4 comments about Horse Schools: The International Guide to Universities, Colleges, Preparatory and Secondary Schools, and Specialty Equine Programs.

1. "Horse Schools" is amazing. It details horsemanship educational schools internationally by the discipline, costs, degrees offered, location, etc... It is easy to follow and has saved me much time because this book has done the initial searching for me.



2. This book is GREAT as far as helping narrow down what schools offer the degree or program that your college-bound student is looking for. It's a fabulous resource for parents as it lists tuition costs, etc., all in one place - no more searching websites, calling schools only to find out you can't afford it. I would recommend finding a book that helps you and your child narrow down their field of interest first, though, since it really doesn't go into detail what the different degrees mean to "lay persons."



3. Compiled and organized by horse expert Angelia Almos, Horse Schools is a detailed and comprehensive guide to international universities, colleges, secondary schools, and specialty equine programs -- all categorized geographically by nation. From Argentina, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, to Spain, and the many schools to be found in the Canada, the United Kingdom, and the U.S., Horse Schools surveys an immense number of learning facilities and summarizes the basic programs offered by each school, along with a brief but informative program description, degrees offered, contact information, tuition costs, and more. Horse Schools is confidently recommended as being a first rate reference for choosing an ideal location to learn equine handling for personal fun, professional necessity, or horse show competition.



4. This is absolutely the finest resource for locating Horse Schools I have ever seen! The format is easy to read and the extensive cross references make it a breeze to locate a school by subject, course, location or degree level. I had no idea there were so many schools available until now.

   A must have for anybody who is serious about a career in the field Horses.

5 comments about My Rescued Golden: True Stories of Rescued Golden Retrievers and the People Who Love Them.

1. I loved this little book so much. Of course having a golden retriever is what made me purchase the book and it shows what a great love and bond that can form between a Golden Retriever and it's human family. My retriever "Einstein" is a blessing in a beautiful gold fur coat that I just love with all my heart. His precious nose is always at my finger tips when I'm walking around at home and his big beautiful brown eyes are filled with so much love it makes my heart swell. A golden gives so much unconditional love and all they want in return is as much love as the give. This books tells that story over and over again. I never get tired of hearing it.



2. I felt so honored when asked to provide my Golden story for this book, and when it arrived I let it sit for a few days. I was worried that some of the stories would be sad and open old wounds for me. One day I sat down and read it cover to cover and am a better person for doing so. Author Margo gently nudged each and every one of her authors to speak from their hearts in their own voices and each tale is utterly unique and beautiful. This book pays a fitting homage to the most loving and companionable breed of all time, the Golden Retriever. It is a wonderful testimony to what adopting a rescued Golden can do to enrich the lives of the adopter and adoptee.



3. Kudos to Margo McHann for putting together such a wonderful book, that will tug at the hearts of all Golden Retriever lovers everywhere! This is a must for anyone who loves or has been loved by one of these wonderful dogs. My own little girl is featured in this book and it will forever be a very special book to me! Thanks Margo, for opening the eyes of the world to "Rescue" and what it is all about!



4. My Golden Frosty's story in in Margo's book. I read it first when I bought it, I was so proud. Then I started reading each of the other wonderful stories and was feeling every emotion, from tears to happiness and whatever lies in between. Each and every story brought such emotion to me. There are so many out there who love Goldens so much they devote their lives to them. I am very proud to be included in this wonderful book and to have been owned by such a wonderful dog.



5. In her book, Margo McHann proves that whatever you put into a dog, you get back with interest! The forward to this book couldn't encapsulate it any better: rescued dogs are not second-hand throw aways! Hopefully this book will convince many people why they should adopt from breed rescue groups.

No comments about Why Don't Cats Go Bald?: The Questions You've Always Wanted to Ask Your Vet.

1 comments about The Everything Yorkshire Terrier Book: A Complete Guide to Raising, Training, And Caring for Your Yorkie (Everything: Pets).

1. The title is self explanatory. This book will not be too helpful to a beginner as it explains everything with very little graphics and it is difficult to visualise aspects such as the grooming of the dog. I thought the toilet training bit was lacking as well and served more as a sweeping generalisation of known information than anything that would be truly helpful to a novice.
   
