Harcourt, Inc.
Available: 06/15/07
6 x 9 · 320 pages
978-0-15-101270-1 CDN $27.95 · cl

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Merle’s Door

Lessons from a Freethinking Dog

Ted Kerasote

A deeply touching portrait of a remarkable dog, Merle’s Door explores the issues that all animals and their human companions face as their lives intertwine.

Award-winning author Ted Kerasote tells the story of Merle, a half-wild Labrador mix he adopted while camping and then brought back to the city. He realized that Merle’s native intelligence would be diminished by living exclusively in the human world. He put a dog door in his house so Merle could live both outside and in.

Kerasote presents the latest research into animal consciousness and behaviour, as well as the origins and evolution of the human-dog partnership. Merle showed Kerasote how dogs might live were they allowed to make more of their own decisions, and Kerasote suggests how these lessons can be applied anywhere.

“Sly, funny, and wise look at the world beyond the walls that we erect to keep ourselves safe from the wilderness and to keep the wilderness safe from us.” (Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, on Out There)

Ted Kerasote (Wyoming) has written for Audubon, National Geographic Traveler, Outside, Field & Stream, Salon and the New York Times. He is the author of Bloodties and Out There: In the Wild in a Wired Age, winner of the 2004 National Outdoor Book Award.