Review: A Healer in Every Home: Dog & Cat Edition

If you buy one book on animal health this season, let it be A Healer in Every Home:  Dog and Cat Edition.  You won't regret it.

This little volume on the wonders of homeopathy and natural remedies will open doors and possibilities to help you not only preserve the health of your animals, but to treat them safely and effectively when veterinary help isn't immediately available.  From their perspectives as a certified classical homeopath, holistic veterinarian, and shelter director, authors Begabati Lennihan, Dr. Margo Roman, and Shirley Moore have packed A Healer in Every Home with practical tips to help you manage dozens of common crises without resorting to drugs or despair.

I was midway through the book when my recently adopted dog, the rascally cocker spaniel, Bobby, got into a bag of cat food and unbeknownst to me, apparently ate about half of it.  Without going into too many graphic details, I'll just say that torrents of vomit and diarrhea ensued, and the over-the-counter treatments and probiotics I was administering seemed woefully inadequate to stem the tide.

But then I happened upon the section of the book that discusses what the remedy Arsenicum can do, referencing its ability to quell diarrhea.  As it happened, I'd gotten a basic homeopathy kit from Dr. Roman a few years ago, and fortunately for me and for Bobby, it contained a vial of Arsenicum pellets.  I mixed four of them in some spring water and gave the solution to Bobby, in two doses. As if by magic, the diarrhea disappeared and Bobby's gastrointestinal tract returned to a quiet, normal state with no further incidents.  It made me a believer.

And chances are, you will be, too.  Do you have a dog with itchy skin that nothing seems to soothe? The authors recommend the remedy Sulphur, at the 6c (low potency) dose.  For kennel cough, Save A Dog founder Shirley Moore uses grapefruit seed extract, which also prevents and cures giardia.  When her shelter dogs are whimpering from the loss of their former people, Shirley gives them a dose of the remedy Ignatia, with good results.  For puppies and kittens who are taken away from their mothers too soon, Pulsatilla (30c) is the remedy to try.

What makes this book so valuable is that it doesn't get overly bogged down in theory, but consistently presents actual case studies of real animals who were in physical or emotional pain, but who were then helped by homeopathics, supplements, and/or complementary therapies.  My only complaint is that A Healer in Every Home: Dog and Cat Edition doesn't have an index.  But that's just a small quibble. I'll say unequivocally that if you share your life with animals, it belongs on your bookshelf.

***

A Healer in Every Home: Dog and Cat Edition co-author Shirley Moore will be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Conference on Complementary Animal Healing in November.  Her presentation, "Using Homeopathy to Heal Your Dog's Body and Spirit" will be on Sunday, November 11th.

Review: Reiki for Dogs

When one of our animals is hurting, be it due to a physical ailment or emotional pain, we want to help.  We want to heal.  We desperately want to do something to ease the distress.

In Kathleen Prasad's wonderfully insightful book, Reiki for Dogs:  Using Spiritual Energy to Heal and Vitalize Man's Best Friend, we are humbled to discover that in truth, though we can offer the gift of spiritual energy to our dogs, it is up to them to accept it. And hardest of all, perhaps, is to set aside our own egos, and honor each dog's decision to participate in healing, or not, even though we may anxiously wish to fix or cure his problem.  It's not up to us; it's up to him.

That can be a difficult message for us humans, who are so used to being in control.  When it comes to Reiki, or other forms of spiritual energy that can flow through us, we can best serve our dogs by allowing what will be, to be.  But that doesn't mean that we are powerless to help an animal in his hour of need, whether that is to support him through a health crisis, release fears from former trauma or abuse, relieve sadness and depression, or be fully present with him in the days or months or moments before his last breath.  If we know how to work with Reiki, we can be a conduit for this universal energy to flow to our animals where it's needed, creating a perfect sense of balance and peace and harmony.

But as Kathleen explains, Reiki "is not something you give to someone else."  Rather:

    "Those of us who use the system of Reiki are called 'practitioners,' not 'healers,' since we do not manipulate the energy or healing of others.  Through our compassionate intention, we simply open more deeply to the universal flow of energy, creating an 'energetic space of healing,' and in so doing, facilitate the healing process of others.  Reiki can do no harm and is supportive of all other healing modalities and therapies, both allopathic and holistic."

