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Lisa has been an author and journalist for thirty years and has published over fourty books. She's covered everything from sabbaticals to baby names to funeral food customs. The last few years, she's primarily focused on writing biographies, including one on Michelle Obama and Shel Silverstein. Her 2008 book, Barack Obama In his Own Words, hit the New York Times Best Seller List. Her biography, Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, was nominated for an Edgar. Lisa had also written two books about dogs--Dogs of War and most recently Dogs of Courage--which is how she and I found each other! She emailed me and said, "Hey, would you like to read Dogs of Courage" and I emailed back and said, "Heck yeah, and by the way, do you have a dog" and here we are!
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Ruby The Hearse |
Lisa has lived the vagabond life, traveling far and wide. For that reason, she is not, alas, owned by a dog. But she is the enthusiastic "Aunt Lisa" to a pack of various friends dogs. Let's meet this fascinating lady and her four-footed buds in today's Fido and Friend in Five!
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Sam & Cosmo |
When I'm home in Berkley, I walk dogs at the local shelter.
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Think Cosmo likes food? |
3. What's your all-time favorite dog story? May I humbly suggest my own? When researching The Dogs of Courage, there were so many inspiring stories about how dogs just innately know how to help humans, and they usually know better than the humans in their care. From the highly trained therapy, search-and-rescue and medical detection dogs, to the untrained mutts who will instictively jump in front of a train to save their humans, there's no shortage of great dog stories out there, with more being created every day, everywhere.
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Oh no! Not the quills! |
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Reagan |
5. In five words (or more) tell us what dogs mean to you: They remind me not to sweat the small stuff or the big stuff, for that matter. There's a great passage I include in Dogs of Courage that sums it all up: "Everybody has to deal with their own mortality. Dogs make us do that," said Larry Madrid, animal trainer for movies including Marley and Me. "They bring so much pleasure to your life, but you look back at the great dogs you've had, the great times, and realize, 'Geez, they only live about ten years.' So make the most of those years. Dogs do."
Thanks so much to Lisa Rogak for sending me her truly inspiring book Dogs of Courage! I'm serious when I say be sure to visit her website. It is really funny and amazing! If you don't laugh out loud when you read parts of it, there's something wrong...
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