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You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness
by
Julie Klam (Goodreads Author)
The secrets of love, health, and happiness gleaned from a life lived with dogs.
Julie Klam was thirty, single, and working as a part-time clerk in an insurance company, unable to meet a man she could spend her life with. And then it happened: she had a dream about a Boston terrier- a dream that practically hit her over the head. The companion she needed was not necessarily...more
Julie Klam was thirty, single, and working as a part-time clerk in an insurance company, unable to meet a man she could spend her life with. And then it happened: she had a dream about a Boston terrier- a dream that practically hit her over the head. The companion she needed was not necessarily...more
ebook, 240 pages
Published
October 28th 2010
by Riverhead Books
(first published September 17th 2010)
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A delightful, light, humorous memoir of a woman who catapults from being a single dog owner to being a wife, mother and rescue volunteer in Manhattan. Each chapter is centered on an anecdote from Ms. Klam's sometimes uplifting and sometimes heartbreaking dog experiences, then concludes with the life lesson she learned. She credits the dogs she has known for helping her to confront selfishness and open her heart to others, preparing her for marriage and motherhood. She not the first person to who...more
Aug 17, 2010
Susan
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone who has ever loved an animal
Recommended to Susan by:
Lydia
If the cover alone doesn't inspire you to read this book, you probably don't belong to that elite and sometimes maligned group of people known collectively as “dog lovers.” If you dip into the first few pages, you'll see what you are missing. This memoir of a dog rescuer who never intended to be one is funny, touching, and ultimately satisfying.
The author, who lives in a Manhattan apartment, stumbled into rescuing Boston terriers and dogs masquerading as Boston terriers. As all who have ever wor...more
The author, who lives in a Manhattan apartment, stumbled into rescuing Boston terriers and dogs masquerading as Boston terriers. As all who have ever wor...more
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I loved reading Klam’s experiences with pet psychics and her attempts to determine if she could become a psychic herself. It was a thing of humorous beauty, but I admit I approached pet psychics after a rescue. You see, we couldn’t determine if Patchwork Sally’s kittens were still alive out in the nasty field where we found her (she was lactating when we grabbed her). The pet psychics all assured us they were dead but we found them all alive and that was when we really wished we could communicat...more
I'd like to give this 3.5. It's engaging, funny, heartbreaking, and educational. Anyone involved with rescue, or thinking about getting into rescue should probably read it.
But gosh darn it all, I may just hurl the next book I about "a New Yorker who gets a dog and does all the wrong things but who learns and gets better next time" out the window. Can't you people do some research about basic training and obedience? I started training dogs in junior high through 4-H, so maybe I'm a little more s...more
But gosh darn it all, I may just hurl the next book I about "a New Yorker who gets a dog and does all the wrong things but who learns and gets better next time" out the window. Can't you people do some research about basic training and obedience? I started training dogs in junior high through 4-H, so maybe I'm a little more s...more
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From Publishers Weekly
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Starred Review. Klam (Please Excuse My Daughter) recounts the touching, often hilarious tales of life with Boston terriers. She adopts her first pet, Otto, after a "substantial" little dog "came slow-motion scampering through the high grass and wild daisies of sleep." With Otto, the then single Klam learned about compromise and sacrifice. Married and pregnant, the author adopts a little "doglet," Beatrice, and distracted by a newborn, forgets to have the puppy spayed--res
I have been wanting to read this book since it came out. When I saw the audiobook on my library's website, I jumped on it, said MINE!, and downloaded it. I don't listen to audiobooks very often anymore, but I figured I would listen to this one while I was cleaning or something.
I have two Boston Terriers (well one and a half) who I love so very much. I really related to Dahlia's story because about two years ago, I was given a pregnant, neglected, and malnourished Boston Terrier (knocked up by a...more
I have two Boston Terriers (well one and a half) who I love so very much. I really related to Dahlia's story because about two years ago, I was given a pregnant, neglected, and malnourished Boston Terrier (knocked up by a...more
I wanted to like this book.