While Reiki practitioners who work with people usually do so by putting their hands in prescribed positions on their client's body, those techniques may not always be effective or appropriate with dogs.  After offering thousands of treatments to dogs and other animals over a period of many years, Kathleen has learned that they may not always welcome such direct, hands-on contact, and may even shun it by literally walking away.

Dogs, in particular, "are more 'tuned in' to the energetic realm," she says, and are so sensitive that they may find hands-on Reiki to be overpowering.  Her advice to Reiki practitioners who want to work with dogs is to be quiet, calm, and nonthreatening.  "It's our job," Kathleen explains, "to hold a space of lightness and peace in our minds.  In this space, the dog is more likely to relax and open to an energetic connection."

Reiki for Dogs is about much more than Reiki.  Based on her own experiences, Kathleen writes movingly about how we can open our hearts and minds to connect with our dogs on a level we may never have imagined.  She offers a series of meditations and exercises to enhance our ability to do so, and to release our attachment to a particular outcome.  If we can learn to do that, Kathleen says, "we also find it easier to be open to the possibility that our dogs may be helping us just as much as we are helping them."

###

Animal Reiki expert Kathleen Prasad is making a rare visit from California to the Boston area to be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Conference on Complementary Animal Healing in November.

Review: Going Home: Finding Peace When Pets Die

If ever there was a book that deals with the subject of animal death in an unsentimental way, Going Home:  Finding Peace When Pets Die is it.

That's not to say that author Jon Katz doesn't care about the animals he has had to euthanize:  he does, deeply.  But unlike so many preachy books on this subject, Katz writes with dispassion, clarity, and even wisdom.  Though he agonized over his decision to end the life of his iconic dog, Orson, Katz was completely unprepared for the way the border collie's death would subsequently affect him:

"I did not want to be one of those silly people who lost themselves in the lives of their dogs and cats.  I didn't want people to see how I felt.  I told myself that Orson was just a dog, an animal.  It wasn't like he was human.  Yet my grief could hardly have been worse.  I admitted to myself that I had lost members of my family for whom I had not felt that much sorrow.  It was a shocking thing to consider."

I've long admired Katz's writings about the wonderful dogs with whom he shares his days at Bedlam Farm, but have mistrusted him since he first wrote about sending an adopted steer, Elvis, to slaughter.  And to be honest, those feelings rose up anew while I was reading Going Home, in which Katz recounts Elvis's sad fate yet again.

Katz freely admits that he "adopted Elvis, a three-thousand-pound Swiss steer, to spare him from the slaughterhouse."  In spite of having made that commitment, Katz started to feel "uneasy" about the gentle giant when he had to change his own routine to accommodate Elvis's.  though Katz says, "Killing Elvis was not the ending I wanted," he rationalized it by finding a slaughterhouse that "used sedatives so that the animals did not feel pain."  Katz dispatched Elvis in a neighboring farmer's trailer, feeding him "one last chocolate donut from Dunkin' Donuts, his favorite treat," perhaps as a way of assuaging his guilt, perhaps not.

I couldn't help but compare the image of Elvis being led away to his bloody demise with the deathbed scene of the steer, Samson, which was so lovingly described by Kathy Stevens in Where the Blind Horse Sings.  When it was his time to go, Samson wasn't sent away to face a brutal ending:  he quietly fell into unconsciousness at the farm where he had lived out his life in peace and dignity.

If the chapter on Elvis is Going Home's worst, the section on the way in which children can be helped to understand and mourn the death of a beloved pet is one of the best.  Katz says that we should respect children enough to tell them the truth about what is happening to their dog or cat, and be given the opportunity to say good-bye when the time comes.  I agree.  But so often, it is our own discomfort with the details of death that makes us fumble:  we simply don't know what to say, or do.  Katz counsels:

"For families dealing with the death of a pet, it's important for parents to share the experience of grief with their kids, rather than ignore it or simply wait for it to pass.  Acknowledging loss is important.  Children's grief ought not to be rushed or diminished any more than the pain adults feel when their animals die."

In the end, Going Home:  Finding Peace When Pets Die is a good read, even if you don't agree with Katz's life-and-death decisions and the way in which he's rationalized them.  The man has grieved greatly for his lost creature companions, and in that, we're all united.

