Animal wisdom Learning from the spiritual lives of animals

What we do for animals, we do for ourselves. Bender, a veterinarian and animal advocate, discusses this central tenet of her personal philosophy in a work that is basically one of unconditional love. When we love animals and fully understand them, their innate happiness and connection with the world will make us happier. In seven chapters, Bender explores these beliefs, writing of the connections animals make with each other and how we humans can connect with them. Stories of pets that find their way to their humans hundreds of miles distant, or of therapy animals that calm psychiatric patients, illustrate her theme that animals have souls (the Latin anima, meaning soul, is the root of the word animal) and that our souls and theirs can communicate. Her final chapters provide guidelines for how to connect with animals intuitively in an extrasensory or telepathic capacity, which she believes that everyone is able to do.--Bent, Nancy Copyright 2014 Booklist

Pet therapist Bender's debut book mixes the endearing and the enlightened with the folkloric, the anecdotal, and the downright silly. Given Americans' passionate affection for their pets, most people need little convincing that there is much to be learned from their company, including an acceptance of the world as it is and, as Bender puts it, "not having to figure everything out." There pis an unmistakable reciprocity between the animal world and the human one, but whether many would believe that dogs can detect cancer or predict epileptic seizures is harder to say. The author includes advice on how to communicate telepathically with animals and two narratives in the voices of dogs and white lions. VERDICT Bender's brief volume is another entry in the growing body of spiritual literature about animals and should be of interest to pet owners and seekers in alternative spiritualities, as well as the ecologically minded. (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.