Rescuing Penny Jane audiobook

Dogs on the cover, book about dogs- saving dogs, loving dogs... 'nuf said!

This review is reprinted from my blog, aheartforshelterdogs.com:When writer Amy Sutherland and her husband, Scott, adopted Bumble Bee, an extremely fearful young dog, from a Maine shelter, they thought that their love would heal her. They also thought that they knew a lot about dogs; each had had dogs individually, and together they had raised their genial Australian shepherd. In addition, Amy was a devoted and experienced volunteer dog walker at the shelter where Bumble Bee had been brought after being impounded from under a farmhouse porch where she had lived her whole short life.But Bumble Bee turned out to be a greater challenge than Amy and Scott were prepared for. She was not just a stray; she was feral – never having lived in a home or interacted with people. She slunk in the shadows of their house, was terrified of stairs, doorways and, most of all, of them. As sleepless nights and disrupted days began to take their toll, they asked themselves, “Why did we ruin our nice life?”Trying to warm to the dog Amy changed her name to Penny and gave her the middle name of her beloved grandmother, Jane. Still, tensions mounted, each spouse blaming the other for perceived missteps that aggravated the dog’s fears. “We’d quit kissing each other goodnight to avoid getting our fangs tangled.” Things came to a head the morning Scott said, “It would be easier to return Penny Jane than to get a divorce.”But Amy could not imagine becoming one of “them,” the people who returned dogs, whose breaking of the implicit commitment to lifetime care for their adopted pet made her fellow shelter workers roll their eyes and sigh. “If I become ‘them,’” she lamented, “I won’t be me.”The crisis passed; returning Penny Jane was never mentioned again, and in time the couple became deeply attached to her. For her part the dog came to accept domestic life, though she would always be shy and never very affectionate. “For the first time,” Amy says, “I loved a dog who showed no great love for me back.” That’s the tone of this book: clear-eyed, warm-hearted, but never sentimental or cutesy.Rescuing Penny Jane: One Shelter Volunteer, Countless Dogs, and the Quest to Find Them All Homes is touching, honest, funny, at times heartrending, and enormously informative about the plight of homeless dogs and the people nationwide who are working on their behalf.Amy Sutherland devotes several chapters to her travels across the country to meet exemplary shelter and rescue workers and visit outstanding dog care facilities. There’s the woman in San Francisco who runs Muttville, a shelter just for senior dogs, so that they’re not at a disadvantage in competition with the spiffy newer-model pups as they would be in an ordinary shelter. There’s “Adopt and Shop” in (where else?) L.A., which showcases the adoptable dogs in a colorful boutique setting along with cute accessories and high-end doggy supplies. There’s Best Friends, the Utah desert sanctuary for creatures – dogs, cats, horses, others – who have lost out in the adoption lottery but who are guaranteed a peaceful, loving place to live out their days.A team of trainers at an ASPCA facility in New Jersey focuses on the “scarediest” dogs – the ones whose aversive behavior toward people would doom their chances of adoption. Many “graduates” from this program have gone on to find permanent loving homes.The Animal Farm Foundation in upstate New York is dedicated to reversing the stigma against pit bulls, widely considered wrong and unfair by most animal experts. Sutherland herself was at first suspicious of “pitties” but, like the great majority of shelter workers, came to love and esteem them.These are just a few of the organizations and individuals she spotlights that are all working toward the same goal — ending canine homelessness — in a variety of ways: promoting spay/neuter; assisting needy pet owners in keeping their animals; tirelessly and creatively promoting adoptions; rehabilitating damaged dogs into good companions; transporting dogs from overpopulated areas (like my Tennessee city) to areas where strictly enforced spay and neuter laws create a shortage of adoptable animals.These profiles are fascinating, but the book’s real heart is Sutherland’s stories of the shelter dogs she has walked, fostered, adopted herself or found homes for, loved, and, sometimes, lost.Some of the stories are hilarious – like that of Walter Joe, her foster Jack Russell terrier who hung out on top of the clothes dryer and would not let her touch him; to avoid being bitten she had to keep the leash attached to him and tug it to get him to go for a walk, after which he would hop back up onto his warm perch. But then came the night when Amy and Scott lay down on the living room floor to watch TV and suddenly saw a small silhouette in the hallway, tentatively approaching. Walter Joe had gotten down from the dryer and come in search of…what? “A look of resolve comes over his pointed face. He suddenly races at Scott and snuggles up against my husband’s chest.” After that, he slept in the bed with them.When their agreed-upon foster term was up, Amy and Scott returned Walter to the shelter with a great report card — “yet almost the moment the kennel door closed behind him, his eyes went black and glassy again. He growled at staffers when they looked into his kennel.” On hearing that the shelter was considering euthanizing Walter as unadoptable, Amy brought him home for good, to join Penny Jane as an exceptionally lucky dog.This experience convinced her that some dogs, like Walter, are “homeable” but not “shelterable” – which presents shelter staff with a dilemma: they have to make their assessment of whether a dog is safe to adopt out based solely on his behavior in the stressful environment of the shelter. “The equivalent would be judging a person while he is in the hospital, stuck with IVs, anxious, bored, and with no family to comfort him. Would you see that person’s true character?”This insight affected me greatly, since, like every shelter worker and volunteer, I have loved and grieved for some dogs who I felt sure would have done great in the right home, but who couldn’t take the noise, the smells, the proximity of so many other dogs in the shelter setting. Thus, they “lost it” and had to be euthanized.But there is great hope in this book, in the vast network of people who care for dogs and are working for better conditions for all of them. And in the individuals like Amy Sutherland, who, day after day, show up with treats and the offer of an outing and individual human attention, to brighten — you could even say, save — the lives of shelter dogs.

