Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 19
 This book would make you want a Newf! June 13, 2005
Lizzybluts (Bath, Ohio)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed reading this book. We had just gotten two Newfoundland pups and I had to keep putting the book down to go kiss my dogs. The author made me appreciate what breeders go through to bring us our puppies. This was a wonderful story about a very special breed.
I have recommended to book to many people.
 Dog Lover July 15, 2004
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
I bought this book thinking it would be more on the lines of photos and short stories. Instead it is more like a novel. The book itself is a nice presentation as far as the cover photo and the printing adequate in size. The content I did not care for at all. I found the subject matter a little to weird. For example she uses descriptions like "having an intimate relationship with her dogs" and she needing to be more like a dog and her dog wanting to be more human. I found this a bit to much closeness for me. It was out there. I didn't even get 1/4 of the way through it and stopped reading. If I had actually seen this book in person I would not have purchased it for any price let alone for the steep price of $27.95.
You hate for it to end May 25, 2004
very (florida)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Wonderful book that you hate to have come to an end. Captured the love and joy of sharing your life with a Newf. Entertaining as well as engaging.
 Utterly Presumptuous October 2, 2003
Stephen Sayad (San Francisco)
13 out of 19 found this review helpful
I have a three-year old Newfoundland, and have had dogs all my life. I had to put my 12-year old Golden Retriever down just a few months ago. I just began to read this book and was upbeat about the prospect of doing so, having read so many flattering reviews. Then, I finished pages one and two, and felt sick. For anyone (much less someone who purports to understand dogs in general and newfies in particular), to claim that ". . .their life's work is not to be dog, but to be human" and that "[t]hey work to be human, to be other than what they are", is so utterly full of ill-founded presumption that I doubt I will ever open the book again.
The most wise words even written about dogs comes from Eugene O'Neill, ironically quoted in Bruce Weber's incredible book on newfies, "Gentle Giants". As Mr. O'Neill so perceptively states: Dogs are wiser than men.
They do not set great store upon things.
They do not waste their days hoarding property.
They do not ruin their sleep worrying about how
to keep the objects they have, and to obtain the
objects they have not.
There is nothing of value they have to bequeath
except their love and their faith. Anyone who has shared life with a dog knows this to be true, and could never make humans the idol of dogs. If only humans had the compassion and love of dogs, this world would be a far better place. As Lord Byron put in his poetry on dogs (another newfie lover), it is "vile man" who has ruined the earth, and who ruins his life with worry, materiality, and all the other trappings of post-modernism. Our dogs give us what we can no longer give ourselves, the closest thing to unconditional love. How sad it is for someone to misunderstand the truth, and to state such utter folly as fact. The author has learned little, if anything, from her gentle giants. Stephen Samuel Sayad
It is now available... December 7, 2002
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
It is THE book to read if you've ever owned a Newfy. The reprint has pictures of the Lerman's Newfies...
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