“Change loves me, defines and stalks me like a laser-guided smart bomb. It comes at me in all forms, suddenly and with enormous impact, from making shifts in work to having and raising a kid to buying a cabin on a distant mountaintop.

“I fuss over George when he’s sick and I fuss over him when he’s well. I send him to a play group several days a week to give him intraspecies quality time.

Treating animals just as any healer would treat human beings, Allen Schoen has become one of America’s most celebrated veterinarians.

“Dogs are blameless, devoid of calculation, neither blessed nor cursed with human motives. They can’t really be held responsible for what they do.

“Birds are my passion,” says Joanna Burger, “but parrots are my weakness.” Fifteen years ago, when se adopted a neglected, orphaned thirty-six year old parrot named Tiko, she entered on of the most complex relationships of her life.

Sullen and hostile when he entered Dr.

Jenny Lee covered her first year of marriage in the painfully real and funny book I Do. I Did. Now What?!