Review: The New Holistic Way for Dogs & Cats, by Paul McCutcheon, DVM

Dr. Paul McCutcheon sees things differently. When a client makes an appointment for him to treat a dog because the dog is compulsively licking and chewing his skin, for example, the Ontario-based veterinarian doesn't immediately reach for a shot of prednisone. Instead, he starts asking questions.

After more than 35 years as a holistic small animal practitioner, his focus is to identify the early signs of "unwellness" before they explode into full-blown disease. And, as he explains in his important book, The New Holistic Way for Dogs & Cats: The Stress-Health Connection, "there are important differences between the way mainstream medicine and the holistic way attempt to find out what's wrong when a pet is not well."

Rather than rushing to eradicate the symptoms of an animal's illness, Dr. McCutcheon becomes a detective, seeking to identify what external forces may have tipped the balance in an animal's equilibrium and garbled the energy flowing through his "living terrain," compromising his immune system in the process. In this respect, he differs sharply from conventional veterinarians who reach for a quick fix--that shot of prednisone--to quell an animal's pain and discomfort, without worrying too much about how a steroid injection may simply further impair the animal's ability to heal.

In a life devoted to animal healing, Dr. McCutcheon has emphasized the power of prevention, and it's here that he empowers animal caretakers by helping us to become mindful of the insidious and often unrecognized sources of stress that affect our animals in ways we never intended or imagined. In Dr. McCutcheon's view, "stress is the sole cause of everything that happens to our pets' health."

It's when stress becomes chronic and unrelenting, and morphs into distress--from the high-pitched noise that never stops, the shock collar, the processed foods, the annual vaccinations, or the exposure to toxic household or lawn chemicals--that problems can ensue:

"Because it is prolonged and persistent, chronic stress can wear a pet down over time. Its effects manifest differently in each individual. One animal may show it through a behavioral issue; another, through a gastrointestinal disturbance; and a third, through unexplained weight loss. It may also produce problems with organs or glands, such as heart disease or diabetes. . .

Chronic stress can also compromise a pet's health indirectly. For example, she may become more susceptible to infections, and eventually to degenerative conditions such as cancer or allergies."

Dr. McCutcheon challenges his clients, and his readers, to become their animals' stress monitors and to ask themselves how their own habits and lifestyle choices may be putting their animals' health at risk. He urges us to watch for subtle signs of unwellness--such as changes in our animals' behavior, appearance, energy level, habits, appetite, weight, and even smell--and regard them as early warning signals that something may be wrong.

The New Holistic Way for Dogs & Cats offers a refreshing--and some would say, even radical--approach to protecting, preserving, and enhancing our animals' health. For those whose efforts to "cure" their animals from illness or chronic conditions have dead-ended, it offers options. And for those whose animals are facing daunting diagnoses, it offers hope. I highly recommend it.

Review: Am I Boring My Dog?, by Edie Jarolim

Am I Boring My Dog? The question that Edie Jarolim asks is a good one, actually. We're so busy working and running around and doing what needs to be done that we don't spend enough time with our animals. For many hours each day, they are left to fend for themselves, often by themselves. And the time we do manage to spend with them tends to be devoted to the "must-do" activities, such as walking and feeding and grooming, rather than to more pleasureable--and even frivolous--pursuits. Are we really doing enough to keep them happy?

Ms. Jarolim answers that question, and 99 others, in a book that brilliantly spoon-feeds serious information in the guise of light-hearted fun. Her adorable terrier, Frankie, is her steadfast guide and fact checker, and the raison d'etre for this compilation.

When it comes to preventing boredom, for instance, the author has lots of creative suggestions, including audio-visual stimulation for stay-at-home-dogs, in the form of DVDs such as Bradley Joseph's While You Are Gone, featuring deer, ducks, geese, and wolves. But be sure to read the footnotes, in which Ms. Jarolim adds, "According to Wikipedia, performing with Yanni is one of Bradley Joseph's claims to fame. If you and/or your dog are allergic to New Age music, this may be irrelevant."

For more active canines, Edie offers a list of "organized activities," such as Canine ("Musical") Freestyle, and quips, "If Frankie was more coordinated, this is the competition I'd most want to try." But then she admits, "I can't afford to pay off everyone who knows the truth: Frankie has an adorable pranching gait, like a tiny Lippizzaner stallion, while I'm the big ol' klutz."

I like this woman's style.

