Bedtime Stories for Dogs & Bedtime Stories for Cats - Amy Neftzger - review & giveaway

Bedtime Stories for Dogs and Bedtime Stories for Cats are two compilations of short stories, poems and fables for your favourite canine and/or feline four-legged friend(s) by author Amy Neftzger. These tales are called 'tails' here for obvious reasons, and are ideal for those who love their pets and sometimes wonder what they would read for themselves, if only they could...

My favourite selection of the two was the book for dogs, an unsurprising bias really as we have a dog! Amongst the collection, I particularly liked 'Why Dogs are Natural Leaders', 'The Giant Slipper - A Tail of Horror', and 'Is Obedience Training Really Necessary?', which illustrates many areas in which dogs believe they could teach their humans a thing or two! An essay by Henry David the Hound, it offers us a dog's perspective on why obedience training is important:


'When you consider all the potential reasons for obedience training, try to think of it as not really training for us: it's for the humans. Most of them don't know how to communicate well and need assistance in this area. For example, humans have very insensitive noses. They can't smell fear or danger. They must be trained to ask us for assistance in detecting these things or risk the potentially adverse outcomes that take place when these things go undetected.'

Written from the point of view of the dog, or cat, these stories give us an imagined insight into how they might think, and their personalities and opinions. Sometimes the stories and opinions are actually fairly serious considering the light-hearted appearance of the books, but all ages may find them entertaining.

As the author notes at the end of the book, humans with a love for cats may like the stories for cats book, wherein some of the stories tell the cat's version of the same stories in the dog book. 

Thank you very much to the author for the opportunity to read and review these two books.

They are both available to buy now as separate e-books, and as a paperback where the two compilations are bound together into one book, back to back.

You can visit the author's blog here and also follow her on twitter @Neftzger

Here's some background to the books from the author:

First of all, I love animals - especially dogs and cats.  I like the idea of them having their own stories and mythologies, just like different cultures of people. 

The idea for the book came to me because I think that dogs and cats view the world differently and they both probably think that their perspective is the "correct" view of the world.  For example, sometimes my dog looks at me like I'm crazy for throwing out spoiled food.  However, dogs are naturally scavengers and people are not.  Their bodies were built to handle digestion differently because of this.

I think that misunderstandings between people can happen for similar reasons because we may view other personality types or cultures as strange if we don't understand them.  For example, I love sushi but I live in the South where several people have told me that fish should only be eaten deep fried and they think I'm crazy for eating raw fish.  Extraverts often want to be around other people and may think introverts are crazy for spending a lot of time alone reading a book.  There are a lot of different types of people and animals in the world.  I like the variety and think we could all understand the world a little better if we occasionally looked at it through the eyes of someone with a different perspective.

Win a copy of the books! 

Thanks to the author, you an win an e-book copy of Bedtime Stories for Dogs and Bedtime Stories for Cats, just complete the rafflecopter form below.

The winner will be sent the codes to download both books for free from Smashwords.


The giveaway closes on 16th April 2012. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway