Tuesday, February 24, 2015

The Stolen Dog, by Tricia O'Malley

Park & Stowell Publishing, ISBN 9780989435116, May 2013

Tricia and Josh O'Malley are a loving couple and the loving owners of a Boston terrier named Briggs. Then one fine, sunny day, Briggs is stolen from their deck while Josh is momentarily distracted. Thus begins the most stress-filled weeks of their lives.

This is Tricia's story of their search for their stolen dog, and what she learned about marketing, social media, friendship, and both the kindness and the meanness of strangers. She has to go well outside her comfort zone, talking to people she would never ordinarily meet, go into your unfamiliar and sometimes unwelcoming neighborhoods all over Milwaukee to put up posters, develop a Facebook page for her stolen dog, put her cell phone number out there for everyone to call. There are prank calls, unhelpful calls, vicious calls.

But there are also calls that may be real leads.

Through the entire emotional rollercoaster, Tricia is going to work every day and trying to keep up the essentials of daily life. She's surprised to learn which of her friends think of Briggs as "just a dog" and offer no support at all. She's also surprised by the strangers and relative strangers who come out of the woodwork to provide real assistance in the form of putting up posters, providing backup when she or Josh are going into dicey neighborhoods, and making connections in the media and in different communities.

It's human connections that make the difference in their story.

This is a solid story, well-told, about finding a stolen dog. It's warm, human, and a very good read.
Recommended.

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