   On the plus side, the writing is pleasantly light, although this does not make up for the lack of illustrations and depth.

1 comments about Cloister Cats.

1. Knowing Richard Surman's work from his four previous books, I was looking forward to receiving this latest in the series. I was not disappointed. This picture book (fine photos) with accompanying commentary is an excellent addition to Surman's previous books each showing felines associated with various sacred and secular institutions throughout England.

4 comments about The Last Panda.

1. Despite his universal appeal, the panda is an insult to both good design and truth in advertising. Is he a black bear with white patches, an aberrant raccoon or something unique?
   Whatever, he isn't a as cuddly and friendly as he looks.
   And considering that he has an inefficient digestive system melded to a diet of unnourishing bamboo, it's rather a surprise that he has beaten the evolution game thus far. (And he doesn't even chew the bamboo thoroughly.)
   He isn't likely to keep beating the odds, according to George Schaller, one of our best-known literary zoologists.
   Schaller spent some time with the World Wildlife Fund in the early '80s trying to set up a joint Chinese-international research program into the mysterious panda. They learned a lot, duly reported in specialist publications.
   Only a decade later did Schaller get around to writing a popular account of his panda experience, similar to his earlier books about tigers, lions etc. Yet not so similar, either.
   While Schaller has always been interested in preservation of large mammals, "The Last Panda" is more alarmist and packs more of an emotional wallop.
   That is, once you get past (or skip) the first 50 pages, which recount his tiresome interactions with the sclerotic Chinese bureaucracy. This is neither new nor interesting nor surprising, though it is of vast importance, whether you are a panda or a peasant.
   But especially if you are a panda.
   Schaller always writes with both grace and precision, and here also with passion and frustration. "Too often treatises on endangered species seem to be mere memorials," he writes, though he went into the project determined to have an impact on the beast's future.
   Ten years later, it looked as if Schaller was just one more foreigner ground down by China, which its own people exceeding fine, too. "I was prepared to fight on their behalf, to rage and scream if necessary," he writes.
   But "there's a limit to the art of endurance."
   Non-Chinese also come in for criticism, especially at zoos that "rent" pandas.
   The Chinese have never given the pandas an even break, but as long as both species were primitive and backward it was a standoff. Modernity, which the Chinese have adopted except in the fields of law and ethics, has given them the upper hand over the pandas.
   But not only in China. There is a school of thought now which says large land mammals cannot co-exist with humans at the densities humans are achieving for themselves. That may be proven wrong, but it looks as if it can't happen soon enough for the pandas.
   Though it has its lovely moments, "The Last Panda" is a sad book.
   A year after the hardcover edition was published in 1993, Schaller issued a paperback, which included a relatively upbeat new afterword. The Chinese government, he reported, had improved its panda policies, with regular successes in the captive breeding program.
   Ten years before, Schaller had been very pessimistic about Chinese suspiciousness of outside ideas, "but I have found that they always consider and, when possible, assimilate these ideas, especially if pragmatic suggestions conform to their concept of moral rightness."
   Unfortunately, the American zoo bureaucrats who come in for Schaller's wrath for their fabulously lucrative rented panda exhibits had not also advanced toward enlightenment over the preceding decade.
   The San Diego Zoo, despite its fancy reputation, even regressed to the point of demanding wild-caught, rather than cage-reared, animals for its multimillion-dollar exhibit.
   That exhibit was stymied by Clinton administration officials, but with the Old Testament view of animals that many congressmen carry with them, the outlook for exploitable species was growing grimmer in the mid-1990s.
   Current news suggests the Chinese are now treating their pandas better than their own children. It is hard to view this as progress.



2. It's now known -- after a comprehensive Chinese-U.S. panda census carried out between 2001 and 2003/2004 -- that there are over 1,600 giant pandas left in the wild. The previous, oft-quoted estimate of "fewer than 1,000" was way too low. The benefit of hindsight on the part of a recent reader of this book, by naturalist George Schaller, makes this book less than believable. Schaller spends much time criticizing the Chinese government as well as Western governments for what he perceives to be ignorance and apathy toward the "plight" of the giant panda. But, one must ask, if he had indeed spent more time researching pandas instead of writing numerous books -- seriously, no matter how smart you are, the amount of waking hours, and working hours, you have are always limited, not to mention the amount of time one must expend in order to travel to the remote areas Schaller has -- Schaller should have known, or found out, that 1) there were more pandas out there in the wild, and 2) several Chinese research institutions, including Wolong Nature Reserve, had already made ground-breaking discoveries in captive breeding by the time this paranoid book was published.
   
