Being quite so little, he was rejected by his herd, and the future looked bleak. A few fields over, a young girl was coming to terms with the fact that she would never be able to ride again. Unknowingly, they were about to change each others lives . . .The pony was Little Alf, a Shetland pony with dwarfism, and the girl, Hannah, who rescued him aged sixteen. From charity work and building a business together, they became constant companions, though there have been a few casualties along the way - mainly garden ornaments and the neighbors' vegetables.Little Alf is the story of their life together - the adventures and the mischievous behavior of the most adorable little pony.

    The authors share stories drawn from decades of experience leading pet loss groups and practicing family therapy. Their recommendations for taking care of yourself and loved ones during the rough spots of grief will answer all of your important questions and help you feel well-supported. I highly recommend The Pet Loss Companion for companion animal lovers like me. - Ed Sayres, President & CEO of the ASPCA(R)The Pet Loss Companion is a wonderfully reassuring book for anyone who cares about pets. It is a loving book, full of personal and practical details about how to care for oneself after loss. The authors are sensitive pet-lovers, empathic and engaging in this moving and meaningful book. - Monica McGoldrick, MSW, Ph.D. (h.c.), Director, Multicultural Family Institute, and author of You Can Go Home AgainIf you have ever lost a beloved pet and have wondered if your feelings are normal, this book is a must read for you. Ken and Nancy, in this single book, have captured the emotional roller coaster that most people experience during the end stages of the life of their pet. In addition there are helpful insights into their world as bereavement counselors and how they have helped their patients deal with the experiences of death. I have practiced Veterinary Medicine for over 30 years and have finally found a book that can be given to my grieving owners after such a trauma. - Anthony Miele, DVM, CEO, Veterinary Asset Management, Inc.What a gift Ken and Nancy's book is to those of us who have cherished and lost a pet companion. They get it, and as such, gently and skillfully help to ease the treacherous journey that loss is. This gem explores the terrain of loss and grief and the vast love that surrounds the experience. Readers will be warmed, saddened, and delighted by the examples and tools that are provided to ease the necessary grief process. The experience of reading this little book leaves me feeling much gratitude for my pet companions and these authors who so beautifully convey the huge role they play in our lives. - Lynn Parker, Ph.D., LCSW, Professor, Graduate School of Social Work, University of DenverSt. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center is proud to offer free pet loss support as part of its programmatic efforts, with Nancy Saxton-Lopez at the helm for over 20 years. Together Ken and Nancy continue to provide this valuable service at our center twice monthly and they've expanded their reach by sharing their professional training and direct pet loss counseling expertise with the completion of The Pet Loss Companion. Their compassion for both pets and the people who love them is palpable in this concise, easy-to-read guide which offers understanding, solace, and hope to anyone struggling with the loss of a cherished animal companion, no matter the circumstances. The loss of a companion animal is a unique, yet not unique, grieving process not always well understood by others. This book connects and thereby supports people at a time of what can be isolating grief, providing a life raft or light to navigate the process. It's also a helpful tool-whether as a gift or for personal awareness-for those looking for some guidance in supporting family and friends coping with pet loss. - Heather Cammisa, President & CEO, St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center, Madison, New Jersey

    They evoke a full range of emotions like hope and courage and valor. They can gallop straight to you with neck arched and tail flagged, and then instantly melt to a stop—just to share your breath.” We’ve been besotted with horses since they had three toes. From the popular Relaxed and Forward blog comes training advice combining the everyday fundamentals of dressage with mutual listening skills. Blake writes with a profound respect for horses and an articulate voice for humans, blending equal parts inspiration and un-common sense. It’s serious training communicated with humor and lightness, because horses like us when we laugh. Most riders want to build a better relationship with their horse. These short essays are geared as much toward attitude as technique, and include topics ranging from reading calming signals from your horse to using breath as your best communication tool. Blake’s writing uses clear descriptions, storytelling, and humor to inspire meaningful, positive communication. Less correction and more direction. Horses are honest; they answer us in kind. If we want a better response, a more fluid conversation and relationship with a horse, we have to be the ones to change first. The other word for that is leadership. By the author of Stable Relation, A Memoir of One Woman’s Spirited Journey Home, by Way of the Barn. “Excitement and delight surge through me every time I see Anna Blake's name as an author. Her writing is filled with deep understanding and heart connection, seasoned with a lively dash of humor. Reading her work is like giving myself a gift...one I can open again and again.” --Kim Walnes, winning USET Three Day Eventer, Riding Instructor/Trainer, and Life Coach.

