101 Salivations: For the Love of Dogs
Anyone who loves dogs knows that they have their own unique personalities-they may be brave or timid, placid or hyper-but they're always soulful. In this collection of 101 arresting four-color portraits, Hale manages to capture the essential doggishness of her subjects, whether it's Hamish the Chihuahua's minuscule, quizzical face or the quiet intelligence of Loki, a Staffordshire bull terrier mix, sitting patiently with a kitten on his head. Though there are a few gratuitous props-a knitted cap on a Gordon setter, a pearl necklace on a Chinese Crested-the photographs don't descend into the realm of the kitschy and too-cute, partly because the dogs' expressive faces are the focus of the compositions. Hale tosses a few relevant quotes into the mix as well, e.g., Walt Whitman's "The dog is the god of frolic," and P.G. Wodehouse's "It is fatal to let any dog know that he is funny, for he immediately loses his head and starts hamming it up." The appendix, which gives a brief description of each dog's story, adds dimension to the photographs. We learn, for example, that Jabba, an eight-year-old pit bull, is just as shy as she looks. During the shoot, Hale says, she "ran terrified from the room...frightened by a fly."Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.