Sit, Stay, Heal: What Dogs Can Teach Us about Living Well

ISBN: 0063215225

Author: Renee Alsarraf

An esteemed veterinary oncologist battles her own cancer diagnosis while fighting to save her four-legged patients diagnosed with the same disease in this moving and uplifting memoir. For more than two decades, esteemed veterinary oncologist Dr. Renee Alsarraf treated cancer in canine patients. Then at fifty-one she received a cancer diagnosis of her own. Suddenly, the disease she had been fighting her entire career threatened her own life. But Renee wasn't alone--she had her dogs to show her the way. In this stunningly beautiful memoir, Renee shows us why canines are the perfect guides to help us navigate traumatic and difficult experiences. Dogs, she reveals, are unbelievably hopeful, wonderfully stoic, and unwaveringly cheerful even under treatment that would make most of us humans nauseous, angry, and sad. These wonderful animals are terrific reminders of the power of the human spirit, and what is available within ourselves. Each chapter of Sit, Stay, Heal opens with the story of a remarkable dog. We meet Cosmo, the golden retriever, diagnosed with cancer just before his fourteenth family vacation to the beach; Daisy the cocker spaniel, an emotional support dog diagnosed during a difficult time for her owners; Franny the bloodhound, a police dog who wasn't ready to retire from the force; and Dr. Renee's own boxer, Newton, whose lymph nodes begin to expand at only five years old. Full of life lessons and healing metaphors, perfect dogs and their imperfect humans, Sit, Stay, Heal is a captivating story of illness and survival, and a moving celebration of all that dogs have to teach us about life and how to live.