Chihuahuas. Male and female dogs that fall for the same gender (the love that dares not bark its name). And a sick white terrier named Chow who’s “abused, abandoned, blind, deaf, gloriously fat, comically ugly.... [Chow] disliked humans, disliked other dogs, bit all species equally and with little provocation.”

On top of figuring out how to make sure everybody gets along, the couple must manage canine health, housing, hunger, and waste management in their miniature dogtown. One challenge is the most vexing of all: teaching a damaged dog to love and be loved.

As the sanctuary grows, becoming both a hospice and a kind of rehab center, the inevitable happens. Dogs die or get rehabilitated and find new homes. Loss overwhelms Kotler, robbing him of the ability to function.

He has plenty of company: Many of us suffer mightily when our pets die, sometimes more than when we lose friends and relatives. When that happens, we often feel guilty. It’s just a dog, we tell ourselves, or just a cat or horse... even though it isn’t.

Why do we care so much about furry creatures on four legs? To find some answers, Kotler taps into decades of scientific research in pursuit of ways to understand the amazing human-canine bond.

While he relies too much on bone-dry excerpts from scientific studies, Kotler manages to find plenty of evidence to support the idea of a unique bond and, in some cases, an impenetrable divide.

Dogs are cute like babies – helpless, inquisitive, playful – and humans love cute: It draws us to take care of our own little ones. Dogs that aren’t so cute, including those whose only sin is black fur or ugliness or drooling issues, have much more trouble attracting potential owners at the pound and are more likely to be killed through euthanasia. “As it turns out, what makes a dog adoptable has very little to do with dogs; a great deal to do with humans.”

Kotler also looks at the science of giving. Why do we help animals? Why do we protect the sick, meek, and elderly? Why do we have empathy in the first place, and do animals like dogs have it, too?

While the rewards of helping others can be huge, the cost of caring can be even higher for ultrasensitive people like Kotler. As he acknowledges, his grief often overwhelms him.

One cold night his girlfriend-turned-wife finds him standing above the grave of an old schnauzer named Vinnie who often shivered when he was alive. Kotler, holding a blanket and a shovel, offers a heartbreaking explanation: “I was worried he was cold.”

For a moment, this man – dog’s best friend – is too overwhelmed by emotion to think of anything but hurt. But every reader will see the warmth within.

October 9, 2001 San Francisco Examiner

A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life by Steven Kotler sucks in animal lovers with a cute title and a humorous beginning about Mr. Kotler giving up his LA lifestyle and moving to Northern New Mexico with his girlfriend to start an animal shelter named Rancho de Chihuahua.

One might think moving to rural New Mexico (with lots of space to roam) would enable a shelter to take in lots of large dogs--that's not the case; here they rescue Chihuahuas (and a few other assorted breeds). But even those who are not Chihuahua fans will be won over by the stories of the small dogs' large character and staunch bravery. It's not really their fault they've been ridiculed and used as fashion acessories.

The writing is clever and self-deprecatory. It's what Steven Kotler does next that is cruel. Sort of.

He takes what should be a cute, clever book about life in the country, funny stories about coyotes, and anecdotes about tiny dogs, and around halfway through the book, he strays from the touching story and begins to include serious science about the history of man and dog.

By that time, it's too late to stop reading--the reader is hooked on both the story and Steven Kotler's writing. He includes information about how scientists now believe that the human-dog bond goes back much, much farther in time than previously thought. UCLA biologist Carles Vilá dates the beginning of the collaboration to the end of the last ice age--more than a hundred thousand years ago.

The reader will also learn about evolutionary adaptations (actually quite interesting), and about Aldo Leopold, who petitioned to create the first official wildness area in the United States, New Mexico's Gila WIlderness. Science, history, and a smattering of politics is interspersed with the continuing story of the shelter, its humans, the dogs and the occasional wildcat and coyote.

The footnotes at the back are perfect for those moments when the reader thinks, "Where did he get this from?" It's obvious that Steven Kotler is not only a very competent writer, he is quite an educated person. Dare I say brilliant?

Anyone who is interested in the human-animal connection, the bond that we feel with our dogs, will find this book fascinating. It's almost a guarantee that you will look at your dog in a totally different way.

Those who loved Jim Gorant's inspiring tale of the Michael Vick dogs, The Lost Dogs, will love this book. To learn more about the bonobos mentioned in A Small Furry Prayer, read Vanessa Wood's memoir, Bonobo Handshake.