    She is placed in a foster home, following an operation to amputate one of her front legs, and she hopes that she can stay there forever. When she finds out she can't, she worries that she will never find a home. Who would want a dog with only three legs after all? Then a close encounter with a dangerous stranger changes everything... Told in her own voice, "Jessica's Diary" follows the thoughts and feelings of a lost little puppy, trying to negotiate a world filled with uncertainty and people with unknown intentions. Inspired by a true story. This is a short story of approximately 30 print pages

    Both the veterinary community and dog-owners alike are hailing the arrival of "Living With Blind Dogs".In it, Levin successfully answers the question most commonly asked by devastated pet-lovers: "What do I do now?" Levin came to write this book, when after a decade in human ophthalmic nursing she left that field to manage an ophthalmic veterinary clinic. Here, she was able to meld her knowledge of ophthalmology with her love of dogs, developing badly needed educational materials for clients. Levin took the opportunity to meet many blind dogs and talk with their owners. Caroline Levin is also an award-winning dog trainer. She has an in-depth understanding of canine behavior and the methods used to successfully train dogs. She shows her dogs in obedience competitions and the new sport of musical canine freestyle.

    As a hardy, easy care, and potentially long-lived lizard, the leopard gecko is the perfect size, attractive in its velvety skin, and fairly easy to breed. The subject of breeding geckos is covered in multiple chapters in this book led by author and herp expert de Vosjoli, who is joined by gecko specialists Dr. Roger Klingenberg, Ron Tremper, and Dr. Brian Viets, who each contribute special chapters to this up-to-date and authoritative guide. Colorfully illustrated, Leopard Geckos provides excellent general guidelines for keepers who wish to add a gecko to their vivarium and maintain their pet in excellent health and condition. The authors provide an introduction to gecko characteristics including distribution, size, longevity, and growth rate, to help beginners better understand the anatomy and behavior of these fascinating lizards. This Advanced Vivarium Systems title includes information about selecting a healthy leopard gecko, handling, housing needs, water and feeding requirements, and shedding and tail loss. Dr. Klingenberg provides the chapter “The Recognition and Treatment of Disease,” which covers specific disorders keepers should be aware of. De Vosjoli begins the discussion on breeding leopard geckos, and then is joined by Dr. Viets for a chapter on “Incubation Temperature and Hatchling Sex and Pigmentation.” Tremper’s chapter on “Color and Pattern Variations” focuses on the genetic aspects of breeding leopard geckos. The book also discusses the African fat-tailed gecko plus other eublepharids, including the African clawed gecko, Japanese leopard gecko, Malaysian cat gecko, and the Central American banded gecko.

    They all grew up dreaming of skating in the big league as stars. Then one day, a coach tells them the only way to make it is to drop the gloves. And every guy says the same thing: I'll do whatever it takes to play in the NHL.Not Stu Grimson, though. When he was offered a contract to patrol the ice for the Calgary Flames, he said no thanks, and went to university instead. And that's the way Grimson has approached his career and his life: on his own terms. He stared down the toughest players on the planet for seventeen years, while working on his first university degree. He retired on his own terms, and went on to practice law, including a stint as in-house counsel for the NHLPA.This has put him in a unique position when it comes to commenting on the game. He's seen it from the trenches, and he's seen it from the courtroom. This puts him in the eye of the storm surrounding fighting and concussions. And he handles that the way he does everything: on his own terms. When Don Cherry called him out on televison, it was the seemingly indominable Cherry who backed down. Hockey fans will be fascinated by his data-driven defence of fighting.But in the end, this is not a book about fighting and locker-room stories. It's the story of a young man who ultimately took on the toughest role in pro sports and came out the other side. Where many others have not.

    It was shortly before 19h00 when Don Steenkamp jumped out of the vehicle and ran into the station’s charge office, covered in blood, to announce that his parents and sister had been brutally shot and killed on the family farm, Naauwhoek. Although the killings were initially thought to be just another farm attack, months later a sixteen-year-old youth was arrested for the murders, setting in motion a chain of events that would grip South Africa, and divide the people of Griekwastad.Based on interviews with all the role-players, including the investigating officers on the case, the forensic and ballistic experts, and family and friends of the deceased, this is the riveting account of what really happened on Naauwhoek farm on that fateful day, as told by the reporter who followed the case from day one…

    The story that he tells, nearly 40 years later, is of his early days at home and in school, brought up in a strict mission household and conflicting with his father.

