Weekends with Daisy
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
The weekend program for prison-raised service dogs sounded perfect. Pick up a puppy on Friday, return it on Sudnay. A new puppy each year, no strings attached. Except that the golden labrador called Daisy is not a no-strings-attached kind of dog.
Sharron Kahn Luttrell was still mourning the death of her beloved German shepherd when she decided to volunteer as a weekend puppy raiser. Every Sunday she hands Daisy back to Keith, the prisoner who cares for and trains the dog during the week. Keith seems intimidating at first but his work with Daisy suggests he is calm and committed to his work and the two trainers fall into an easy rhythm with their handovers. Sharron finds that working with Daisy is making her a better, more patient mother to her children.
When Sharron discovers the horrifying crime that put Keith in prison, her faith in him is shattered, yet Daisy's unwavering trust helps Sharron to understand the man's struggle for redemption. Both Keith and Sharron start this unforgettable year believing they are training a puppy, but in truth, Daisy show her trainers the way, gently pushing them to grow up, let go and experience what it really means to sit, to stay and to love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Having lost her longtime pet dog, Massachusetts journalist Luttrell volunteers to help train service dogs on the weekends; the rest of the week, the animals are taught by inmates as part of the Prison PUP program. She hits the jackpot with the second dog assigned to her Daisy, an affable yellow Labrador puppy. Even as Luttrell struggles to follow the program's guidelines and not simply play with Daisy, the connection she and her family form with the dog creates a complicated tension. On the one hand, keeping Daisy would be a dream come true, but that could only happen if Daisy flunked out of the National Education for Assistance Dog Services program. That failure would not only tear at Luttrell, but would be devastating to Keith, the inmate responsible for Daisy on weekdays. This moving warts-and-all narrative explores themes of redemption, as Luttrell struggles to reconcile the Keith she knows through the dog-training program and the man responsible for the crime that landed him behind bars for decades. The author's empathy is impressive given her own troubled past; she relates those struggles, as well as her rocky relationship with her teenage daughter, with candor that will win over readers generally left cold by animal books.
