The Dog in the Dentist Chair

Let’s face it – kids and animals have a special affinity and watching them interact brings smiles to adult faces. While pets, usually dogs and cats, provide love and companionship, there is a special class of animals who go above and beyond that. These are service animals and The Dog in the Dentist Chair: And Other True Stories of Animals Who Help, Comfort, and Love Kids tells their stories. The book, published by Paraclete Press, is written by Peggy Frezon for children but I will admit that I thoroughly enjoyed it too.

The book begins with the story of the title animal, JoJo, who comforts and distracts children who are afraid at a visit to the dentist. We are told how JoJo sits on a nervous little girl’s lap and keeps her calm enough so the dentist can work on her teeth. As with the other animals in the book, there are pictures of JoJo and information about her; she is a seven year old Golden Retriever and her favorite toy is a tennis ball. It’s especially nice that each entry ends with an appropriate Bible quote.

There are a number of dogs mentioned in the book, as you would expect, and their skills go beyond comforting. Ricochet, another Golden Retriever, helps children with disabilities to surf. Ricochet had been in training to be a therapy dog when she went to the beach one day and saw a boy with a physical disability lying on a surfboard in the water. “All of a sudden, Ricochet jumped off her own surfboard and right on the surfboard with Patrick. She shifted her weight to balance the board in the waves, something Patrick couldn’t do by himself.”

Along with the dogs and a few cats, there are some more exotic animals helping kids including Magic the caring miniature horse, Bacon Bits the friendly pot-bellied pig, Tess the cuddling bunny, and Sage the school camel. The book also includes a list of ways that children can help animals.

This is a book that can be enjoyed by a family reading it together, but could also be used in Sunday school for a lesson about creation, or in a Blessing of the Animals worship service. The author quotes Genesis 1:25 in the dedication to the book and it is appropriate to end this review with those words as well.

So God made
every kind of animal.
He made the wild animals, the
tame animals, and all the small
crawling things.
And God saw that
this was good.

A review copy of this book was provided by the publisher.