Why Dogs Die Young:
And What We Can Do About It (Fall 2012)
In the months following the publication of Merle’s Door, I received hundreds of e-mails from readers who had lost beloved dogs and closed their letters with a variation on this theme: “Why must our dogs die so young?”
Naturally, when most of us say this, we’re not expecting an answer. We’re expressing a rhetorical complaint: “Why do our best friends in the animal kingdom live so much such shorter lives than we do, only about an eighth of the normal life expectancy of a person in the developed world?”
To research the book I traveled across North America and throughout Western Europe, as well as to Russia and India, interviewing veterinarians, geneticists, shelter workers, and dog trainers, whose colorful stories become part of Pukka’s and my adventures: running rivers, backpacking, skiing, and introducing him to the wildlife of the northern Rockies.
How does Pukka react to these freedoms and having a door of his own? Does he become a free-roaming dog as was Merle? How much does a wild environment make a dog into a freethinker? Why Dogs Die Young and What We Can Do About It explores these questions while also examining the issue of how our own lifestyles intimately affect the longevity of our dogs.
Laying to rest many timeworn myths about dog health, Why Dogs Die Young and What We Can Do About It also suggests a different approach to reducing the number of dogs and cats killed in North American shelters (about four million annually) and describes an integrated strategy that can reduce the chances of our dogs dying young. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the fall of 2012, it's a touching and memorable story of how we mourn one loved dog and begin life with another.
However, I also received another question from many readers, which was more particular in its nature and much more heartrending: “Why did my dog have to die of cancer at three years old...at four...at six?” “Why,” as one person wrote, “have four of my five Golden Retrievers died of cancer?”
Why Dogs Die Young and What We Can Do About It answers these questions, looking at the evolutionary reasons for dogs being a short-lived species and then examining how we can extend our dogs' lives by the care we give them. The latest scientific findings on nutrition, vaccinations, environmental pollutants, and genetically inherited diseases are woven into the story of my mourning Merle’s loss, my finding my new pup Pukka, and my trying to raise him in the most healthy way possible.
© 2010 Ted Kerasote
Web design by Dina Sutin
