About the Book
About the artist
Completed Chapters:
1. Finding Your Inner Dog: changing your perspective changes everything
2. DNA Rules Us All: we are who we are as a result of our DNA
3. Temperament: easy, difficult and slow-to-warm-up
4. Life Is A Bell-Shaped Curve: the bell curve illustrates how a very small percentage of us have blessed lives and a very small percentage of us have tragic lives while most of us (dogs and people) have average lives containing a more even mix of good and bad
5. Most of Us are Mutts: that’s actually a good thing due to hybrid vigor
6. No One Ever Really Changes That Much: so we might as well accept what we can’t change!
7. The Concept of A “Good Fit”: some of us go together well and some of us don’t
8. Handling Difficult Relationships: sometimes we can try to manage a difficult relationship by creating physical and/or emotional space….sometimes we might just need to walk away
9. The Search for Self-Acceptance
10. Hurdles to Acceptance and Peace
11. The More We Resist Something The More It Persists: in other words, ignoring our problems won’t make them go away
12. Self-Improvement in Spite of our Genetic Selves: thankfully people, just like dogs, can be trained!
27. Dangerous Dogs/Dangerous People: trusting our instincts and remembering to stay a bit paranoid (this chapter is out of order but it’s so important I wanted to get it out there)
Chapters in Progress:
13. Self-improvement in spite of our Genetic Blueprint
14. Choose to Believe That Things Turn Out as They Need to (even if we can’t understand why)
15. Biology and Hormones: how they run our lives
16. Reproduction and Love: the fear of not being loved
17. Addiction: the inescapable need we have to escape the harshness of reality…it could be drugs and alcohol but it could also be working to excessive, work, needing to be needed to the point we try to rescue and save others, compulsive exercising, compulsive eating, compulsive sexual activity, excessive sleeping, on and on…
18. Survival: concerns our need to protect ourselves and why we tend to play it safe; the fear of dying is the source of most of our anxiety…involves our need to not get hurt in any part of ourselves: heart, mind, body or soul
19. The Need to Believe in a Higher Being: it’s how we deal with the inherent sadness of the world and our lives
20. What Kind of Dog Am I: Why life’s easier when we think of ourselves as a dog
21. Working breeds: perfectionists and leaders
22. Sporting breeds: extroverts and clowns
23. Herding breeds: controllers
24. Hounds: loungers
25. Terriers: high-energy multi-taskers
26. Toy breeds: dependent and anxious
27. Dangerous dogs: no dog is ever worth someone’s life or well-being
28. Finding Peace