A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home
Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher
Published on 6. May 2014
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-1-59463-269-3 (ISBN)
Description
A layabout mutt turned therapy dog leads her owner to a new understanding of the good life.
In late adolescence, Pransky was bored: she needed a job. and so Sue Halpern decided to give herself and her underoccupied Labradoodle a new leash-er, lease-on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy-dog team. Pransky proved to be not only a terrific therapist, smart and instinctively compassionate, but an unerring moral compass as well. In the unlikely-sounding arena of a public nursing home, she led her teammate into a series of encounters with the residents that revealed depths of warmth, humor, and insight Halpern hadn't expected. Little by little, their adventures expanded and illuminated Halpern's sense of what goodness is and does-how acts of kindness transform the giver as well as the given-to.
Funny, moving, and profound, A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home is the story of how one virtuous-that is to say, faithful, charitable, loving, and sometimes prudent-mutt showed great hope, fortitude, and restraint (the occasional begged or stolen treat notwithstanding) as she taught a well-meaning woman the essence and pleasures of the good life.
In late adolescence, Pransky was bored: she needed a job. and so Sue Halpern decided to give herself and her underoccupied Labradoodle a new leash-er, lease-on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy-dog team. Pransky proved to be not only a terrific therapist, smart and instinctively compassionate, but an unerring moral compass as well. In the unlikely-sounding arena of a public nursing home, she led her teammate into a series of encounters with the residents that revealed depths of warmth, humor, and insight Halpern hadn't expected. Little by little, their adventures expanded and illuminated Halpern's sense of what goodness is and does-how acts of kindness transform the giver as well as the given-to.
Funny, moving, and profound, A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home is the story of how one virtuous-that is to say, faithful, charitable, loving, and sometimes prudent-mutt showed great hope, fortitude, and restraint (the occasional begged or stolen treat notwithstanding) as she taught a well-meaning woman the essence and pleasures of the good life.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Publishing group
Penguin Putnam Inc
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 211 mm
Width: 141 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
278 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-59463-269-3 (9781594632693)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
05/2013
Riverhead Books
€11.49
Available for download
Person
Sue Halpern is the author of five previous books. Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, Time, The New Yorker, Parade, Rolling Stone, and Glamour, among others. She has been a Rhodes Scholar and a Guggenheim Fellow and is a scholar in residence at Middlebury College. She lives with her husband, the writer Bill McKibben, and Pransky in Ripton, Vermont.