Mr. and Mrs. Dog: Our Travels, Trials, Adventures, and Epiphanies
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About this ebook
The New York Times–bestselling author Donald McCaig has established an expansive literary career, founded equally on books about working sheepdogs and the Civil War novels Jacob’s Ladder and Rhett Butler’s People, the official sequel to Gone with the Wind.
In his new book, Mr. and Mrs. Dog, McCaig draws on twenty-five years of experience raising sheepdogs to vividly describe his—and his dogs June and Luke’s—unlikely progress toward and participation in the World Sheepdog Trials in Wales.
McCaig engagingly chronicles the often grueling experience—through rain, snow, ice storms, and brain-numbing heat—of preparing and trialing Mrs. Dog, June, "a foxy lady in a slinky black-and-white peignoir," and Mr. Dog, Luke, "a plain worker—no flash to him." Along the way, he relays sage advice from his decades spent talking with America’s most renowned dog experts, from police-dog trainers to positive-training gurus.
As readers of McCaig’s novels will expect, Mr. and Mrs. Dog delivers far more than straightforward dog-training tips. Revealing an abiding love and respect for his dogs, McCaig unveils the life experiences that set him on the long road to the Welsh trial fields. Starting with memories of his first dog, Rascal, and their Montana roadtrip in a ’48 Dodge, McCaig leads us into his thirties, when he abandons his New York advertising career to move to a run-down Appalachian sheep farm in the least populous county in Virginia. This 1960s agrarian adventure ultimately brings McCaig, Luke, and June to the Olympics of sheepdog trials. In his narration of one man’s love for his dogs, McCaig offers a powerful portrayal of the connection between humans and their animal companions.
Donald McCaig
Donald McCaig is the award-winning author of Canaan as well as Jacob’s Ladder, designated “the best Civil War novel ever written” by the Virginia Quarterly. It won the Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction and the Library of Virginia Award for Fiction. He was chosen by the Margaret Mitchell estate to write Rhett Butler’s People, an authorized sequel to Gone with the Wind. He lives on a sheep farm in the mountains near Williamsville, Virginia, where he writes fiction, essays, and poetry, and trains and trials sheep dogs.
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Reviews for Mr. and Mrs. Dog
3 ratings1 review
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Donald McCaig writes with much experience about sheep dogs. He has worked these intelligent and hardworking dogs for almost three decades. Working his renowned dog trainers, he has learned much about dogs and training. Here he explains all that goes into the herding trials, imparting hard earned wisdom.In this current book, Donald takes us with him and his beloved dogs, Luke and June, to the World Sheepdog Trials in Wales. In great detail, he shares his respect and love for his dogs and what they do. The bonds are clear and mutual.We are also taken on Donald McCaig’s journey through his many years of training and learning. We are able to meet the many dogs who shared his life and taught him along the way as he trained them.The book is a fascinating look at “the Olympics of sheepdog trials” and the special ones involved in it. It also is a very intimate portrait of the mutual love and respect between dogs and people.As a person who has a special love of sheepdogs, I especially enjoyed this book. In fact, I have read and recommend all of Donald McCaig’s books. I only wish I could see his dogs run the trials.