Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog | Ted Kerasote

Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog | Ted Kerasote | Realistic story of life with a true companion dog

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Merle's Door: Less...

	Merle's Door: Lessons from a Freethinking Dog Ted Kerasote Harcourt, 2007 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 141 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

While on a camping trip, Ted Kerasote met a dog?a Labrador mix?who was living on his own in the wild. They became attached to each other, and Kerasote decided to name the dog Merle and bring him home. There, he realized that Merle?s native intelligence would be diminished by living exclusively in the human world. He put a dog door in his house so Merle could live both outside and in.

A deeply touching portrait of a remarkable dog and his relationship with the author, Merle?s Door explores the issues that all animals and their human companions face as their lives intertwine, bringing to bear the latest research into animal consciousness and behavior as well as insights into the origins and evolution of the human-dog partnership. Merle showed Kerasote how dogs might live if they were allowed to make more of their own decisions, and Kerasote suggests how these lessons can be applied universally.

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The best of a thousand

I've read a thousand books, and most I'd consider good as I try to be discriminating with my reading. By good, I mean in the sense that I've been delighted, enriched, made to laugh out loud, and shown countless insights into living and this life we share. With no reservation, I count Merle's Door my favorite.
No doubt the author's singleness, his passion for the outdoors, and his home ground, Jackson Hole, played a large part in my relating so well to the story. Most of all, though, Kerosote captures something very, very special and opens our eyes to a real and magnificent world that heretofore we never gave a thought.
Compelled by the beautiful meaning in this true account, I closed the cover on the last page one morning at 3:00a.m. I was standing in my kitchen reading those final pages after having set all the house's lighting ablaze trying as I could with false courage and faltering hope to stave off my tightening throat--but alas to no avail.

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Realistic story of life with a true companion dog

Merle's Door is a great dual-biography...of both the author as well as his companion dog, Merle. As is true with most dogs, their story is interwoven with that of their human family...and, like their human counterparts, would be quite incomplete without the companion tale of the rest of the family. Merle's story would be incomplete with Ted's and, clearly, Ted's story would be incomplete without Merle.
I found parts of the book to be touching, parts are unquestionably sad, and much of it similar to the things I have often thought and felt about my dog Bear. Needless to say, Bear is among the great dogs known to mankind...loyal and true, able to read my moods, but quite independent and able to make himself happy.
No one who professes to be a "dog lover" should miss this book. Ted Kerosote is thoughtful, well written and clearly an animal lover. Although he may be more of an "outdoorsman" than many of us "city slickers", he is able to touch the heart and mind of any dog lover. Read it!

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Don't order this book from Amazon !!!!

I did and I am so disappointed because it did NOT have the pictures in it as it was supposed to. So I am sending it back and going to the bookstore where I should have gone in the first place. I have heard its an excellent book !!!!!!

Dogs, love and grief

This is a long book. I know that sounds like a simpleton opening, but somewhere slightly past the middle of this tome, I started finding some of the corroborating scientific information about the relationships between men and other mammals just a bit "teedjus," ya know? I mean I bought the book because I love a good dog book, so I wasn't terribly interesting in learning about horses and chimps along the way. That said though, Kerasote has written an extremly thoughtful book about men and dogs, and why they love each other - or don't. There are several places in the book where Kerasote protests a bit too much, methinks, that he does NOT anthropomorphize Merle, or the other dogs in this book, then rationalizes like hell, using esoteric bits of scientific trivia to "prove" he doesn't. But hell, he does. He knows it, and so do we. And we don't care. Because this is just a great love story that any dog-lover cannot help but enjoy. I have a neighbor who has, over the years, owned three retired greyhounds. When he lost the second one, who died very suddenly of a twisted gut, I felt badly for Jim. But he acknowledged quietly the age-old problem that comes with loving a dog. He told me sadly, "Dogs. No matter how much you love 'em, it always ends in grief." And that is certainly how MERLE'S DOOR ends. Oh, I know that Kerasote tried to dress it up a bit with that last (anthropomorphic) line from Merle's spirit: "I dance! I DANCE!" But my God, that last chapter was just gut-wrenching, and it brought back all the tearful times of losing dogs of my own over the years. Yes, I cried. And because of that beautiful last chapter, Ted, I forgive you for all that pseudo-scholarly "teedjusness" in the middle of the book. That final chapter clinched the 5-star rating. Thanks for sharing your story. I know, of course, there'll never be another Merle, but I hope you've found - or will soon find - another golden pal. - Tim Bazzett, author of ReedCityBoy

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don't have to be a dog lover . . .

i highly recommend this book. right now it's making the rounds at my vet's clinic. the writing is beautiful and the story knocked me out. made me sad i don't live where i can let the dogs off-lead. but we have a great chain of dog parks around louisville, so they get some free-running time with others. what a wonder Merle was! since i'm originally from that area [born in montana] i got a double hit off ted's story. read it! you'll love it!!!

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