    A book for apprentice falconers wanting to know the basics of becoming a falconer. Shows a step-by-step approach to training your first wild caught hawk.

    One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre handguns, dispensing heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and fear. This is the story of the second city… In Gang Town, investigative journalist and criminologist Don Pinnock draws on more than thirty years of research to provide a nuanced and definitive portrait of youngsters caught up in violent crime.

    "If I don't offer it milk, our son will grow up to look like a lizard," she explained. Clearly I had a lot to learn about life in Africa.On the cusp of middle age, Simon Fenton leaves Britain in search of adventure and finds Senegal, love, fatherhood, witch doctors—and a piece of land that could make a perfect guest house, if only he knew how to build one. The Casamance is an undiscovered paradise here mystic Africa governs life, people walk to the beat of the djembe, when it rains it pours, and the mangoes are free. But the fact that his name translates to "vampire" and he has had a curse placed on him via the medium of eggs could mean Simon’s new life may not be so easy.

    250,000 first printing. $225,000 ad/promo.

    It is in the heart of the southern midlands of KwaZulu-Natal, Alan Paton country, and it is true that “… from there, if there is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest scenes of Africa.” Later I will tell you more about that landscape, and of how it changed during the course of my investigations; a spectacular backdrop of giant shapes and colours when I first saw it, a myriad dramas of human anger and violence when I left …’In the spring of 1999, in the beautiful hills of the Kwa-Zulu-Natal midlands, a young white farmer is shot dead on the dirt road running from his father’s farmhouse to his irrigation fields. The murder is the work of assassins rather than robbers; a single shot behind the ear, nothing but his gun stolen, no forensic evidence like spent cartridges or fingerprints left at the scene.Journalist Jonny Steinberg travels to the midlands to investigate. Local black workers say the young white man had it coming. The dead man’s father says that the machinery of a political conspiracy has been set into motion, that he and his neighbours are being pushed off their land.Initially thinking that he is to write about an event in the recent past, Steinberg finds that much of the story lies in the immediate future. He has stumbled upon a festering frontier battle, the combatants groping hungrily for the whispers and lies that drift in from the other side. Right from the beginning, it is clear that the young white man is not the only one who will die on that frontier, and that the story of his and other deaths will illuminate a great deal about the early days of post-apartheid South Africa.Sifting through the betrayals and the poisoned memories of a century-long relationship between black and white, Steinberg takes us to a part of post-apartheid South Africa we fear to contemplate.Midlands is about the midlands of the heart and mind, the midlands between possession and dispossession, the midlands between the past and present, myth and reality. Midlands is a tour de force of investigative journalism.

    Remember me though it hurts to do so, because the pain you have is equal to the love we shared, and as long as you feel something, I am here with you. There is no goodbye if you carry me in your heart. Remember all the joy we shared, because there was so much of it for both of us.” Herbie Longfellow Alderdice Are you a dog owner who is in the process of losing your best friend to illness? Or have you lost your beloved friend and you are struggling to get over them? Pet bereavement is tough. Not everyone sympathises with you. Jeannie Wycherley chose to write this book after the loss of her beloved boy, Herbie, because she was hurt by the repetition of the phrase, “he was just a dog.” She realised that her grief transcended that tired notion - one tritely rolled out by people who think they’re being helpful and supportive, failing to realise the guilt and shame many pet owners already experience when they are locked deep in mourning. Losing my Best Friend seeks to dispel the myth that any of our best friends are ever ‘just’ dogs, and it acknowledges that the recovery from dog bereavement is a journey we make mostly on our own, which many find isolating. Losing my best friend demonstrated that there is no rule book, and no hard and fast techniques that will make you ‘better’. Recovery should be taken at your own pace. There is no schedule, and no-one has the right to say, “Oh, I thought you’d be over it by now.” Losing my Best Friend: thoughtful support for those affected by dog bereavement or pet loss also offers practical advice about what to do when your dog passes away, including tips on helping your children or other pets cope with the loss, designing your own ceremony to celebrate your dog’s life, and creating memorials. One of the biggest strengths of this book is that it validates what you are feeling. Other people share similar experiences and emotions, and recognise your struggle. You’re normal! In these pages Jeannie Wycherley has created a loving tribute to Herbie, and Losing my Best Friend delivers support with a light and loving touch.