Maybe not of very great literary merit but this was a book I found impossible to put down. A sergeant in the Royal Marines befriends a couple of stray dogs in Afghanistan and eventually brings them home and with considerable difficulty domesticates them, . Eventually he starts a charity to aid soldiers to take home (the United Kingdom, the USA and Holland) dogs they have rescued. Needless to say the UK posed the greatest problems with customs regulations!

A must for dog lovers, but it also throws interesting sidelines (very understressed and understated) oflife in the British Forces (his wife is a PE instructor with the Royal |Navy) and the situation and role of foreign forces in Afghanistan. Apparently all the foreign armed forces forbade the keeping of feral dogs and cats because of the risk of infection, but this was largely ignored not just for he sake of the animals but because the care of them helped to relieve the stress of serving in a war zone. It seems to me the War Office might have been wiser to cure the diseases in the animals than treat the traumasof returning forces

Another point he make is that the perception of some Moslems that keeping pets is forbidden by their religion is a misinterpretation of the Koran. The Prophet Mohammet actually loved animals and adopted a cat which sat on his knee
when he was writing his "sermons" ! He enjoined kindness to animals as a virtue and forbade, not keeping them as pets, but "constricting" or "imprisoning" them! This has been corrected in current translations of the Koran but the damage has been done! How much damage has been done in ALL religions by misinterpretations and misunderstandings of scriptures - sometimes accidental and sometimes deliberate by someone trying to make them fit their beliefs! I think this point was made by another poster recently on another thread. I was so sorry that the recent BBC programme on The King James translation of the Bible glossed over this issue.

This sounds like an interesting one, Penny. I would think animal therapy would be helpful, too, and would be interesting and inexpensive to at least try it.

As for cats, any cat owner will tell you....you don't own a cat...cats own you.

So do dogs Jan, so do dogs!

The therapeutic value of animals is already recognised in some quarters, (although in some circumstances it can actually cause other stresses) but until I read this book, I had never thought of it in connection with the physiological disorders caused by service in war zones.

I know they have animal programs here for veterans once they've returned, but I'd never heard of any programs going on in the war theater. Helps the animals and the soldiers. Great idea, imo.