Linkfest
Dogo Canario Club of America (parent club for the Presa Canario) http://www.dogocanario.org/
Staffordshire Terrier Club of America (the history area is very interesting) http://www.amstaff.org/index.htm
American Kennel Club’s Legislation Position page (where the AKC stands on certain canine issues) http://www.akc.org/love/dip/legislat/can...
American Dog Owners Association (fights BSL) http://www.adoa.org
Rott-N Literature
When Katie Wakes by Connie May Fowler
This month I might be accused of cheating a bit. This book is neither fiction, nor is it technically a dog story. When Katie Wakes is a new biography by Connie May Fowler, who also wrote the novel When Women Had Wings. It is the story of how Fowler managed to come to grips with her past and escape a physically/emotionally abusive relationship. The reason that I have featured it this month is because one of the main factors that inspired Fowler’s break for freedom was her relationship with her dog, a black lab/shepherd mix named Katie.
Fowler had grown up in an abusive home. She witnessed her father’s abuse of her mother. After her father’s death, her alcoholic mother, in turn, began to abuse the children emotionally and physically. A deformity in her own physical appearance only served to drive Fowler’s esteem even lower. By the time she was in her mid twenties, she found herself repeating the relationship she had with her mother in the form of a seven-year relationship with an extremely abusive, alcoholic man thirty years her senior.
According to Fowler, the turning point in her life came when she adopted a small black puppy from an abusive home of its own. From the moment Katie entered her life, Fowler began gradually to find her own strength. She began to realize that there was nothing wrong or unlovable about her, as her mother and boyfriend had led her to believe. Katie certainly didn’t think anything was wrong with her. At one point, Fowler tells the reader about a time when she was standing in the bathroom with a razor in hand, contemplating suicide. Katie simply walked into the room and the idea of taking her life suddenly didn’t seem like an option any more. She couldn’t leave Katie alone.
This book is not a dog story, but Fowler’s story. It tells about how she found the courage to find a good, progressive job and make new friends. She eventually puts her self-consciousness aside and talks to a doctor about fixing her deformed jaw, not because someone told her to, but because she wanted to. Finally, she loses her heart to a good man who helps her make the final break with her abuser.
| Here's the follow-up discussion on this article: | View all related messages |
For a complete listing of article comments, questions, and other discussions related to Wendy Smith's Rottweiler Dogs topic, please visit the Discussions page.