A Dog Named Boo: How One Dog and One Woman Rescued Each Other - And the Lives They Transformed Along the Way
By: Lisa Edwards / Narrated By: Meredith Mitchell
Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins
Sweet story about a bumbling, loving dog
Okay, okay! So A Dog Named Boo isn’t a Halloween book, but Boo was indeed a Halloween puppy, saved from where he was abandoned outside a pet supply store by Lisa Edwards. Hence the name Boo (c’mon, it could be worse: they were thinking of naming him Anubis for heaven’s sake!).
Edwards simply couldn’t pass him up as it turns out that the way she chooses her pets (one could say, however, they choose us) is to see what damaged part of her soul is calling out. With Boo, the part of her that’d always felt abandoned and bullied drove her to adopt him, much to her husband’s dismay.
The book is a lot about the way two damaged people, Lisa and Lawrence, were abused and mistreated and about the way their animals healed them. Lisa wants a family, though she doesn’t wish to repeat her parents’ mistakes, but Lawrence doesn’t want a family. Period. His own childhood was so bad that he can’t even consider having children.
Enter Atticus, Dante, and now Boo. Three dogs that bring life lessons in tender and funny ways. Lawrence really doesn’t want Boo around; he has his own problems, health issues, and now he has to deal with a bumbling dog that it took over a year to house train? No by God!
But it’s discovered that Boo is special needs, and his disabilities make it important that he be taught in certain ways. Both Lisa and Lawrence must learn to have even more patience, and they have to speak to Boo in even more positive ways. The more they do this, the more optimistic and positive they become about life. And as they witness what Boo does as a service dog (tho’ he had to train for it in a special way, outside the class of uber-puppies they’d originally tried him in), the more they see that he’s a really special dog, and life is pretty special too.
Special enough to think they can raise their own children in the same positive, patient, and loving manner? Well… maybe…?
There are lots of stories here about each of the three dogs, lots of stories about families of origin and the scars that are left behind. There are really sweet moments as Boo struggles along, doing his hampered best, and especially as he excels in just being Boo: helping kids read, helping them talk, helping them get past ADHD moments to focus on loving him for 5, 10, even 30 minutes at a time.
A sweet audiobook, and though Meredith Mitchell’s narration sometimes comes off as though she’s delivering the story to children, it doesn’t happen enough to make you want to throw your phone at the wall (phew!).
Happy Halloween; go save a puppy and named him/her Boo…!
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