Talk with Edie Jarolim, Author of Am I Boring My Dog? during March 31st Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Edie Jarolim, who will discuss her recent book, Am I Boring My Dog? and her blog, Will My Dog Hate Me?, on Wednesday, March 31st at 9:00pm (EDT).

Edie Jarolim is a seasoned writer, having authored three travel guides and numerous travel articles.  She holds a Ph.D. in English literature from New York University, but she was admittedly clueless about dogs until she adopted an adorable terrier mix named "Frankie," who inspired her to learn everything she could.  She has shared her new passion for all things canine in her book, Am I Boring My Dog? and in her blog, Will My Dog Hate Me?

As a relative newcomer to the world of dogs, Edie Jarolim brings a refreshing perspective to the topic.  She is an intrepid and tireless researcher, and even though her approach is often humorous, she also tackles serious subjects, such as aging and tuahanasia, with compassion and sensitivity, and always from the point of view of someone who loves dogs and wants the best for them.

If you'd like to have an opportunity to chat with Edie Jarolim about your own dog, you can join the "Conversations with Animal Authors" call by dialing 712-432-0180 and entering PIN #1063739 at 9:00pm (EDT) on Wednesday, March 31st.  Long-distance charges may apply.  If you can't make the call but want to hear the interview, a recording of the call will be archived here within a few days after the event.

Talk with Bethanne Elion, author of Memoirs of the Bathtub Psychic, during November 30th Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Intuitive Bethanne Elion, who will discuss her recently published book, Memoirs of the Bathtub Psychic: The True Story of a Clairvoyant and Her Dogs, on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 8:00pm (EDT).  The call is free and all are invited to participate.

Bethanne Elion has been deeply involved in animal communication and holistic healing for many years.  She works as a nutrition consultant for private clients and for Volhard Nutrition, makers of natural diet and other whole health balancing products for dogs.  Bethanne has lived in Vermont since 1999, sharing her life with her beloved Newfoundlands, her Yellow Lab, and many feline friends.  Memoirs of the Bathtub Psychic is her first book.

As a truly gifted animal intuitive with an indepth knowledge of homeopathy and nutrition, Bethanne brings an important and often unconventional perspective to the subject of how we can best care for our creature companions.  Whether you're an animal lover, a would-be animal communicator, or just interested in learning how to protect and enhance your dog's health and longevity, you won't want to miss this opportunity to talk with her. 

You can participate in this month's "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference by dialing 616-347-8100 and entering PIN #1063739.  Long-distance charges may apply.  If you can't join us live, a recording of the interview will be posted here within a few days after the event.

Review: Energy Healing for Dogs, by Nicole Wilde

Nicole Wilde wants to empower you, by helping you to discover the energy flowing through your own hands. It's not magic, but many of us may feel intimidated at the idea that we can actually send energy to another being--human or animal--falsely believing that the ability to do so is owned by a privileged few natural-born healers.

In Energy Healing for Dogs: Using Hands-On Healing to Improve Canine Health and Behavior, Nicole deftly and clearly demonstrates that we are all blessed with the ability to sense, clear, and affect another's energy field, simply by tapping into time-tested techniques that are easily accessible to anyone who wants to learn them. And in spite of the fact that the title of her book suggests that you have to be touching a dog in order for it to work, Nicole explains that you can send energy across a room or even across a continent, to help dogs who are out of sync with their emotions, their bodies, their companions, or their surroundings:


"When a dog experiences energetic blockages or imbalances, he may become
stressed, anxious, depressed, irritable, or even fearful or aggressive. . .Although
energy healing is not a substitute for training or medical care, it can serve as an
excellent adjunct. When a being achieves a state of homeostasis--balance--the
result is better health, a sense of well-being, and better behavior. That applies
to both dogs and people. When we are balanced energetically, we feel healthy,
happy, and content, and are therefore likely to interact in positive ways with
those around us."

All living beings are made up of energy, and are surrounded by an electromagnetic field--sometimes called an aura--which vibrates at a certain frequency. When we--or our animals--are sick, or frightened, or angry, our energy field can contract, or mutate, or become murky, and that's when problems can ensue. So when we adopt a shelter dog who has been displaced from the only family it ever knew, and then been caged and bombarded by the sounds and smells of other fearful, barking dogs, it's no wonder that he may display behavioral problems. Until his energy field has been cleared and calmed, he may come across as sullen or unpredictable or just downright depressed.