I saw the cover, the adorable bug-eyed little dog, and thought "The reviews call it heartwarming and seriously funny! This will be wonderful! I love dogs!" The reviews were not entirely accurate.
The first thing that bugged me was her pacing. Otto was her first doggy love - but he barely lasted until chapter 3. He impacted her life so "strongly" but there aren't many stories about him. The back cover made it sound like Otto was going to lead her through personal discove...more
I saw the cover, the adorable bug-eyed little dog, and thought "The reviews call it heartwarming and seriously funny! This will be wonderful! I love dogs!" The reviews were not entirely accurate.
The first thing that bugged me was her pacing. Otto was her first doggy love - but he barely lasted until chapter 3. He impacted her life so "strongly" but there aren't many stories about him. The back cover made it sound like Otto was going to lead her through personal discove...more
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I picked this up at a closing Borders, and figured, it's about dogs and the title is "You Had Me At Woof", how could I not like this? I barely had time to scan the back and didn't see the author bio. I lazily picked it up at home, and suddenly it was 3AM and I was halfway through. I looked at the author bio and found Klam was a writer for many respected publications. Through reading her book I had discovered that she had been 30 and at a job she hated (part time insurance clerk) and felt she had...more
Those of you who know me well can look at this book's cover and know why I enjoyed the book so much. Julie Klam, a dog lover, lives and writes in NYC, living in an apartment with her husband, daughter and three Boston Terriers. She also works with Boston Terrier Rescue in the NYC area and thus often fosters Bostons. The subtitle of the book " How Dogs taught me the secrets of Happiness" indicates her attitude toward the whole dog loving process: It is a wonderful, amusing and giving two-way stre...more
Reading Julie Klam's You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness takes us through her journey as a young, single woman living in a studio in Manhattan who takes and rescues a Boston terrier - and the satisfaction and delight that ensues. In the months and years that follow, Julie falls in love, marries, changes apartments, starts a family, and grows increasingly involved in fostering and caring for rescue dogs. With sympathy and humor, You Had Me at Woof captures Klam's trans...more
Look at that cover. How could I resist that face? This just came in yesterday...I started reading immediately, read a bit at lunch and then finished last night. Obviously, a quick read. You don't have to be one of those people that cannot leave a dog alone to appreciate this one, but it helps. Julie opens the book with chapters about Otto, her first dog as a single person. Because of Otto's rewarding presence in her life, she decides to become a foster parent for Boston terriers, joining a Manha...more
Even if you are not a dog person, you will be a Julie Klam person. Reading about her life through the lens of her relationships with the Boston Terriers she has rescued over the years, I became Klam's fan, then grew to feel as if she were an old friend, and by the end of her memoir, You Had Me at Woof, she had become an inspiration. Her often funny and always fresh and honest stories about herself, her dogs, her friends, and her family, are at turns easy-going and deeply moving. By the end of ea...more
I had the flu this week, and did not feel like reading anything for a few days. I watched movies, slept, blew my nose til it bled, and descended into an unplanned and most definitely un-curative marathon of Dr. Drew's Celebrity Rehab. I blame my fever. Anyway, Art bought me this book for Christmas, a book I mentioned wanting mainly because of the cover, however suspect that motive. Not looking for anything deep, I dug in this week, and I'm pretty sure it took about 10 minutes to read.
The cover'...more
The cover'...more
This book reads like a long email or a Christmas letter, and it's written with about the same amount of skill as an average rendering of the latter. There are quite a few emails copy-and-pasted into the book, in fact. I really can't fathom why Julie Klam was ever hired by the big-name magazines that she's written for, or why people think she's a "funny" writer. Just because you write about funny things doesn't make you a funny writer. Maybe it's just that i prefer a more witty or tongue-in-cheek...more
My mother-in-law gave this book to me as a birthday present thinking that I'd really enjoy it because it was about the author's experience with dog rescue and my husband and I are the proud parents of three rescued beagles. I loved it! It was nice to hear about another's experience and how it's similar to my own. Dog ownership in general, and dog ownership of rescues in particular, can be full of trials and tribulations, but greater still it is full of tremendous joy, pride, and love. I had so m...more
I good book but not a great book. The author lost a bit of credibility with me when she stated in an early chapter that she paid to become a pet psychic. Perhaps it is an east coast USA thing, but after that chapter I started to wonder just who the heck she was spinning this tale for. It seemed like she found a niche and decided to use it to her advantage. "I have a dog lets tell a short story and then tack on a deep thought at the end that ties it all up into a bow."
