Book description
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. A Small Furry Prayer
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, A Small Furry Prayer
weaves personal experience, 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 long human history with
dogs to 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.
Steven Kotler is the author of the novel The Angle Quickest for
Flight, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and West of Jesus, a 2006
PEN West finalist. His work has appeared in the GQ, Wired, New York
Times Magazine, National Geographic and elsewhere, and he writes The
Playing Field,
a blog about the science of sport for PsychologyToday. com. Kotler runs
the Rancho de Chihuahua dog sanctuary with his wife in rural New Mexico.