June 28, 2010 Publishers Weekly
Starred Review

Steven Kotler, Bloomsbury, $25 (320p) ISBN 978-1-608-19002-7

Kotler (West of Jesus), owner of Rancho de Chihuahua, an organization that treats dogs with special needs, offers a joyous, almost spiritual chronicle of his journey from L.A.–based apartment dweller to owner of a dog sanctuary in New Mexico. He introduces readers to Leo, a destined-to-be-euthanized German shepherd who becomes his first rescue; Gidget, a dancing dog with mange and epilepsy; and Ahab, who appears to contemplate suicide while balanced on a three-story ledge. Kotler lays bare the challenges he and his wife face as their brood grows and his attachment to his pack grows: he suffers separation anxiety on an out-of-town trip and is devastated when placing rehabilitated dogs in loving homes. His nurturing is returned ten-fold when a rescue saves his life and, when he is taken ill, a dog vomits in his mouth to--as he believes--nourish him. Brimming with humor, gratitude, and grace, this is a remarkable story.

August 15, 2010 Library Journal
Starred Review

Dog rescuers remove dogs from shelters and care for them until they are ready for adoption, focusing on those most likely to be overlooked and sometimes ending up with them as "lifers." Kotler (West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief) became involved with dog rescue when he became involved with novelist Joy Nicholson, a committed rescuer; in a matter of weeks, they were compelled to move their dogs ("One dog is a pet, eight is a pack") from California to Chimayo, NM, a rough neighborhood but the only place they could afford that offered enough room. As he recounts their life in Chimayo (the pack at times approaches 50, all entertainingly delineated), Kotler seamlessly blends a history of Chimayo, a well-articulated understanding of how humans and dogs coevolved, and background on animal welfare efforts in this country with his witty, sharp-edged, and rewarding reflections on life. VERDICT: Kotler defiantly proclaims his love of Chihuahuas (he's hilarious), then shatters our hearts and ends by laying down a real ethical challenge. Highly recommended not only for dog lovers but for readers of memoir, biology, and anthropology and seekers generally.

, July 15, 2010 Kirkus

A journalist and lifelong dog lover attests to the joy and the emotional fallout behind animal-rescue work.

In the poignant preface, Kotler (West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief, 2006, etc.) movingly describes his psychologically exhaustion after the death of seven dogs in as many weeks at his New Mexico canine sanctuary, Rancho de Chihuahua. The altruistic author, who has battled Lyme disease, recounts his many years of selflessly caring for special-needs dogs (“the very old, the very sick, the really retarded”) with his wife, Joy, a fiercely devoted dog lover who spearheaded the effort. Kotler backtracks to early 2007 when he and Joy (then his girlfriend)—both writers, both broke—were unceremoniously booted out of their tiny Los Angeles home and immediately drove to Chimayo, N.M. Tucked in a dusty valley north of Santa Fe, Chimayo has a 60 percent poverty rate and is a regular target for federal drug raids. The region is also “the black tar heroin overdose capital” of America, a religious hotbed of miracle healings and supreme outlaw territory for “bikers and bandits and beatniks.” Amid isolation, uncertainty and overcrowding, it became home for Kotler, his wife and their amassed pack of rescues. Kotler lovingly describes pups like Gidget, rescued at barely two pounds; Ahab, formerly abused and harboring separation anxiety; Squirt, an obese “dachshund-pug hybrid”; and Salty, a “shell-shocked” three-pound Chihuahua with heartworm. Then there was Leo, a mangy pit bull who became the author’s first rescue in New Mexico, was euthanized before he could become adopted. In the strongest scenes, the book drives home the agony of pet loss. Kotler offers a touching account of Chihuahua adventures alongside interesting blurbs on the history of pet ownership, canine ethology, the semantics of the dog-adoption process, homosexuality in nature and the intricate science behind canine domestication.

A heartfelt example of humanitarianism at work.

September 1, 2010 Booklist

Kotler is a journalist who dove into the world of dog rescue to impress his love interest, now his wife. He did not foresee adopting the least appealing, most troublesome dogs from shelters and living intimately with them until they either were rehabilitated and adopted by others or died in his lap. According to this part memoir and part philosophical study of the dog-human relationship, many of them died on the small farm that he and his wife bought in crime-ridden Chimayo, New Mexico, leaving him very depressed. From the heart-wrenching work, however, he began to find purpose and see how many canine experts have misunderstood dog behavior. Reflecting on the writings of mystics, philosophers, and animal scientists as varied as St. Francis, René Descartes, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Elizabeth Hess, Kotler elevates this tale about saving dogs to a story about human stewardship of life. Rough language and frank descriptions of sexuality may offend more sensitive readers. Full of well-told stories, Kotler’s book will please many animal advocates.