A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life – Hannah Biggs

Steven Kotler. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. 307 pp.

Despite the title, Steven Kotler’s nonfiction book, A Small Furry Prayer: Dog Rescue and the Meaning of Life, is not just a story for dog-lovers. This is a story of lived human existence—an existence riddled with joys, pains, losses, regrets, empathy, compassion, and startling introspection into what it means to be human. Kotler transports readers to a world where dog rescue and life with and dedicated to another creature (or two, or five, or the more startling thirty-nine—as in Kotler’s case) outside of the human is more than a caring, unselfish action; it is a way of being. For Kotler, life took a drastic change in direction when he dedicated his life to a world of the canine, a world for which he “traded forty years of the most ordinary for a world made of dog” (13). And as his book asserts, he has emerged from that selfless, dog rescue-focused life with the understanding “that the life [he] was living was, in fact, real” (x). This is a story of the transformative life, both in changing the lives of others, human and canine, and in transforming the own individual life into something more than a mere “ordinary” existence. Kotler’s story begins in the town of Los Feliz, California. He is dating his soon-to-be wife, Joy—a woman dedicated to dog rescue. At first, this is Joy’s passion. Not Steven’s. But, Kotler takes no time in transitioning into how Joy’s passion suddenly morphs into a lifestyle choice of his own. They buy a farm in Chimayo, New Mexico with the intention of starting a dog recue, a rescue that soon turns into what it is today: Rancho de Chihuahua, a registered 501(c)3 nonprofit organization with the mission to rescue and rehabilitate and, hopefully, find new homes for the many abandoned and abused dogs of New Mexico and surrounding areas. This story gives a voice to the othered dog, the one who is different, abnormal, and not completely functional or acceptable according to companion animal standards. He gives these canines a voice denied to them by a world of sociocultural factors that mirrors the othering even human people face, a world of separation and exclusion with which we are all too familiar. Kotler recognizes that: Dogs go unnoticed in shelter for a variety of reasons. Most people come looking for puppies and purebreds, so older mutts are at a considerable disadvantage. Beige dogs are often overlooked, brown dogs ignored. Black dogs are so hated that rescuers refer to their trouble as ‘black dog syndrome,’ which oddly extends beyond the boundaries of race: even black people don’t like black dogs. Ugly dogs, sick dogs, handicapped dogs, retarded dogs, shy dogs, fat dogs—those too don’t stand a chance. Pit bulls are out of the question, Rottweilers as well. Dogs that need too much

housetraining, dogs with bad coats, dogs that like to chew, dig, drool, et cetera. As it turns out, what makes a dog adoptable has very little to do with dogs, a great deal to do with humans. (55) The issue of being a stray dog is not a dog’s fault; it is a representation of the human predicament. By using dog rescue as a vehicle for introspection, Kotler asks readers to critique their own culture—a critique that is unsettling and rather depressing. Thus, this book garners a unique audience of dog-lovers and non-dog-lovers alike who are simply interested in understanding how dog rescue represents the world of oppression that so many human beings still face today. Despite the often times heavy-handedness of this book, Kotler is a comedian, and with lines such as: I, Steven Kotler, being of sound mind and body, being heterosexual, fond of football and whisky and flannel shirts, able to drive a stick shift and operate heavy machinery, having once flown a Mig-17 fighter jet, with some experience climbing mountains and surviving rain forests, not scared of snakes or spiders or such, hereby admit, out loud and in public, that I have become extremely enamored of Chihuahuas. (127) it is almost impossible not to laugh. He very smartly layers intensity with humor, and the reader emerges from the book refreshed, introspective, and with a smile on his/her face. However, this is not a simple story—rising action, climax, falling action, and conclusion; this is an exploration, a journey, and intellectual breath of fresh air. This book will teach you more about dogs, and in turn, yourself than you ever dared perhaps to understand. For, as Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson says of human life cohabitating with dogs: “‘Dogs do not appreciate time that is set by convention; they do not divide a day up into minutes or hours, nor do they think in terms of weeks or months or years. A dog does not tremble at the thought of his own mortality; I doubt a dog ever thinks about a time when he will no longer be alive. So when we are with a dog, we, too, enter a kind of timeless realm, where the future becomes irrelevant’” (95). It too transports you into Kotler’s world of dog rescue; selfless dedication to another; an unwavering mission to embrace and love the othered, abandoned, lonely stray or misunderstood dog. This text asks you to step outside of yourself, your life, your own (often times) narrow-minded passions to see the world through the eyes of another. It does not ask you too to partake in dog rescue. But, it asks you to understand the rescuer. It asks you to see a dog as a creature who reflects our own humanity. Then, it asks you to reflect on your own humanity, through the eyes of a dog or your own. This text moves you “meta” and leaves you introspective, soul-searching, yet altogether complete and content when its final words close out the page.