cover image Dog Heroes of September 11th

Dog Heroes of September 11th

Nona Kilgore Bauer. Kennel Club Books (www.kennelclubbooks.com), $29.95 (345p) ISBN 978-159378998-5

After 9/11, Bauer completed an exhaustive compendium of the search and rescue dogs who labored at the disaster sites. The individual dogs are profiled, photographed, and their handlers are interviewed. These dogs worked at Ground Zero, the Pentagon, the Fresh Kills landfill, Shanksville, PA (the Flight 93 crash site), as well as in therapeutic capacities. Additionally, Bauer looks at the roles of military working dogs in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the handlers generally do not consider the dogs heroes%E2%80%94they are merely doing their jobs%E2%80%94readers will quickly feel that the dogs themselves deserve special recognition for their work. It will be difficult to not get choked up and emotional over the images of the selfless animals with buoyant spirits who brought hope to people in the most trying times. While it is definitely repetitive (as one might imagine with a few dozen cursory biographies of Labrador Retrievers), the pictures of the dogs, as well as their stories, are an inspiration to all. (July)