All Sharon Langford needs to know she learned from dogs. She must know an awful lot; because she’s had so many of them. Langford is one of those admirable people who sees a need and does something about it. In her case, it’s the need of abandoned, neglected, and abused dogs.
When she wrote Living with the Rescues: Life Lessons and Inspirations she was sharing her home with eight dogs, all of which were rescued from various situations. Before you judge her as that crazy lady with all the dogs, note that she lives on three acres with fences, outbuildings and doghouses, and when she built her home, accommodating dogs was a major consideration.
In addition to providing homes for her canine family, she also assists with vet bills incurred by injured, abandoned animals, and helps in other ways. We may not be able to see it, but surely when her dogs look adoringly at her they see a halo.
Each chapter of Living with the Rescues is about one of her dogs; in the first section, the chapters are about the dogs that were with her at the time of writing, in the second section are dogs she has rescued that have crossed over to “the Rainbow Bridge.” Literalists might prefer “died,” but the image that Langford paints of our deceased friends’ afterlife is welcome and seriously better to consider than the end of a relationship. (“The Rainbow Bridge” is an anonymously written essay about canine “heaven,” where our companions enjoy their afterlife, but await our joining them.)
Not all of Langford’s rescues were models of the dogly graces, but each one taught her an important lesson on how to live a more rewarding and satisfying life. Rocky taught her “You can learn a lot by observing and listening”; Barney taught her “Be willing to change your opinion.”
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