"Loving Edie: How a Dog Afraid of Everything Taught Me to Be Brave" by Meredith May; Park Row Books (296 pages, $24.99)
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"Loving Edie" is the memoir of a journalist, her wife, and their freaked-out dog. Edie is a typical golden retriever in many ways: goofy, playful, a lover of people and other dogs. But she is terrified of the world at large. Everything scares her — loud noises, cars, shrieking children at play, a garage door opening, an airplane overhead. Her reaction to these fears is always to run.
"Loving Edie" is an engaging tale that examines what it's like to find out that the sweet puppy you adopted is actually "reactive" (that is, a dog that overreacts to stimuli). May is lucky in that her dog's response is to flee; many reactive dogs turn antisocial and sometimes aggressive.
Edie does not. She just — runs. Fast, far and sometimes right into traffic.
It's aggravating to read about the number of times May let Edie off the leash, only to have Edie get spooked and dart off — when will she learn to keep that dog on a leash? But it's also understandable; it took her a long time to come to terms with the fact that Edie was nothing like her previous calm goldens.
In the end, May found a wonderful solution, one that would not be available to most dog-owners unless they are quite wealthy. But her journey is interesting, and her memoir is a step toward illuminating this increasingly common problem.
