A Dog Walks Into a Nursing Home: Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher

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.

Author: Sue Halpern
Publisher: Riverhead Books
Published: 05/06/2014
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.10h x 5.40w x 1.00d
ISBN13: 9781594632693
ISBN10: 1594632693
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Personal Memoirs
- Pets | Essays & Narratives
- Body, Mind & Spirit | Inspiration & Personal Growth

About the Author
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.