QUIET VALOR

Nouvel presents stories of meaningful connections between humans and their pets.

The author, a longtime developer of flea-control measures and calming products for cats and dogs, reverses the normal pattern of his Quiet Valor books, focusing this time not on humans’ compassionate or courageous actions, but on dogs and cats who have offered support to humans. Nouvel accompanies these stories with scientific data explaining the chemical and biological underpinnings of these encounters. There’s the story of Sophie, a Yorkshire terrier who acted as a therapy dog; she made bedside visits in a pediatric ward in Wichita, Kansas, where she interacted with children who’d been taken out of their comforting home routines: “A human visitor, however warm, arrives carrying the full complexity of human presence,” Nouvel writes, including “the particular discomfort that well-meaning adult attention can produce….A small dog in a basket carries none of that.” He notes various clinical studies that have measured the swift, cortisol-lowering calming effects dogs have on kids in such situations. Other examples come from other books, as when he devotes a chapter to a story author Nancy Balbirer relates in her memoir A Marriage in Dog Years (2018), in which she lost her aging, ailing beagle to kidney failure: “What [the beagle] leaves behind is harder to describe than what he was,” Nouvel writes. “The bowl is still on the floor. The leash is still by the door.”

Nouvel presents various case studies in terse but evocative prose (which he edited with the assistance of AI tools, according to a prefatory note) that walks a line between dispassion and sentimentality. He intersperses his stories with factual observations about the cases in question. For instance, when writing about Gunnar, a French bulldog with reflex-biting issues, the author summarizes the slow and careful aggression therapy needed to change Gunnar’s habits; he adds, “Most bites are not the first signal a dog gives. They are the last one.” The book also effectively describes the humans involved, such as a woman named Drina who adopted a standoffish cat named Ghost. Drina adopted a long-term pattern of patience, steadily reducing Ghost’s chronic stress by providing him with the predictable environment he needed to relax and allow affection. Throughout, Nouvel intriguingly attempts to relate animals’ instinctive thought processes, and particularly the ways in which they choose whom to trust: “These decisions were not made the way humans make decisions,” he writes. “They were made in the body, through systems far older than thought.” These passages combine seamlessly with the book’s scientific information (with extensive references for further reading at the end), although Nouvel is at his strongest when narrating stories of human-pet connection, as in the case of a young woman in London who adopted a 27-year-old cat: “The relationship has deepened alongside the awareness that it will end.” The overall result of all these stories is an uplifting narrative for pet owners.

A series of touching tales of what it means to be chosen by an animal, and how to help them in return.