Exactly what Droopy wanted - a book that focuses on dry treats with longer shelf life. Included is a glossary of ingredients - he gets high paw marks for pointing out potential allergies. Droopy's mommy likes the informative content - what's the difference between using whole wheat versus unbleached all-purpose flour? how can you dry out your biscuits for better storage? Downsides: Book doesn't lie flat and no pictures.

Billed as "for ages 6 and up" -- this book has fun thick cardboard pages and a bone cookie cutter that sits in a hole in the book. Included are 10 easy recipes, touted as the top 10 favorites out of hundreds tested. Except for wheat germ, most ingredients are readily available in your kitchen. The book makes a couple faux "paws" that decrease its rating: Bark-B-Q requires BBQ sauce but the author doesn't caution against sauces that may contain onion powder. Similarly, Santa Paws requires dried fruit and raisins are one of the suggestions. Both are doggy diet no-no's!

Of the whimsical hand-drawn art, Mark remarks, "Is it crappy or artistic?" Get this book and decide for yourself. A small but useful section on food cautions - did you know you shouldn't feed your dog sushi? A wide range of treats, meals, vegetarian dishes, and special occasion feasts will keep us entertained for many meals to come. Downside: no pictures.

Some of the recipes are easy biscuits which Droopy likes. Many are meals like pasta, etc. It gets major negative doggie points for including recipes with raisins. Other ingredient choices are also questionable - Droopy enjoyed pineapple cookies but would not touch a plain pineapple -- are pineapples included just to make it seem more tasty to the humans making it? Some are also no brainers, e.g., turkey burgers. Well yes, dogs are going to like eating turkey burgers but they also like the hamburger sitting on your plate, too, and you don't need to buy a dog cookbook for that. That said, the recipes we've tried so far have impressed Droopy's pals, and it is a beautiful book that opens easily for cooking and has full-color photos for everything.

We picked this up at the ranger station on our first snowshoeing venture. An excellent place to start if you're clueless on where to go like we were. Featuring 81 tracks with directions, time of year to go, etc. We are pleased with the quality of information Nelson puts out with his publications. This isn't geared towards dogs, so not all hikes would be suitable for or allow dogs.

A great guide with photos, contour maps (less useful than a road map though), and directions to 80 dog-friendly hikes. Droopy plans to use this book a lot! It has useful details such as elevation gain, miles, and best months for the hikes.

Thanks to Sarah Morsbach for buying this for us! We love it! Describes trails and parks in Washington and Oregon, specifying on-leash or off-leash. Also lists pet-friendly hotels.

A popular guide to places to take your dog in the Seattle area.

This hike-friendly book has a vinyl cover, zippered edge, and removable pages with a plastic sleeve to protect your page while you have it out hiking. It isn't a dog book, but it's been great for finding places to take Explorer Dog.

Each page is a large glossy photo of dogs in artistic, natural settings. Silvester captures many striking and beautiful poses. It would make a great coffee table book (although it is currently sitting on our bookshelf due to too much crap under our coffee table). We love all his photo books for both cats and dogs.

Our wonderful friend Jane Reidy loaned this great book to us when we were trying to decide what kind of dog to get. It has great pictures and descriptions for every dog, and is a nice large hardcover book that would make a good coffee table book too.

This book was recommended to us by many people, and actually loaned to us by Virginia at the Seattle Animal Shelter when we were deciding whether to adopt a dog. It has excellent advice on how to train your dog based on what its mother would do. We hope everyone will adopt these nonviolent and effective training techniques.

Descriptions and paw ratings of dog-friendly hotels in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. They omit many of the smaller cities, and for the cities they do list it would be nice if there was a list of hotels that didn't accept dogs so you'd know they checked them. 'Doing the Northwest with your Pooch' lists many more hotels and many more cities (just no descriptions), whereas these authors tend to focus more on a limited selection of fancier getaway hotels. The authors donate 5% of book proceeds to the Humane Society of the United States.

If we go on a long trip with Droopy, this book is coming with us. It is a good, up-to-date, huge resource for AAA lodgings, with useful pricing and pet restriction info. Note, however, that it only lists AAA places. For example, 'Doin the NW with your pooch' covers more small towns in Washington State, although those entries are less reliable than the AAA book. Droopy would prefer to be roughing it outdoors, but his parents definitely thank David and Anabeth for the present!

This book was well worth the 25 cents we paid at the Library Sale for it, as it provides a quick handy overview of some places you can take your dog across the country. However, it's only good for starting ideas, as the information is rather sparse and other book reviewers have noted inaccuracies in pet policies (we bought the 1995 version).

Lots of tips on camping and being outdoors with your dog. Includes advice on what to take and first aid for your dog. This is a good book for the overnight hiker. Droopy gives Mark's parents a big woof for sending this book to us.

A fascinating book with research articles on a variety of pet-related topics, spanning history, psychology, and veterinary medicine. I have a special place in my heart for this book because anyone who can do empirical research on why people own dogs and get paid $80 bucks for it must be in dog heaven. Special thanks to Patti Loesche for providing the book for this review.

Precursor to 'The Social Lives of Dogs'. Worthy of your book collection if you can find a hardcover at your local secondhand bookstore. Thomas follows the travels of her free-roaming pets. Her method and observations stirs the heart in some and ire in others. Droopy recommends this read just so you can see for yourself what all the bark is about! It's a very short book.

A series of chapters describing the Thomas household and the pets that come and go from their lives. It is interesting to hear about someone's pets and to notice the commonalities as well as how different other dogs can be. An easy pleasant read and beautifully illustrated with pencil drawings. A big thanks to Patti Loesche for this wonderful graduation present.

We haven't bought the dog book, but the one for cats is great! It has cartoons by Riddell guaranteed to make cat lovers smile. Be warned, it is a very small book, but it makes the perfect gift. Shadow gives this one four cat paws up.