For anyone who has faced these situations, Nicole's book is a godsend. She shows us how we can affect our dogs' health and happiness in ways we may never have imagined possible. She coaches would-be canine healers to let go of their expectations, hold an intention of the highest good for their dogs, and then to just let energy flow. We don't have to push it or pull it or make it go. We just have to let it happen.

There are terrific chapters on clearing a dog's energy field, using a technique similar to one known as "Magnetic Clearing" in Healing Touch for Animals, and on drawing pain and inflammation out of a dog's body by visualizing your palm as a strong magnet. And there are some very cool "Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments" you can try if you remain skeptical.

I loved Nicole's way of presenting a potentially complex topic with ease and simplicity. If you share your life with dogs, you'll want to read Energy Healing for Dogs and incorporate its techniques into your personal toolkit.

Talk with Nicole Wilde, Author of Energy Healing for Dogs, during October 28th Teleconference

The next "Conversations with Animal Authors" teleconference will feature Nicole Wilde, who will discuss her book, Energy Healing for Dogs: Using Hands-On Healing to Improve Canine Health and Behavior, on Wednesday, October 28th, 2009 at 8:00pm (EDT).  The call is free and all are invited to participate.

Nicole Wilde is a natural healer and Reiki Master, as well as a Certified Pet Dog Trainer who specializes in behavior issues.  A prolific writer, she is the athor of seven earlier books, including Help for Your Fearful Dog.  Nicole runs Gentle Guidance Dog Training in southern California, offers energy healing for pets, and assists rescue groups, shelters, and dogs in need.

In Energy Healing for Dogs, Nicole demystifies and simplifies the process of channeling energy for the benefit of our canine companions, and so effortlessly describes how to do it that even readers with no prior healing experience will feel empowered to try it with their own animals.

If you would like to learn how to use energy to heal your dog, you can join the "Conversations with Animal Authors" call by dialing 616-347-8100 and entering PIN #1063739.  Long-distance charges may apply.  For those who would like to hear the interview, but cannot participate live, a recording of the call will be posted here within a few days after the event.

Paws & Effect: The Healing Power of Dogs, by Sharon Sakson

On a cold day in early April, 2003, I drove to Westchester Medical Center in New York to visit my sister, Janice, who was dying of liver failure. I didn't know that then, but I understood that she was gravely ill. Janice didn't have much of an appetite, and her memory was failing, and I can't remember everything we talked about during the last hours I spent at her bedside.

But one memory will never fade from my mind. It was when two smiling therapy dogs came into the room to bring some comfort to my sister. For those fleeting moments, Janice smiled and seemed to come out of her fog, even laughing with delight as one of the dogs jumped right up in bed with her, audaciously licking her face. Such is the power of dogs to bring joy into a person's life. And it is stories like these that Sharon Sakson has so eloquently told in her wonderful, life-affirming book, Paws & Effect: The Healing Power of Dogs.

Sharon chronicles the way in which dogs can literally save people's lives, whether they are recuperating from debilitating illnesses, suffering from undetected cancer, fighting unseen enemies in wartime combat, living with the ever-present threat of an epileptic seizure, wracked by unrelenting pain, plagued by plunging sugar levels from type II diabetes, or trying to live with dignity and independence while compromised by sight or hearing disabilities.

Ms. Sakson has an artful ability to grab her readers by telling them about one particular dog, and how he or she transformed the life of one individual person, all the while providing scrupulously researched sources and documentation to buttress some of the seemingly unbelievable successes of these remarkable canines.

Some of her stories are heartwarming, such as the one about "Mr. Gruffyd Babayan," an odd-looking, one-eyed Brussels Griffon who, as part of Westminster Kennel Club's Angel on a Leash program, makes weekly visits to Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital and Ronald McDonald House in Manhattan, in his role as an "Animal-Assisted Therapy Dog" to lend encouragement to children who have cancer, and heart failure and leukemia and broken bones. He's a particular favorite among physical therapists who have trouble getting their young patients to start walking again, after surgery. Mr. G.B. has an uncanny knack of being able to motivate children to get up and try to do what they think they can't do.

