Book Review: A Dog Called Hope (Labrador Retriever service dog, Texas, Air Force veteran)

A Dog Called Hope: A Wounded Warrior and the Service Dog Who Saved Him, by Jason Morgan and Damien Lewis* (Simon and Schuster, 2017, 324 pages, $26)

Imagine

Imagine you are a special operations-type Air Force guy, fully physically fit and well-prepared for the job. You brief others on your team.

Then, it happens. You are stationed in a foreign country, drive into an ambush and the vehicle turns over. On you. You are medevac’d back to the States but will never walk again. Your future lies in a chair – a wheelchair.

The pain is excruciating. Your marriage breaks up. How can a guy in a wheel chair ever raise three boys alone?

Then, It Happens!

After a few years, quite by chance you meet someone from a service dog organization and, after contemplating a while, you apply for a service dog, a service dog who changes your life and gives you meaning and a mission for living: spreading the word about service dogs for veterans and living life to the fullest.

Napal is a Black Lab

Napal is so much more than ‘just a dog.’ He picks things up, he finds lost keys, he opens and closes doors – but, most of all, he is love and joy and fun. And love changes your life and the lives of your sons.

A Star Among Stars

Napal is a star among stars. A service dog can be a bridge to a wider body of humanity. Service dogs change every life they touch, especially their new human family who becomes nearly normal again with relief that their person now has someone to help take care of him not to mention the independence a service dog brings – a new start on life.

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, or, Choose Your Battles

For some reason, DogEvals reviews a lot of service dog books ** and military books*** - perhaps because one of us is a veteran and a dog trainer.

A Dog Called Hope earns an A-minus**** from DogEvals. The good is a simply amazing story, well-written to a T. Would you believe Napal’s puppy raiser, Jim, was a wheelchair-bound veteran himself and Napal was selected to assist a wheelchair-bound veteran? But be prepared to shed a few happy and a few sad tears.

And the lesson Morgan and Napal convey is to not sweat the small things. Sure, the duo was refused service when trying to purchase some snacks at a gas station, a doctor refused to discuss laboratory results with them immediately before surgery because of Napal’s presence (legal), and Jason had to (chose to) leave the field when coaching a boy’s football game because one parent was afraid his chair would get out of control and injure her son.

Napal lives for the day – today and every day (but too few, in the end). He brings Morgan back down to earth and tells him that they are legally in the right but that trying to explain their rights is simply not worth it sometimes. Other times, the world bends over backwards to get to know the duo and do whatever they can to make life easier. They even visit the White House!

How Does Napal Do It All?

“The amazing thing with this kind of training is that Jim [puppy raiser] never once scolds Napal. Jim’s golden rule is: Reinforce and praise the positive. Find the good in the dog, not the bad. Don’t overcorrect the bad; seek the good to praise. We don’t. Punish. The dog. It isn’t right to, and in any case, it doesn’t work.” (p. 178)

Hope is an excellent uplifting way to spend a weekend. It may just change your life.

*Lewis also wrote Sergeant Rex, Judy, It’s All About Treo and The Dog Who Could Fly.

**A Dog Like Daisy, Chester and Gus, Cowboy and Wills. Also the Tuesday books.

***Megan Leavy, The Places in Between (Afghanistan), It’s What I Do (female combat photographer), War Machine, War Dogs, Dogs of War.

****only an A-minus due to terms like ‘command’ and an inappropriate visit to a zoo