A San Francisco Chronicle bestseller: a veterinary behaviorist evokes James Herriot with these remarkable stories of distressed pets and their equally troubled owners. With humor and compassion, renowned animal behaviorist Dr. Nicholas Dodman explores the complex emotional problems of troubled animals and their (often) equally distressed owners, creating a classic of animal literature, with stories as wise, and almost as human, as the lives of the animals they portray. Did you hear about the dog who always arranged exactly six pieces of kibble in buttonhole depressions in the couch before he could lie down? Or the cat who compulsively hoarded shiny objects? Fifteen years ago Dodman began studying the psychological maladies that afflict our pets, helping to launch a field of animal psychotherapy and psychopharmacology that suggests that animals' emotional problems are often as complex, heartrending, and treatable as those of their human counterparts. If Only They Could Speak, with thirteen true stories culled from Dr. Dodman's own practice, echoes the wisdom of writers like Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Jane Goodall. The stories here are as wise, and almost as human, as the lives of the disturbed animals they portray. Animal Personality Assessment Guide included. 15 b/w photographs. Read Less