The Dogs Who Found Me: What I’ve Learned from Pets Who Were Left Behind

I love animals and bought this book thinking it would share some heartwarming stories about rescued dogs and the situations that arise when they enter your life. What I got was a book about Pitbulls. The flap (very misleadingly) says the book contains stories about all kinds of dogs but in reality this book is only about Pitbulls. I’m not sure why anyone would want to own a Pitbull,even your homeowner’s insurance may cost you more as a Pitbull (or Rottweiler) owner, and the breed is statistically proven to have an aggressive behavior. One section of the book describes a situation where 2 dogs get into a vicious fight and the author has to intervene. That is not a “pet” I would want my children or friends or neighbors around. I was very disappointed in this book and felt it was lobbying to entice people into owning a vicious animal and consider it a pet.

On the other hand, if you want a good book with heartwarming stories, read “What the Dog Did”.
Rating: 1 / 5

I am a dog trainer, and get a lot of books to review. This guy has a nice ideas, needs to make a living writing books and tries to impress us with his lack of knowledge. The dog he owns is showing aggrrresive behavior and its A.the fault of all the unnetured males, B. because he is packing his clothes to move.

The author needs to learn a a lot more about dogs before writing books.Hitting the internet for cute one pages slogans is not research. I threw this down at page 40, books like this make a trainers job so much harder, massive human needs inflicted on dogs.
Rating: 1 / 5

Foster’s clearly a writer, and his style’s impressive. And despite a few moments in the book where you can really feel him pulling away, he’s very honest, which is a nice thing in a memoir after this year’s debacles. I just find some of his decisions in this book troubling – or possibly, his lack of explanations.

In several cases, he or others find a dog alone and conclude that the dog’s frightened, unhappy state indicates he/she has been cruelly abandoned. He and his friends then proceed to ‘rehome’ the dog. I’m sure there’s a good reason they didn’t take the dogs to local shelters, which would give their original owners an opportunity to locate them, just in case the rescuers’ initial impression of abandonment was wrong. But Foster never mentions that he and his friends are skipping a rather big step in the process. It’s important. If my dog ran away, she would doubtless be very upset and miserable. If a nice person found her, decided that her unhappiness meant her owner was a bad person, and then sent her to a new home three states away, I would never find her. That would be tragic for us, and for a real homeless dog who wouldn’t get that home.
Rating: 2 / 5

The prior reviews and the email correspondence in the book description hurried me along to buy this book. I liked Foster’s simple and direct, chatty writing style, but when I got the book, it got old and fast. I can only read email-style writing so long in book form before it becomes wearisome.

Sentences are short and choppy throughout. There is little variety, but if the information offered to the reader were interesting, I could overlook the bland and boring presentation.

An example: Foster develops characters very little. In fact, I have no idea who this guy is down to how old he might be; I don’t even know what generation he’s in. His parents seemed to show up when he needed to move. They’d show up in their white van to move him, take him places, so it felt like he might have been early 20s, just out of college…but then later on he has heart trouble requiring a pace maker, so then I think, hmmm, this must be out of the ordinary for someone young, but he never mentions how unusual it is, so then I’m left to consider he might be in his 50s, 60s? I still have absolutely no idea, although I doubt he’s in his early 20s since he’s teaches at a university…at least I know this much.

I have no idea what he looks like, nor do I know what the main dog character looks like (Brando) other than he’s really, really big, maybe a Great Dane mix, but that’s it. Foster writes mainly about events without development or examination of those events and what they might mean, what they led to… He simply states what happened at this moment, then moves on to the next event with little continuity. I developed no connection whatsoever with anyone in the book because information was presented so coldly, matter of fact, and even when Foster talks of emotional issues, they’re offered in a few short lines and then we move on to other events. I never connected with him or his dogs, and I wanted to very much.

However, I did learn a good bit about how many friends he has strewn about the country. Foster, coming off as quite the diva, ensured that the reader would recognize his various good deeds as do his many friends.

The title states: What I’ve learned from pets who were left behind. I learned absolutely nothing about what he learned. If he was trying to convey something about dogs, I didn’t catch it. His bias feels very subjective and he seems to offer only selective information on certain breeds, especially pit bulls, clearly his favorite.

I was particularly interested in Foster’s experience with 9/11 and Katrina, but I found both lacking, found little information about the dogs in both instances. I was so disappointed in learning nothing about dogs and their plight in both disasters. I did learn about his many friends in New Orleans, however. This is where I really got the feel for Foster’s diva nature, but I wanted to learn about the dogs.

If interested in this topic of dogs left behind, read the funny, endearing, serious work by Randy Grim, “Miracle Dog.” Grim’s book is worth every penny, but Foster’s book, which I read quickly in a couple hours (177 pp) wasn’t worth my time.

I gave the book 3 stars because it wasn’t horrible. Others might like Foster’s clipped writing style that moves quickly from one event to the other with little to no development of the event. However, Randy Grim’s book is truly about dogs left behind and what he’s learned over the years. Go look up Grim’s book before you buy this one, and then make a better informed choice.
Rating: 3 / 5

This book started off ok and quickly turned into a boring list of dogs that he did not help.He judges people for not wanting to help but he seems irritated to help. Don’t get me wrong he’s done some amazing things for some animals, but he makes a lot of snap judgements about people that he later realizes in the books were wrong, though he never seems to notice or learn from his behavior. He sees stray dogs and assumes abuse in some situations and does not try to return the dog to it’s owner or try to find the owner which i can’t understand. If the dog has clearly been abused then that is different….He seems to just like that he’s a hero, regardless of the fact that he drove a dog into another state to a shelter making it impossible for an owner to find their dog. He makes the judgement on one page that if a person can’t afford the impounding fee for their dog then they can’t afford the dog, even though he could not afford food for his three dogs at one point. It’s just frustrating, all the judgement that goes on. The story is not that good, if you can really call it a story. I put it down so many times. He seems like the “world owed me a living” type and anyone who does not agree with him is wrong. I did like the fact that he shows a different side to pitbulls in the book since they often get a bad wrap, because they are the chosen dog of so many bad people who will fight them, breed them to be cruel, etc. However, alot of his facts/tips about dogs are incorrect, and not thourough therefore he should not have tried to include things like this. For example- the best way to break up a dog fight is to have one person per dog pulling the dog by the hips….it depends on the dogs, and much of what he writes comes from just that- his own exposure to just his own dogs. It’s not always a good idea to try and break up a dog fight that way, and it concerns me when people dole out advice that could be harmful for someone else. What is most disturbing is that for all his dog rescuing, can never turn a blind-eye mentality he seems not to have much heart for dogs at times. It’s not an engaging or heart warming book.

It does get a little better before an odd ending, and has some interesting stuff about PETA on one page, and some resources in the back. Otherwise….not the best or even close that I have read.

Try Marley and Me, With Love from Baghdad, or Women Writers and their dogs. Those are better books.

Rating: 2 / 5