Reviews for Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain

The average rating for Dog Man: An Uncommon Life on a Faraway Mountain based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2008-04-14 00:00:00 Mark Buckham I really liked this book. This book is about Morie Sawataishi, his wife Kitako and their family. By that I mean both their children and their dogs - Akitas. Check out Wiki to see how beautiful these dogs look. There you can only see their appearance. Every dog breed has not only an appearance, but also a particular personality. Morie saved this breed from extinction. In Japan after WW2 there remained only 16 Akitas. During the war they were killed to provide fur vests for soldiers, and there simply was no food to nourish dogs when people were starving. In fact this is not the only breed almost driven to extinction by the war. During the war, Morrie kept his dog No-Name alive, at the expense of his family. After the war he worked to expand and unify the breed. The point of breeds is to ensure that a litter is uniform. When you buy a dog of a particular breed you know in advance what you are getting, both mentally and physically. It is important to note that not only appearance is uniform, but also a mental conformity is achieved through breeding. The character of a Golden is not that of a Huskie or an Airedale or a Flat. Appearance and character are both genetically inherited. This is not to say that how you train and raise your dog isn't equally important. I appreciate that Morie saw the importance of shaping the breed's mental disposition over simple physical attributes. It is a tricky balance act. First you have to strive toward creating a healthy, alert, intelligent mentality; only thereafter can you play with the color and thickness of the coat, curl of the tale, and shape of the ears! All too often breeders fixate on appearance, forgetting the importance of character, humor and spark, the spirit of the dog. This book is much more than a typical dog breed book. It is about Morie and the family and how Morie's love for his dogs shaped every element of family life. This is about a person who goes after his goal, and everybody else has to follow. That sounds pretty brutal and selfish, but you know in the end I believe their life was good. That is what is interesting about this book! You get to look at another's life and judge for yourself what you think of their life. It is also about living life with a passion. It is about living life for one you love; some of us don't have these strong passions, maybe we want to follow rather than lead. It is about learning who you really are. I think it took Kitako quite a while to realize that she was in fact living a good life. Was it really being forced upon her? Sometimes it is easier to just grumble, but do nothing to change anything. When you read this book you cannot but compare it with your own family relationships and choices. Who won in the long run? Who suffered most? Each one in the family and each reader will have a different opinion. Is life best in the city or in the country? That is another theme. The narration by Laural Merlington was fine. She just read the text. The thoughts presented are what engage you. OK, the Japanese names are in the beginning a little hard, but after a while you recognize who is who. I pulled out a map to find the cities Akita and Sendai. So, you get life with a passionate dog lover, a lot to think about in terms of how people relate to each other and what life choices each of us wants to make. Very good book. Lots to think about.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-03-24 00:00:00 Ronald Shockley This book is about a very rare subject that I happen to love and have never really found in another book--I felt like I'd discovered treasure. Many of the dog breeds we know today were created or heavily influenced by one or two eccentric, dedicated people. Usually, not much is known about them other than their names and a lot of anecdotes and myths. For this book, the author interviewed Morie Sawataishi, a man who helped save the Japanese Akita from extinction and shaped it into the dog it is now. His dogs consumed his whole life. The book is less about him than it is about his wife, and how she learned to live with and eventually respect a man who loved dogs and the Japanese wilderness more than anything else. It's beautiful, honest, and sad, and an amazing work of art.