A stunning new book about the role of animals in our lives, by a
popular and acclaimed writer
From the time she is nine years old, biking to the farmland outside
her suburban home, where she discovers a disquieting world of
sleeping cows and a "Private Way" full of the wondrous and creepy
creatures of the wild--spiders, deer, moles, chipmunks, and
foxes--Lauren Slater finds in animals a refuge from her troubled
life. As she matures, her attraction to animals strengthens and
grows more complex and compelling even as her family is falling to
pieces around her. Slater spends a summer at horse camp, where she
witnesses the alternating horrific and loving behavior of her
instructor toward the animals in her charge and comes to question
the bond that so often develops between females and their equines.
Slater's questions follow her to a foster family, her own parents
no longer able to care for her. A pet raccoon, rescued from a hole
in the wall, teaches her how to feel at home away from home. The
two Shiba Inu puppies Slater adopts years later, against her
husband's will, grow increasingly important to her as she ages and
her family begins to grow.
Slater's husband is a born skeptic and possesses a sternly
scientific view of animals as unconscious, primitive creatures, one
who insists "that an animal's worth is roughly equivalent to its
edibility." As one of her dogs, Lila, goes blind and the medical
bills and monthly expenses begin to pour in, he calculates the
financial burden of their canine family member and finds that Lila
has cost them about $60,000, not to mention the approximately 400
pounds of feces she has deposited in their yard. But when Benjamin
begins to suffer from chronic pain, Lauren is convinced it is
Lila's resilience and the dog's quick adaptation to her blindness
that draws her husband out of his own misery and motivates him to
try to adjust to his situation. Ben never becomes a true believer
or a die-hard animal lover, but his story and the stories Lauren
tells of her own bond with animals convince her that our
connections with the furry, the four-legged, the exoskeleton-ed, or
the winged may be just as priceless as our human relationships.
"The $60,000 Dog" is Lauren Slater's intimate manifesto on the
unique, invaluable, and often essential contributions animals make
to our lives. As a psychologist, a reporter, an amateur naturalist,
and above all an enormously gifted writer, she draws us into the
stories of her passion for animals that are so much more than pets.
She describes her intense love for the animals in her life without
apology and argues, finally, that the works of Darwin and other
evolutionary biologists prove that, when it comes to worth, animals
are equal, and in some senses even superior, to human beings.
"From the Hardcover edition."
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