I am a dog lover and my fami...more
I am a dog lover and my fami...more
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This book was not at all what I expected. I’m not going to lie - I did buy it because of its cover since I am a Boston terrier lover. How can you resist that face!?
The back cover summarizes Julie as 30, single, and living in NYC and she is a rut and looking for love. Then she dreams about a Boston Terrier named Otto which she takes as sign. So she goes out to get this dog, whom she falls in love with. I thought this book would focus around her life with Otto in it and how he helped her grow, fin...more
The back cover summarizes Julie as 30, single, and living in NYC and she is a rut and looking for love. Then she dreams about a Boston Terrier named Otto which she takes as sign. So she goes out to get this dog, whom she falls in love with. I thought this book would focus around her life with Otto in it and how he helped her grow, fin...more
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This is about a woman who rescues Boston terriers. And, more than that, it’s about the special bond people have with their dogs. You might think that it’s a given that I’d like this kind of book, but I usually don’t read “yay, dogs are awesome!” books. I like this book because it’s great and well-written, not because it’s about dogs. :)
If you’re not a dog person, read this anyway. It’s not weird and all “dogs are better than people.*” It’s smart and funny and when I was a few chapters in**, I we...more
If you’re not a dog person, read this anyway. It’s not weird and all “dogs are better than people.*” It’s smart and funny and when I was a few chapters in**, I we...more
I really enjoy Julie Klam's book. Her style style of writing is very easy to read, hilarious and has down to earth observations of the events in her life. I felt like I was listening to one of my friends telling me stories of her life. The book begins at a time in Juile's life when she is looking for direction. She is in her early 30's, has a job but not a career, and no significant love interest in her life. She has a dream that she has a Boston Terrier named Otto and shortly thereafter she doe...more
Everyone thinks they know the best way. The best way to raise children, the best way to raise pets, the best way to do everything. I've heard a lot of dog owners very pompously tell me, for example, that they only give their dogs raw food because dogs don't have kibble in the wild. People also have very strong opinions on child rearing. Everything from breastfeeding to spanking to letting your child sleep in bed with you seems to be controversial, and many parents have absolutely no qualms about...more
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I bought this book as a potential Christmas gift for a family member who loves dogs, and thought I'd just try it out to make sure she would like it. Half a day later, I'd read the entire book, laughed in so many places and felt sad in others. Julie Klam's writing is a treat .... she makes it effortless to follow her adventures as a member of a rescue group for Boston Terriers, and brings each of the dogs who come into her life come alive for us. She had me loving even the less lovable dogs, and...more
Author Julie Klam wrote You Had Me At Woof to share her love of dogs and finding them homes as a foster fur baby mom. Some of the dogs she kept herself other she just watched until they found their permanent home.
Being a dog, and cat lover I know if I started the job of fostering I would not be able to let go of the pets. Although Mrs. Klam has had the issue of keeping a dog she fostering many times, especially since she does have a daughter who also become attached, she has learned to let go o...more
Being a dog, and cat lover I know if I started the job of fostering I would not be able to let go of the pets. Although Mrs. Klam has had the issue of keeping a dog she fostering many times, especially since she does have a daughter who also become attached, she has learned to let go o...more
This book was a Christmas gift. I always am shy of buying stories about pets because I know they will make me cry eventually. I put off reading this book because I had just lost my own Otto and knew I could not bear to read of another person's grief over losing a special pet. I finally read Ms. Klam's book this weekend and I am grateful to the person who was kind enough to gift me with this particular tome. I laughed out loud often while reading...and I eventually cried too. But the real gift of...more
First off I have tell everyone something funny about the book. After I finished reading the book I left it laying on the floor at home all I always have done with my books. One of my dogs chewed the living day lights out of this book, and it was a library book. This has never happened in my years of having dogs. When you have 5 dogs there is no way to know which one did it either. The book started off pretty slow and a little strange. When I say strange I am referring to the chapter where the au...more
Julie Klam was a single woman living in NYC, and looking for love in all the wrong places. Then she met Otto, and it was love at first sight. Otto was her first Boston Terrier...
