Follow My Lead: What Training My Dogs Taught Me about Life, Love, and Happiness

Follow My Lead is the story of how two rambunctious dogs and a tough Eastern European dog trainer named Irina taught Carol Quinn everything she needed to know about life, love, and happiness. It all begins when the author decides--somewhat naively--to enroll her two Rhodesian ridgebacks, Nairobi and Sheila, into dog agility training. Unhappy with her failing love affair, her career, and even herself, she's hoping to find a hobby and straighten out her unruly but affectionate pets. She soon discovers that dog agility is not a lazy game of fetch--it's a highly competitive sport that requires owners to move their dogs through a timed obstacle course using only voice and hand signals. What follows is a life-changing experience: a learning process that teaches her not only about her dogs, but also about herself. As she continues, the training, and even the obstacle course itself, becomes a metaphor for her life.

With humor and candor, Quinn shares the parallel story of how, with Irina's guidance and wisdom, she and her dogs develop a deep bond of love and trust, and learn to navigate the course obstacles with grace and skill; and how she, too, overcomes life's obstacles by accepting her flaws and finding the inner strength to move forward--away from her doomed love affair, fears, and anxieties--and become the "alpha dog" of her own life.

Funny, thoughtful, and uplifting, Follow My Lead is a story full of useful life lessons and homespun wisdom that will entertain and inspire readers of all sensibilities, whether they are dog lovers or not.