A Review: Dog Medicine: How a Dog Saved Me from Myself

Chances are most Americans know someone suffering with depression or have grappled with it themselves. Julie Barton, a bright and talented young woman on the cusp of a successful career in publishing, woke one morning on her kitchen floor, the room filled with smoke from the meal she’d been preparing the night before when she lost consciousness. Terrified, she crawled to the phone and called her mother, convinced she’d had a nervous breakdown. Thus begins Barton’s powerful depiction of the catastrophic depression that unraveled her life until an adopted puppy called Bunker released the love that would eventually help her heal. Behind Barton’s depression lurked memories of the violent physical and verbal abuse to which her older brother subjected her and which her parents failed to address. Convinced she was the stupid ugly loser he said she was, she thought of herself in those terms and continually berated herself with those words. Caring for Bunker, however, taught her to forgive and trust herself. When a medical condition elicits a doctor’s suggestion to put him down, Julie she asserts her belief in his life, obtaining for him costly surgery to correct his bone deformities. In nursing Bunker to health, in saving Bunkers life, in giving him a better life she achieved the strength to save herself. Dog Medicine celebrates the reciprocal sharing that can occur between man and dog. It’s an exquisite testimony to the power of that love to heal.