Today marks the first week since the publication of Talking to Animals: How They Can Understand Us And We Can Understand Them. I don’t really know how the book is faring overall. I know that Battenkill Books has shipped nearly 800 copies of the book, along with my signature and personalization, and today, the very worthy book Soul Of An Octopus by Sy Montgomery bumped the book out of the top slot on Amazon’s Pet Care category.

It is also a week in which I personally understand the urgency of listening to our animals as well as speaking with them. Red’s illness underscores this for me.

All week we have been changing places with Esther The Wonder Pig, an octopus and the puppy nanny. We have pushed the nanny off of the top 50 but the octopus and Esther are fierce competitors.

I feel like the premise of the book is beginning to break through the great fog that shrouds book publishing these days.

“This is a book that has been a long time coming,” wrote one reviewer. “The people who want all elephants and ponies and horses et al removed from our midst and essentially slaughtered with no utopia to frolic in, will hate this book. In the age of Facebook wars where everyone is flinging feces at each other’s opposing views, well, this will be a hot button. But without discussion, without light shed on the subject, how can we ever discover new ideas, and possibly innovative better ways of thinking? We can’t. Bravo to this author and his thought-provoking book.”

And bravo to the reviewer. So far, few people have hated the book and a lot of people have liked it a lot, and that feels good to me. I understand that many people may not agree with the essential premise, but disagreement has never troubled me, in fact, I think democracy – and creativity – thrive on it.

There is also another element to the book, and that is my very personal account of the dogs and donkeys and sheep and steers and barn cats and chickens that have accompanied me through life, and that have taught me so much about how to communicate with animals and listen to them.

I knew last week that Red was feeling badly, because he kept trying to tell me, licking his lips and looking into my eyes, and putting his head on my knee. Because border collies are so stoic and hardy, I didn’t react as quickly as I wished I had, and it wasn’t until Sunday night that I truly heard the message.

Red knows instantly when I am sick and we talk to one another all of the time in our own way. In therapy work, Red looks at me to see if it’s appropriate for  him to approach someone, and he stays with them as long as I want him. I loved writing these stories of talking and listening to animals and those stories are, in so many ways, the heart of the book.

If we don’t understand the real needs and true lives of domesticated animals like horses and elephants and ponies, we cannot possibly make the right decisions about them. An animal rights advocate challenged the premise of my book – she believes it is abuse for draft horses to pull carriages in New York City. I asked her if she had read the reports of the American Veterinary Medical Association and the American Association of Equine Practitioners, or she had read Horse Whisperer Buck Brannaman‘s writing claiming the carriage horses were content and were the luckiest horses on earth.

Or the score of testimonies of equine trainers who journeyed to New York City to examine the horses. Or the 52 reports of New York Police Department investigators and veterinarians who examined the horses every week of the year and found them content and healthy and well cared for.

She had read none of these reports, nor had the mayor of New York, who promised to ban the carriage horses from “day one” of his new administration, an act that would have sent many, if not all of the horses to slaughter.

This is a dangerous reality for animals, when the people who insist  on deciding their future consistently reject truth, facts, or expertise.

If we can’t listen to the most qualified and respected behaviorists and veterinarians and trainers in the country, then we are rejecting, science, medicine and the real needs of animals. How can we make the right decisions about keeping animals in our world if we refuse to understand them and can’t communicate with them?

So on many levels, I believe this book to be important, as well as readable. You can order or buy the book anywhere books are sold, but if you buy it through Battenkill Books, my local bookstore, I will sign and personalize it and you will receive a free tote-bag.

It is my belief, certainly a self-serving one, that you will learn something about communicating with your animals and also help understand why we need a better and wiser understanding of animals in order to keep them in our world.

You can order the book here. I believe it is important and useful, and I will sign it and personalize it. There are lots of classy tote-bags left.