Okay, I am a sucker for a book with dogs on the cover... That said, it was very interesting. Written by Amy Sutherland, who is a shelter volunteer with dogs. I also volunteer at a shelter, but with cats, who, in my opinion, adapt to shelter life better than dogs. I never really thought about the dogs (other than that barking), but the do have issues that manifest themselves the longer they are in the shelter and not adopted. Amy tells stories of the dogs she has met at her shelter, and others, and discusses what can be done better for them. She tell the story of her own dogs, Walter Joe and Penny Jane. and how they came to be a family. And of Sido, Sadie, Bummer and Lazarus, you know, the older ones who are so often overlooked, and many more who were lucky to find just the right family for them, and some of the unlucky ones who didn't. There are many good shelters and there are those that aren't. This book is a must for anyone who loves dogs.

I am not a dog owner, which makes me sort of an outlier in my family. They all have multiple dogs, mostly rescues. I live with cats, myself, but I appreciate dogs. This book was written by a shelter volunteer who focused on dogs, rescuing two herself. The book is a memoir of her life as a volunteer. If she had concentrated just on the shelters she worked in and the dogs she worked with, it would have been a boring book. She gives us a brief history of the shelter movement and a larger history of the changing attitudes of shelters and the public at large toward stray and unwanted animals. Just in the years she spent with shelters, the way disruptive and potentially dangerous dogs were handled changed from immediate euthanasia to behavioral modification. I enjoyed the book and the entrance to the shelter world it gave me. I won my copy of the book from Bookstr for this review.

Extraordinary story of dogs, shelters, and new forever homesThe author, Amy Sutherland, is an experienced journalist and shelter volunteer. Her writing is engaging, fresh, and scrupulously researched. I have read several books recently about dogs—shelter rescues, PTSD dogs, military search dogs, retired greyhound rescues—and this one shows exceptional quality regarding the author’s writing skills. Rather than using pat phrases, Ms Sutherland finds new and unexpected ways of wording her descriptions.The book opens with Amy Sutherland’s personal story of adopting an extremely fearful shelter dog. Aside from this particular tale, the book is really a mini-course on the state of shelter care today. The author interviews dozens of shelter managers and veterinarians from coast to coast and border to border. In the course of her research, she exposes long-held myths and misunderstandings about pit bulls and black dogs among others.As a dog-walker for a Boston shelter, the author describes difficult and dangerous dogs she has attempted to befriend and the sometimes painful and sometimes rewarding results of her efforts. She explains some typical behavior problems that prevent shelter dogs from being adopted and follows through on efforts to correct them and find homes for the offending mutts.This author is brutally honest about her views on those who surrender their dogs to shelters, and how her views changed after a stint at the intake desk of the Boston shelter where she volunteers. I have not found many authors as transparent as this one. Her findings at the intake desk are truly heart-wrenching.The best part of this book is at the end when the author follows up on some of the most difficult cases at the shelter. She wanted to know how life turned out for some of the dogs about whom she had worried the most. I won’t spoil it for you except to say you won’t be disappointed.

