A Small Furry Hope

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-sized farm in Chimayo, New Mexico. chronicles their adventures at Rancho de Chihuahua, the sanctuary they created for their pack with special needs: the very old, the very sick, and, as Kotler says, the really retarded. An insider look at the culture of dog rescue, weaves personal experience, and scientific inquiry into a fast-paced,fun-filled narrative that explores what it means to devote one's lifeto the furry and the four-legged. Along the way, Kotler combs throughevery aspect of canine-human relations, from long human history withdogs to brand new research into the neuroscience of caninecompanionship, in the end discovering why living in a world made of dogmay be the best way to uncover the truth about what it really means tobe human.