This is her story of how she sort of stumbled into being a dog owner, then a dog rescuer and fosterer, and if you read this book on the subway, people will look at you like you're a crazy lady (or guy) because you will be laughing out loud one minute, and the next minute you will be in tears, as there are some truly hea...more
This is her story of how she sort of stumbled into being a dog owner, then a dog rescuer and fosterer, and if you read this book on the subway, people will look at you like you're a crazy lady (or guy) because you will be laughing out loud one minute, and the next minute you will be in tears, as there are some truly hea...more
I had such high expectations for this book because the author was writing about her Boston Terrier, Otto. How could I not love a book with that face on the cover? But maybe my expectations were too high, because I ended up being mildly disappointed. The author recounts her history with dogs--the first dog she owned, her work with rescue groups, etc. Somehow, though, she failed to convey both her emotional relationship with the dogs in the book and the qualities of the dogs themselves. Instead, i...more
This is a memoir much in the ilk of Dewey: The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World in that the book is really about the author, with pets playing a secondary role. In both cases the pets offer support, but the issues really are about the people. I liked this book much more than Dewey because Klam has a sense of humor and is a more positive person. I felt the section reading entire e-mails of correspondence between the rescue workers was cheesy. It seemed like a lazy substitute for writi...more
This was one of those happy/painful reads. I loved Klam's experiences with her dogs, but they reminded me of the pain that goes along with losing one. Having gone through that one year ago, this book was a sharp reminder that it sometimes takes longer than expected to heal, and only solidified my longing for another four-legged friend. I loved that she identified true "dog people" (not all dog owners are such), and reminds us of the awesome responsibility that comes with owning a dog (as in the...more
This book about the author's experience owning a dog, and then becoming a dog lover and dog recuse volunteer was pleasant to read when focusing on the dogs themselves and concern when pets are abandoned. However, at the end of the book while I applauded the author's volunteerism, she came across as moderatly self involved, and not someone I thought knew how to handle dogs. I even wondered at why she worked so hard to return a found dog to an owner that clearly didn't seem to want it in the first...more
This book was really about a Boston Terrier lover with a passion for rescuing all Boston's because she loved them so much and ended up being a bunch of short stories from her different rescues. Although some of the stories were endearing the whole book just didn't seem to have a point. After the first chapter I thought it was going to be about a single NYC gal who was able to be open to love after getting a dog and learning to put someone else first. However by the next chapter she was already m...more
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Live Video Chat with Julie Klam: Wednesday, 11/10/10, 2 pm ET/11 am PT | 39 | 32 | Nov 10, 2010 11:47am |
Julie Klam grew up in Bedford, NY. She has been a freelance writer since 1991, writing for such publications as “O, The Oprah Magazine,” “Rolling Stone,” “Harper’s Bazaar,” “Glamour,” and “The New York Times Magazine”.
A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she was a writer for VH1’s Pop-Up Video, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Special Class Writing.
Please Excuse My Daughter, her m...more
More about Julie Klam...
A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, she was a writer for VH1’s Pop-Up Video, where she earned an Emmy nomination for Special Class Writing.
Please Excuse My Daughter, her m...more
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“A very wise dog woman once told me that dogs find owners, not the other way around. They pick you and they choose to stay with you. In that way, they are also giving you the end of their life. The deeper the bond, the harder it is to say good-bye. I know I’d rather have any amount of time with a dog I love and suffer the mourning than not have the time at all.”
—
15 people liked it
“Puppies are constantly inventing new ways to be bad. It's fascinating. You come into a room they've been in and see pieces of debris and try to figure out what you had that was made from wicker or what had been stuffed with fluff.”
—
4 people liked it
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