OK, I have to stop reading this thread now, I keep breaking down in tears here at work, my coworkers are going to think I’m nuts.
My children will now have all the books mentioned above on their forbidden book lists, let them stick with Twilight and Harry Potter, or the black stallion novels!
With Halloween in full swing ABC Family has been playing the movie Hocus Pocus. Enter DD (age9) and I watching it as it’s one of my favorite SJP before she was famous movies. In the movie the black cat (Binx) is squished by a truck. Being immortal he pops back up, I know that so we’re all good there. Completely forgot that the cat dies at the end of the movie. He turns back into the little boy but his body of the cat is just lying there dead. Trying to explain to DD it’s a happy ending when all she is seeing is the dead cat was not easy.
Immediate tear jerks for me is the footage for Eight Belles, especially since they euthed her before her owner could get to her. He missed her by MOMENTS!
LOVE LOVE LOVE the Finn book. Totally made me want to own a wolfhoud!
[QUOTE=StGermain;5916913]
Not a book, but a movie. There’s an old, old movie called The Biscuit Eater (not the 1960’s version, but one from the 40’s). My mother remembered being taken to that movie when she was 8 or 9 years old. Her dad was a Detroit cop who also raised and trained hunting dogs. He sat there in the theatre surrounded by his kids, bawling like a baby.In the story, two little boys raise a cast-off pointer. The dog is an egg-sucker, stealing from the henhouse. The boys train him, breaking his egg-sucking. In a field trial, the boys make the dog break his point, because they’re afraid if the dog wins, the boys’ fathers could loose their jobs. So they talk to the dog, telling him he’s a no-account egg-sucker. They break the dogs heart and spirit and he runs out of the field. My mother watched the movie 60 years later and it still brought her to tears. She called her sister and asked if she remembered the movie, and my aunt started crying without even watching a minute of it.
Mara - I saw (and cryed over) Hachi. Just breaks my heart.
StG[/QUOTE]
The movie was based on a book by James H. Street. It is much better than the movie, even though the dog does die in the end. It is a great southern story about bird dogs, men who love them and the relationship between a black sharecropper’s kid and a middle class white kid. The Disney movie was too sickly sweet in my book and missed the whole point of Street’s story.
OMG we all need a 12 step program!
I find that cats are often killed off gratuitously – I read mysteries and crime novels, and it is becoming almost stereotypical to show the early life of a psychopath or sociopath where he/she kills cats. I pretty much lose it at that time. I have heard – thank god with 2 or 3 degrees of separation – of things that groups of teens would do to cats, and these are people who (presumably) grew up into normal human beings, not serial killers. I feel like I need to interview people – do you, have you, do you know anyone who has…
I blubber my way through all of the stories and movies with an animal death or other calamity, but I do still choose to watch them. Heck I watch Hallmark commercials too, and I’ve never gotten through one of them without crying either…
OK, adult dog book where the do lives: A Dog’s Life - Peter Mayle. For folks who read A Year in Provence / Toujours Provence, these are some of the same stories, but told through the POV of the stray they adopt. It’s very funny. A few tougher chapters in the beginning when he’s at his first home and then abadoned, worth reading.
One obscure dog book I remember from childhood was Silver Streak, about a bullied boy who was not allowed to have a dog who of course acquires an unwanted dog, a greyhound, who is eventually beaten by the bullies. Parents find the boy and dog cold and boy wakes up to his mom crying “They killed his dog!” …but the dog lived. Holy potato, Batman, just thinking about that scene makes me choke.
Mara - I read that book “Hidden Life of Dogs” or whatever it was, and I had the exact same reaction to the author. Particularly when she let the dog roam and FOLLOWED IT ON A BICYCLE. What a wack job:mad:
I cannot go anywhere near Old Yeller; I did read Marley, laughed out loud through much of the book. At the “bad part” I was sitting in National Airport waiting for a flight and crying like a baby, so quit and went for a cocktail. Reopened the book on the plane and started all over again. Me thinks the other travelers thought I was a wack job:D
I can still bring myself to tears over the loss of my heart dog at 14, and that was 5 and 1/2 years ago. That’s quite enough for me.
[QUOTE=Lisa Preston;5918843]
OK, adult dog book where the do lives: A Dog’s Life - Peter Mayle. [/QUOTE]
Love that one - couldn’t remember the name. I think Mayle’s books are delightful 
[QUOTE=wireweiners;5918563]
The movie was based on a book by James H. Street. It is much better than the movie, even though the dog does die in the end. It is a great southern story about bird dogs, men who love them and the relationship between a black sharecropper’s kid and a middle class white kid. The Disney movie was too sickly sweet in my book and missed the whole point of Street’s story.[/QUOTE]
wireweiners - The movie my mother watched wasn’t the saccharine Disney version, it was a much grittier, earlier one. In fact, I don’t think the dog dies in the Disney version. I’m afraid to look for the book
StG
I actually liked Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein. Yes, it was very sad in parts but other parts were great.
Maybe I’m a glutton for punishment. I also liked (but was saddened by) Where the Red Fern Grows, Watership Down and the Plague Dogs.
And there was some guy who wrote a best seller about his dog (total dog person) that somehow ended up with a cat. He wrote about the cat, too. I read both of those but can’t remember the author. Anyone know?
I also liked these two books - My Cat Spit McGee and My Dog Skip by Willie Morris. IIRC he got the dog as a kid so it died somewhere in the book (it’s been a while since I read it) but the cat didn’t die. I think the Dog Skip was made into a movie.
IF you like to read books with lots of dogs in them, but not necessarily ABOUT any particular one of them (and none die), then our own COTHer, Laurian Berenson, has a whole series of them. I mean like 20 or more. They are known as the Melanie Travis mystery series, but they are all set in the dog show world and are quite fun to read.
St.Germain, I didn’t know that version existed. I wonder if it’s ever been on TCM or one of the other old movie channels. I’d like to see it, even if they did change the dogs’ names. The boys’ dog was called Moreover, they got the name from a Bible version that began, Moreover, the dog. Mr. Ames’s dog, trained by the father, was called Silver Belle because she was so small that she had to wear a silver bell on her collar so they could locate her in tall cover.
Sonesta, I love Laurien Berenson’s books. I didn’t know she was a COTHer. I used to show dogs and reading her books takes me back to my dog showing days. One of my favorites was the one where the editor of the kennel club newsletter digs up dirt on all the members, is blackmailing them and winds up murdered. It reminded me of all the gossip and in fighting that went on in my kennel club.
Anybody read the new book “Rin Tin Tin”? I used to watch the series when growing up in France! I loved Rin Tin Tin!
[QUOTE=wireweiners;5920407]
Sonesta, I love Laurien Berenson’s books. I didn’t know she was a COTHer. I used to show dogs and reading her books takes me back to my dog showing days. One of my favorites was the one where the editor of the kennel club newsletter digs up dirt on all the members, is blackmailing them and winds up murdered. It reminded me of all the gossip and in fighting that went on in my kennel club.[/QUOTE]
Yep, she’s LaurieB on here and a very nice lady.
