BOOK REVIEW: THEO at the Park - with added Smellessence!

We enjoy our books at Dogs Trust, and we've been known to share them with a four-legged friend before, but this time I had a different 'tester' for a book we were sent: my toddler!

THEO at the Park is a brand new book from Autumn Publishing, aimed at children and with a clever twist - specially scented pages. The story - inspired by the real dog of the same name pictured above - is about a friendly chap who wakes up one day to find he can't smell anything, so he goes on a hunt to find his sense of smell (happily, the real Theo is in full possession of his). We were sent a copy of THEO because, thanks to Autumn's generosity, Dogs Trust receives a donation for every copy of the book sold.

There are three smelly pages, and, thankfully for the reader, they don't include the usual doggy favourites of 'random puddle', 'fox poo' and 'discarded sandwich'. Instead you get to breathe in the aromas of honey, roses and strawberry ice cream - phew!

My daughter, who is just over two and an avid book fan, quickly took to THEO. She enjoyed sniffing at the pages, though she wanted to smell all of them (which still kind of works, as the scents are strong enough to permeate several pages). She liked the colourful illustrations, pointing out all of THEO's toys; she seemed particularly tickled by the fact that he had a teddy bear.

The rest of the afternoon was punctuated by requests to read THEO again, and that's definitely a compliment; while she adores her books, it can take her time to warm to a new one, so the novelty of the scented pages was definitely a plus in getting her to engage with the story.

THEO's recommended audience is 3+.

The usual price is £6.99, but for this week only Autumn Publishing are offering copies at £4.99 INCL P&P if you use the code 'DogsTrust' at the checkout. 

10p goes to Dogs Trust for every copy of THEO at the Park sold.

Buy a copy

Friday Fun Caption Competition: Win SIGNED copies of Marc the Vet's book!

Do you like books about vets? Do you like competitions? Do you like silly pictures of cats? Today is your lucky day...

Below is Izzi, who belongs to one of our lovely fundraising officers, Michelle. We're not sure what she thinks of one of our Dogs Trust mailings, but perhaps you can tell us.

The best part is, if we like your answer you could win a signed copy of Marc Abraham's book, Vet on Call: My First Year as an Out-of-Hours Vet. It's an honest, funny and heartwarming true story of the beginning of the now well-known TV vet's journey caring for animals and we have seven copies to give away to our most creative supporters!

How to enter:

The competition is now closed, but feel free to add your captions for fun if you'd like to!

Although it was a very close call with some excellent entries, and we've picked seven winners, the digital team's favourite so far has been:

"Iz bilingual, I speaks cat and dog but trying to read this human stuff makes me want to hock up a hairball."

Well done Jeri in Aberdeen for that one!

Marc, aka TV's 'Marc the Vet', is a much appreciated friend who has often come along to our Dogs Trust Honours events and we're really happy he chose to let some of our supporters gets their hands on his great book this way.

If you're not lucky, you can always pick up a copy from Amazon.

Book Review: Who Moved My Job? by Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

Who Moved My Job? is actually a short story about globalisation and the shifting tides of workers and skills around the world. So, what's it doing on a dog blog?

Well, Mark Kobayashi-Hillary has very cleverly taken the idea of Border Collies working on a farm who are supplanted by foreign sheep-herding breeds and used it as a nifty allegory for the issues surrounding globalisation.

The three sheepdogs - Winston, Charlie and Blair - are initially cut adrift and in danger of becoming, essentially, extinct. At first they're confused, bewildered and very resistant to any form of change such as finding a home from the centre they've been taken too. In steps Matilda - a wise old Staffordshire Bull Terrier based on Kobayashi-Hillary's dog of the same name and breed - to help push them in the direction of applying their farm skills to city life in a new, exciting and fulfilling way.

There are no trick questions or particularly opaque levels of meaning in the story. The idea is simply to prompt Western society to consider how jobs will develop and move around the world as time moves on. In Kobayashi-Hillary's dog world, those who stay fixed on the past and old use of skills will soon find themselves sidelined but those who examine their abilities and find a new use for them might find that they're in a better position than they started in.

Simple? Yes. Simplistic? Not really. This is the opening question, not the full scale analysis because that latter disection of the issues is what the book is pushing towards in the first place.

This thought provoking and engagingly written piece is well worth the time spent perusing it, and leads to a website from which links to discussions, information about the author and gorgeous pictures of the real Matilda can all be found.

Whether your job is yet to move or you've found yourself on the verge of a shift, take a glance and get involved with the issues.

DoggySnaps Book Club: A Dog Year by Jon Katz

Just last week I was contacted by the lovely Katie from Ebury Publishing who suggested what I (an avid reader) thought was a great idea - a book club on DoggySnaps!

We already knew from various threads on the site that the 'Snappers are big fans of the book world. And since Ebury is the publisher of Jon Katz' series about life as the owner for a troubled young Border Collie (A Dog Year) and bouncy new puppy Rose (A Home for Rose), Katie thought these would be very appropriate for the site.

Ebury has generously offered 15 free copies of A Dog Year (to be followed by A Home for Rose next month) to the first DoggySnappers to email eburyblog@eburypublishing.co.uk with their user name, real name and address. You do need to be a member of DoggySnaps to apply, but signing up is quick, easy and absolutely FREE.

I've got my copy of the book to hand and will get cracking reading it soon for reviewing on this blog; you can be sure I'll be adding my opinion to the forum threads, too.

If you're interested in what's next from the world of Ebury, you can also follow them on Twitter.