   Granted, Schaller seems to have felt a great deal for the giant panda. I don't doubt his sincerety. But by bluntly criticizing others -- and forgetting that conservation takes a lot of money, money to protect the animals, money to research into the animals, and money to help locals escape poverty without resorting to poaching and logging -- he trivializes the amount of effort needed to preserve the panda or any other endangered species. His blindness to what officials in China and in the West, including those at the WWF (where he now works), had already been doing is simply disheartening and misinforming.



3. This book left me with a feeling one has after seeing a very moving film--sad, but reflective and motivated. I'll think about this book and any global conservation partnership differently now. The Last Panda gives equal time to the ecology and lives of wild pandas, but also to the difficulties of forging an international conservation project between Western and Eastern cultures, in this case the WWF and the Chinese government. Bureacratic apathy, even malfeasance, differing ideas of what constitutes "research" and even sad grasps at publicity using pandas as pawns disrupt and ultimately damage the precious few pandas in the study. Schaller's droll voice lends a small bit of humor to what must have been an extreme challenge in self-control when dealing with the friction between involved parties. This is not an uplifting success story, but almost rather a story of candid warning of the realities of forging global partnerships in any realm. Ultimately, concerned citizens, researchers, NGOs and governments have to remember why we're all involved: not for personal glory or public relations, but to save the endangered animal.



4. In this book, George Schaller depicts the giant panda of China not only as a "cute" and lovable creature, but that it is also in a struggle to overcome extinction. I enjoyed reading this book because George Schaller writes down his most inner thoughts and feelings regarding the panda project in China. He does not hold anything back from the reader. From reading this book, I learned about the plight of the panda that other books have failed to mention.

5 comments about Walking My Dog Jane: From Valdez to Prudhoe Bay Along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

1. This would be a nice beach book: not to deep, reasonably well written. And some nice reflections on an Alaska that is changing, and the people who live there.



2. Even though I love Alaska and most books about it, I found this book pretty slow. I like the fact that the book tells the stories of people who live along the pipeline, but I was probably expecting more adventure...
   Therefore, it took me more than a month to finish it...
   I enjoyed the extracts about Jane and the affection he feels for her, but unfortunately they are very rare exceptions.



3. This was a good book about a fellow who decides to walk the Alaska Pipeline from Valdez to Prudhoe Bay with his Chocolate Lab, Jane. He took all summer to do it and chronicles the trip in the book. He did some research on the places he visited as well as the pipeline so it was very interesting from that point of view but also from his writing about walking, solitude, and his dog.



4. I spent my teenage years in Fairbanks and traveled from Bristol Bay to the Arctic Circle, though not even nearly as intimately and exhaustively as Ned Rozell. But luckily I found his book through a family member there who knows him. His descriptions of the landscapes, the characters, the attitudes, and even the whine of the mosquitoes all take me back to Alaska. It's absolutely true to the people and places I knew and it makes for a delightful read! Plus, I can't tell you how grateful I am to escape to the land of the midnight sun when it is 112 degrees here in central California. I hereby solemnly swear to take my kids to canoe on the Chena and pick wild blueberries on Ester Dome next summer!



5. Having traveled in Alaska, I think many others have had the desire to take a similar journey.The story was very well written as my interest was held from the moment I started reading.The author does an excellent job of telling his and Janes many adventures along the trip.It makes you fell you are right there with them.I recommend the book for anyone who has had that l ifelong desire to do something they have never found time to do.I really enjoyed the book.Made me feel I was back in Alaska.

No comments about Hooray for Dogs.

1 comments about Chicken Soup for the Soul: Celebrates Cats and the people who love them (Canfield, Jack).

1. Great stories, the only complaint is that the book is too short.

No comments about How to Raise Pigs (How to Raise).