I am a sucker for any book dealing with dogs, so I really enjoyed this one. It was interesting to read how shelters work, and it's wonderful to know there are so many dedicated people trying to take care of and find homes for these pets. The only criticism I would have (and it's more of a question than a criticism) is she doesn't really go into detail about how she re-habbed Penny Jane. Since the title was Rescuing Penny Jane I thought there would be more information on how she got her adjusted to home life. The last real mention of her was the possibility that they would return her to the shelter, but they didn't because her name pops up through-out the book.Other than that minor issue, I am glad I read it. If you have a heart for dogs, and like reading a (mostly) positive story of how different dogs are dealt with, you will love this book.

A must read for anyone who loves dogs. It is funny, touching and educational about shelters in this country.

“Rugby, Penny Jane and Walter Joe have found loving homes and that is what dogs need. It is what they deserve” “ This is all he knows, his blue ball, his favourite volunteers and his trips to McDonald’s. It is his home”5 beautiful stars to this beautiful story!!! So many puppies and dogs need to be rescued even the older ones, even the ones we label (Pitt bulls and chihuahuas). Every dog deserves a home and to know love.Amy Sutherland just kept fostering the un-adoptable until they were ready to go into homes, so many lives were rescued. But it breaks my heart how many dogs are euthanized in shelters and how many people bring their own dogs to shelters! Dogs are so loving and so trusting, it’s just a shame what some of them go through and I thank everyone who has recused animals because they deserve a home, my Casey deserve one after being tied onto a doghouse outside for 8 years and Sweet Nellie who came from a hoarding situation with 16 other dogs plus more cats. Even if both their times were short with us they still deserved a loving home and that’s what they were given, love🐾💕

As a 12-year-long volunteer dog walker/trainer myself, I closely related to this author's sentiments about the volunteer experience; her preference for pitties; her magnetic draw to the dogs; how once your heart falls for a shelter dog, you can't stay away because you need to see that dog through to his/her adoption; how devastated you feel when a dog's health or behavior is so poor that he/she has to be euthanized. The wisdom and advice the many shelter directors she interviewed shared was insightful, and gave me a broader perspective of the country's shelter systems and how some of it could be applied to San Diego's shelters. Where I had difficulty with this book was in the many typos, run-on paragraphs, overuse of commas, and inaccuracies I came across. Several times, her directions were wrong, saying that West Coast dogs were shipped northwest instead northeast, or that she headed west from San Francisco to Fresno instead of east. The imperfect writing aside, it was a well researched book that I hope people read and become inspired to volunteer at their local shelter and make a difference in the lives of dogs. As a society, we owe it to them.

This beautiful book not only touched my heart, but it challenged me to re-think my perspective on dog rescue. Sutherland made me want to do more and while she occasionally broke my heart, she also gave me great hope that we can solve this very solvable problem. As a person involved in dog rescue, from the foster and rescue side, it was eye-opening to get a shelter volunteer's perspective, but Sutherland's journalistic chops added authority and clear thinking to the situation. Her obvious research, combined with her personal experience, made for a powerful read. I was inspired to read about what innovative shelters across the country are doing to tackle the problem of too many dogs being overlooked in shelters. Sutherland's personal stories of the dogs she encountered were heartbreaking and beautiful. She is a smart, realistic, dog-hearted person who asks a lot of good questions and challenges the reader to be part of the solution, not the problem. Loved this book on so many levels. Bravo.

Rescuing Penny Jane by Amy Sutherland is a delightful look into the the world of a shelter volunteer. If you are a dog lover, you will thoroughly enjoy the often poignant accounts of some of the many dogs encountered by Sutherland and if you are not a gung-ho dog lover, you will gain insight into the problem of finding good homes for shelter dogs and the extent to which shelter volunteers go to find the perfect match between dog and owner. The stories are sometimes heartwarming and sometimes heartbreaking; the quest to find homes for them is sometimes successful, sometimes not, but each story will tug at your heart, both for the dog and for those who care for them. Rescuing Penny Jane is both inspiring and insightful and a joy to read.

I thought it a bit presumptuous to call this an "unforgettable" journey into the world of shelter dogs, but it was very good, and does give me the motivation to name Amy Sutherland a true hero of the shelter dog. There is a good deal of statistics here; enough to engage the true dog lover in contemplating some of the likely and unlikely numbers that are bandied about when people talk "non-kill" and "kill" shelters - things may not always be what they seem. The later chapter about the efficacy of whether moving shelter dogs is an effective means of keeping down the number of euthanized dogs was also revealing.