Other stories are groundbreaking, such as the fact that Bonnie Bergin at the Assistance Dog Institute (now The Bergin University of Canine Studies) figured out that dogs can actually be taught to read, in addition to the more than 90 verbal commands they can learn:

"For a person with a handicap, it could be useful to tell the dog, 'Exit,' and
have the dog look for and locate the appropriate sign, and then go there. The
same would be true for 'Restroom' or 'Park'. . .

So Bonnie wrote the words, 'Sit,' 'Down,' and 'Stay' on big sheets of paper,
and set out to teach her own dogs, Lexus and Keila, to read.

'It was straight classic conditioning,' Bonnie says. She showed Keila the Down' card, and asked her to lie down, and gave her a reward. Within one lesson, whenever she showed the word, Keila lay down. Lesson learned. Keila could read.

Using that method, she got the two dogs up to a 20-word vocabulary. An
unanticipated thing started to happen. The dogs started to learn new things
even better than they had before. They seemed to be able to conceptualize
and problem-solve, traits that would make them of even greater use when
placed with a person with a disability."

One of the most fascinating chapters in Paws & Effect is called, "If You're Sick, I'll Let You Know," in which Sharon tells the stories of dogs who seem to have a natural, uncanny ability to predict when a person is about to have a seizure, with near 100% accuracy. Ms. Sakson acknowledges that:

"How dogs detect an oncoming seizure in a human remains a mystery. Some
trainers and researchers think they detect subtle changes in their owners'
behavior or movements. Some think they can sense the 'aura' that precedes
a seizure. Or maybe they are aware that the brain waves of a person about
to seizure are substantially different from normal. But most researchers are
arriving at the opinioin that what is at work here is the dog's incredible power
of scent."

And there's growing evidence to show that dogs can actually be taught to recognize an impending seizure because the affected people give off a powerful smell that is undetectable to the human nose, but easily perceived by canines, who are believed to be able to detect scents 10,000 times better than a person, according to Dr. Jim Walker, head of the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University. Trainers are now successfully attempting to harness this canine characteristic to educate dogs to detect not only epilepsy, but even ovarian and breast cancer, by sniffing the breath or urine of afflicted patients.

Paws & Effect: The Healing Power of Dogs is a great read if you're a dog lover, but it might be even more compelling if you're a skeptic about what dogs can do. Sharon Sakson has written a magical, inspiring set of stories that left me wishing for more.

Through A Dog's Ear

We are all, it seems, victims of a relentless barrage of noise from the rhythms of everyday life: appliances, TV, radio, traffic, lawnmowers, and screaming kids. We may not realize it, but over time, this soundscape is doing a number on our nervous and immune systems, and those of our animals.

Through a Dog's Ear: Using Sound to Improve the Health & Behavior of Your Canine Companion, is not just about how sound affects animals. It's about how it affects us, too. This ground-breaking book made me turn off the TV, and really bring some awareness to the constant background noise in my home environment and what it might be doing to the health and wellbeing of all of us who live here: humans, dogs, cats, and canaries.

Authors Joshua Leeds and Dr. Susan Wagner have been able to demonstrate that certain kinds of soothing classical music can provide a calming antidote when animals are stressed and losing their cool. Not just from the effects of unwanted noise, but when they are fearful, aggressive, suffering from separation anxiety, or terrified by the prospect of a ride in the car. Until now, behavioral modification techniques and drugs seemed to offer the only relief from these problems.

What's interesting is that not all classical music has this pacifying effect. The authors tell a fascinating story about "Petey," a dog who howled with delight when a visitor in his home played Grieg's Piano Concerto, but who walked out of the room when she practiced Mozart or Bach!

In a pilot study, they found that "solo instruments, slower tempos, and less complex arrangements had a greater calming effect than faster selections with more complex harmonic and orchestral content."

As a result of their pioneering work, Leeds and Wagner have developed three CDs: Music to Calm Your Canine Companion, Vol. 1, Music for the Canine Household, Vol. 1, and Through a Dog's Ear Driving Edition: Music to Calm Your Dog in the Car, all of which contain "psychoacoustically designed" classical music selections to assuage canine fear, stress, and separation anxiety.

The book, Through a Dog's Ear, comes with a sampler CD, with excerpts from Music to Calm Your Canine Companion and Music for the Canine Household. It also offers suggestions on how and when to use the CD for optimal behavioral response.